The Hindu : North Korea and pax Americana

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Saturday, May 10, 2003

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North Korea and pax Americana

By P. S. Suryanarayana

Beijing will be Washington's most important interlocutor in addressing the ''problem'' of North Korea.

THE U.S. has declared victory over Saddam Hussein's Iraq which was defined as a key segment of a global "axis of evil". Washington, however, is wary of going to war with North Korea, another segment of the same "axis of evil". For the sake of world peace, the strategic ambivalence on the part of Washington as regards North Korea is certainly a matter of relief to the larger international community. Nonetheless, the issues at stake do not at all mask the outlines of pax Americana, a policy that is being actively pursued by the U.S. President, George W. Bush.

It has been repeatedly affirmed by the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, that his country "has no intention" to launch a military strike against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or the North) at this stage. In the same breath, though, the U.S. authorities, from Mr. Bush downwards, have also asserted that "all options", including war, "are still on the table" to tame the Kim Jong-Il "regime" in Pyongyang. In a sense, the DPRK's strategic tussle with the U.S. goes back to the indecisive outcome of the Korean War of the early 1950s. The present standoff centres, though, on the question whether Pyongyang can possess nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in defiance of the American diktat. While the DPRK cherishes its sovereign right to wield nuclear weapons as strategic "deterrence" against a hostile U.S., Mr. Bush will not brook any such theory. Not only that. Two of the DPRK's neighbours — the ethnic-kin country of South Korea and Japan — are uncomfortable, too, despite deriving their strategic solace from the U.S. The strategic dependence on the U.S. by both Japan and South Korea complicates the realities as seen from Pyongyang, no less than from Tokyo and Seoul.

Surely, the DPRK can count on few genuine allies on the wider international stage. Yet, the Stalinist state, tremendously impoverished despite its ideology of "juche" (self-reliance), is taken very seriously indeed in East Asia. According to the U.S. intelligence community, North Korea has exported ballistic missiles and the related know-how to countries such as Pakistan. In turn, Islamabad is suspected to have helped the DPRK build nuclear weapons through the uranium-enrichment route. Pakistan, of course, denies any such dealings with Pyongyang. Nevertheless, China gets sucked into these arguments because of its strategic "patronage" of Pakistan. Western diplomatic sources have indicated that Beijing did, at one stage, indicate to Washington that "Pakistan is China's Israel" for all strategic intents and purposes. This aspect, which has so far transcended the ideological dissimilarities between Beijing and Islamabad at any given time, does not establish a political or strategic equivalence between China and Pakistan, though.

However, "pacifist" Japan, in particular, has begun to talk, in recent months, about a nuclear "option" of its own. However, Tokyo's consistent refrain as of now is to rule out the possibility of exercising any nuclear "option" for three reasons — the sentiments of the Japanese people who were "nuked" in World War II, the country's constitutional injunctions and, importantly, the possibility of destabilising the existing international "order". For Seoul, on the other hand, the possibility of a "nuclearised" DPRK will only complicate reconciliation and reunification, unquestionable long-term goals on the inter-Korean front. Relevant to this sub-text is the suspicion within some sections of the Asia-Pacific diplomatic circles that a reunited Korean nation might not be averse to being a "nuclearised" entity. The simple reasoning behind this assumption is that a reunited Korea will still find itself in the vicinity of China — one of only five states allowed to possess all "generations" of the atom bomb under the discriminatory Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Beijing will stay in a league above all the other players in East Asia in the foreseeable future. In all, therefore, Beijing will be Washington's most important interlocutor in addressing the ''problem'' of North Korea, which today owes more to China than post-Soviet Russia in almost all spheres of national activity.

Two important questions should be of utmost concern to the U.S. in this connection. First, will China itself prefer a "nuclearised" North Korea as a proximate neighbour? In a critical sense, a "nuclearised" DPRK should, as long as it remains friendly with China, challenge the strategic ingenuity of both Japan and South Korea. Any such turn of events must, on paper, suit China's own strategic interests of the military kind in East Asia. However, China knows full well that the U.S., whose "forward-deployed military presence" in East Asia remains vibrant to this day, will be inclined to intervene in the region in this scenario. For the U.S., it is still anathema even as a notion that either Japan or South Korea or both could act independently of Washington to confront or contain a "nuclearised" North Korea. Not surprisingly, therefore, some reasoning of this kind underpins China's current policy preference — a "de-nuclearised Korean peninsula". China would not want either the DPRK or even South Korea to possess the atom bomb. This should, in a sense, shed light on the strategic calculations behind China's latest initiative of hosting and participating in "tripartite talks" that brought the U.S. and the DPRK together in Beijing. A "Beijing process" has been set in motion as regards the DPRK issue, China tends to believe at this time.

The strategic case relating to Japan is somewhat different. This raises the second important question of deep concern to the U.S. Should the DPRK cross the "red line" and produce or acquire nuclear weapons, can the U.S. go to war with Pyongyang? A strong strand of thinking across Washington's military-industrial-university complex is that a second Korean war at this stage might only bring the U.S.-Japan security alliance, a legacy of the outcome of World War II, under enormous strain. This aspect should explain why the U.S. leaders are saying repeatedly that they have "no intention"' of invading North Korea at present. In fact, the U.S. has even underlined that the DPRK's latest claims about having already made the atom bomb should be weighed against the "intelligence" that Pyongyang had not yet tested a nuclear explosive device. The DPRK, it is said, has only tested and even exported ballistic missiles that could deliver nuclear weapons in offensive operations.

Beyond this aspect of Mr. Bush's war-shyness as regards North Korea, for at least the time being, lie the inter-related issues of pax Americana and Washington's Japan connectivity. It is generally reckoned by the U.S. establishment that Japan would be averse to joining any war against the DPRK, especially if the military strikes were designed merely to "decapitate" Pyongyang's capabilities and facilities to make nuclear weapons. North Korea has not no far been seriously accused of producing chemical and biological weapons or of actively promoting anti-U.S. terrorism at the present moment. Should Japan steer clear of any U.S.-led war against North Korea in the present circumstances, the "moral" sustainability of Washington's Tokyo flank might come into question with serious strategic implications.

What will this mean for America's global supremacy which the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has now glorified in "liberated" Baghdad? In an update, Chalmers Johnson, author of "Blowback", has foreseen the "danger" of an "imperial overstretch". The U.S. is surely caught between such dilemmas in its all-consuming anti-terror war of any description and the temptation of being the sole "global hegemon".

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