Goals in North Korea vary widely
Even allies don’t always share similar priorities
One reason North Korea is the world’s most dire nuclear hotspot is that among the most important players, even allies and semi-allies have different desires and priorities. An enemy to some, a bulwark to others, a frustration to all, with decades of unfinished business coloring the picture in ways unique to each nation.
North Korea’s successful launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile July 4 raised the heat on tensions that have been building for decades, leaving the international community scrambling for an answer to containing Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.
North Korea
North Korea has made no secret about what its demands are. Nothing is more important to the North’s ruling regime than its own survival.
To that end, it wants Washington to abandon its “hostile policy” aimed at forcing the country into collapse.
United States
The top U.S. priority, apart from defending South Korea as a treaty ally, is to rid the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons — meaning the North’s weapons.
The administration of President George H.W. Bush seemed to set the stage when he announced the withdrawal of all naval and land-based
tactical nuclear weapons, including from South Korea. Pyongyang not only persisted in its nuclear ambitions but in recent years has accelerated its program and all but closed the door to denuclearization.
South Korea
The ultimate dream for South Korea is clear: a unified Korean Peninsula, led by Seoul and its values.
The problem, of course, and the source of seven decades of animosity and bloodshed, is that North Korea harbors a mirror image of that ambition.
China
As the closest thing to what North Korea might call an ally, China is under greater pressure than any nation to curb the regime’s provocations and set it on a path to a long-term resolution of the standoff. Yet Beijing insists it doesn’t have that kind of influence with Pyongyang and has largely rejected calls to curtail two-way commerce that accounts for an estimated 90 percent of the North’s foreign trade. Beijing would like to return to the period in the past decade when it received kudos for hosting six-nation talks in which the North’s representatives sat down with the U.S. and others to discuss steps toward ending its nuclear program in return for incentives.
Japan
As a staunch American ally, Japan cooperates closely with Washington and backs it in stepping up pressure on North Korea to counter the growing threat from its missile and nuclear programs.
Japan, a non-nuclear state and home to 50,000 American troops, relies on the U.S. “nuclear umbrella” under a bilateral security treaty as a deterrent and is wary of any escalation in military tensions in the region. It seeks to avoid becoming embroiled in U.S. military actions but is taking a leadership role with the U.S. and South Korea in lobbying other countries, especially China and Russia, to enforce economic sanctions against the North.