Time for Trump to change tactics in North Korea crisis.
BEIJING MIGHT BE ABLE TO HELP WITH N. KOREA — IF TRUMP SWITCHES TACTICS
On his visit to China in November, President Donald Trump was extremely well-behaved. He smiled, he made sure to point out that problems between China and the United States were borne of previous presidents and their decisions. It was a far cry from candidate Trump, criticizing China on the campaign trail while bemoaning all the bad deals the United States had blundered into.
He was also quick to flatter Chinese leader Xi Jinping. His cosy relationship with Xi was part of Trump’s notion of statecraft, borrowed from his oft- trumpeted sense of how to make a really great deal. But to close this deal — to persuade Beijing to step in and put pressure on Kim Jong Un, thus solving the ongoing nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula — Trump is going to have to be a much more adept and nuanced negotiator than he has been in the past. And he needs to know history.
China is not naturally disposed to give the United States what it wants in the Korean crisis. A collapsed North Korean state would probably lead to a unified Korean government allied with the United States, something not in China’s geopolitical interests. Even if Xi wanted to give the United States what it wants, however, it’s likely that he can’t.
Chinese- Korean relations are not anywhere near as one-dimensional as U.S. strategic assessments of the region often assume. Relations between the two countries since 1945 have long defied any assumptions of a united communist monolith.
There is one narrow approach that offers a glimmer of hope for achieving Trump’s goal — wielding China’s triumphalist selfimage and shame over historical failures to prod Xi into demonstrating China’s power so as not to see his regime’s political narrative shattered.
The complicated history behind the hope that this type of manoeuvre might succeed begins in the 1800s. The 19th century was not kind to China. European and U. S. imperialists drove the Qing Empire into a series of unequal treaties, opening Chinese ports to Western trade and influence, and crippling the Chinese state.
It also witnessed the beginning of f undamental shifts in the relationship between China and Korea. For centuries Korea operated within the Chinese tributary system, an i nternational framework that guaranteed Korean security in return for acknowledgment of Chinese superiority. This system saw the Chinese Ming Dynasty come to Korea’s defence in the face of a Japanese invasion in the 1590s. This relationship was what Xi was probably evoking when he supposedly told President Trump that Korea “used to be a part of China.”
But in 1895, China suffered arguably the most hu- miliating in a long string of defeats in the Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese, who beginning in the 1860s had aggressively adopted Westernstyle reforms in their political, industrial and military systems, won comfortably. The war was fought over which of the two countries could claim Korea within its sphere of influence. Korea officially became a colony of the Empire of Japan in 1910.
A year later, in 1911, the Chinese i mperial system that had existed in various forms since the third century BCE collapsed, replaced by a Western- influenced republic, and China endured decades of conflict until Chairman Mao’s communists successfully reunified the country in 1949.
China’s communist turn helped prompt U.S. adoption of the domino theory, the idea that communist revolutions in one country made similar changes in neighbouring countries more likely. U. S. strategists saw North Vietnam, China, the U. S. S.R. and North Korea as one large red blob of communist solidarity marring the globe. The Chinese Communist Party ( CCP) and the Korean Workers’ Party i n North Korea appeared to be natural allies in the battle against capitalist imperialism.
But that was never actual- ly the case. Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, started the Korean War in 1950 more or less unilaterally, marching south and eventually drawing in one million Chinese “volunteers,” which frustrated the more immediate Chinese goal of reclaiming the island of Taiwan from Mao’s nationalist enemies. And this pattern of North Korea frustrating China or forcing its hand would repeat itself in the decades to come, in part because North Korean sociopolitical thought rested upon Juche ideology, which celebrated political independence and self-reliance.
Today, while North Korea relies on China economically, that dependence does not translate into direct, unmitigated influence.
TRUMP NEEDS TO MANIPULATE THE TRIUMPHALIST NARRATIVE.
That does not mean that Trump’s efforts are entirely futile, however. As much as the power relations between China and North Korea make it difficult for China to intervene successfully, there are currents in Chinese politics that Trump could take advantage of to prod Xi into acting.
Policymakers i n China characterize their country’s evolution into a regional and global power as its “peaceful rise.” This congratulatory self- conception tightly fuses geopolitical standing and domestic development, and it plays a central role in Chinese politics. The CCP has long portrayed itself as the guarantor of social and economic betterment, and this branding is yoked to the notion of a mighty China that dominates its regional sphere of influence.
We see this conception clearly in Chinese policy in the South China Sea: most recently building an air base on an artificial island in the Spratly Islands, only a few hundred miles from the Philippines coast — prompting howls from Manila. China swatted these protests aside, as it did previous complaints from the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations, declaring that the islands were Chinese territory.
This legally questionable assertion is based on a “nine dash line” sketched out in 1948 that claims all of the South China Sea as Chinese territory. China faces similar disputes over its claim to other island chains as well.
China asserts its control over these islands in part to rebuild a sense of greatness and purge Chinese historical memory of the humiliations of the past — a central aspect of both its domestic and foreign policy.
This desire is why Trump’s flattery strategy is destined to fail. As Trump’s visit to China demonstrated, flattery does little more than inflate Xi’s profile, and confirm for a Chinese and arguably an international audience that China’s return to global prominence is complete. In- deed, the Chinese presentation of Trump’s visit emphasized the president’s deference to his hosts.
Instead, Trump needs to manipulate this triumphalist Chinese narrative and the shame that the Chinese associate with earlier periods of geopolitical impotence. The way to do that is to publicly express the expectation that, as the regional power, China would act to rein in North Korea, but then acknowledge how difficult and costly that might be. This posture would directly contradict the Chinese narrative of a peaceful unopposed rise, and highlight the clear limitations of Chinese power.
This would pressure Xi into demonstrating that China has the power to force North Korea to act so as not to have his political narrative burst — which would have serious domestic ramifications.
Admittedly, t he odds of such a manoeuvre succeeding are low, but it would provide a third course beyond the binary options of nuclear strikes or a political capitulation that Kim Jong Un cannot realistically be expected to accept.
The catch is that this approach requires Trump to act with a precise, deft touch, which isn’t usually his strong suit. But the potential gain makes it worth a shot.