Time now for some real give and take.
The media has been too distracted with what happened (or didn’t) in Sweden and how many days it took Trump to express his feelings about antisemitism to pay much attention to a major announcement by China recently. Beijing said that it would be suspending coal imports from North Korea for the rest of the year in response to the expansion of the latter’s testing of an intermediate range missile, part of North Korea’s nuclear armaments program. The test had led the former head of the CIA, R. James Woolsey to warn “Don’t underestimate North Korea’s nuclear arsenal” and that it is “likely more advanced and dangerous than many experts think.”
North Korea badly needs to sell coal in order to earn foreign currency to pay for its imports. Other nations refuse to buy its coal, the sale of which is limited under UN sanctions. This significant move by China unleashed a particularly vitriolic outburst – even by North Korean standards – against China. Pyongyang accused Beijing of “dancing to the tune of the U. S.” and “styling itself as a big power.”
So far the Trump Administration has not responded to this significant gesture by China. This may well reflect the fact that its foreign policy team is still being assembled. Moreover, the U. S. has often taken the positon that China ought to twist North Korea’s arm to the point that it would at least freeze, if not roll back, its buildup of nuclear arms and missiles. For example, former Defense Secretary Ash Carter stated last September that “China has and shares important responsibility for this development and has an important responsibility to reverse it. It’s important that it use its location, its history and its influence to further the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and not the direction things have been going.
