Trump tough talk may help end North Korea crisis

The unprecedentedly close working relationship between the presidents of US and China can keep the Pyongyang dialogue moving forward

n North Korea, the United States is closer to a nuclear war than at any other time since the Cold War. An aircraft carrier battle group (after some confusion) is steaming in. Kim Jong-un vows a sixth nuclear test, which the US has said it would not tolerate. “Diplomatic efforts,” US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, “have failed.” Heated words are exchanged almost daily between the world’s only superpower and its small and impoverished, but nuclear-armed, antagonist. If posturing tips over into actual violence, one million people could die on the Korean Peninsula alone — that is, if the conflict doesn’t go nuclear. Pyongyang’s missiles may not be able to reach the US, but Japan is well within range.

At the same time, these two nations may also be closer to peace than at any point in nearly two decades. This is because the US appears to be shifting away from a policy that exacerbated the conflict. Under the administrations of former US presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the US mixed two fundamentally conflicting aims in its dealings with North Korea, writes Fu Ying, who led the Chinese delegation in many of the failed multilateral Korean nuclear talks, in a recent paper for the Brookings Institution. That’s because Washington aimed for both denuclearisation and regime change. The first goal is strategic, while the second is largely ideological. But the threat of regime change is the very reason the regime wants a nuclear deterrent.

There are signs that US President Donald Trump may take American policy beyond this strategic-ideological schizophrenia. This past week, Tillerson said the US needs to separate its values from its policies. For the sake of national and regional security, curtailing Pyongyang’s weapons programme is clearly the higher priority.

Two misperceptions have resulted in a confused policy towards North Korea. First is the notion that it has been a client state of China since the end of the Korean War, driven by an ideological alliance between the two Communist countries and China’s need for a buffer between it and US-allied South Korea. In the Financial Times, for instance, James Kynge wrote: “Beijing remains inclined to tolerate its exasperating client state.” But for much of the Cold War, North Korea was a client state of the Soviet Union, not of China. The Soviets provided virtually all of the economic and military aid to North Korea, including its initial nuclear capability. During much of the same period, China was in a quasi-alliance with the US against the Soviet Union.

Beijing dislikes instability

After the fall of the Soviet Union, North Korea’s founding leader, Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of Kim Jong-un, went to China in 1991 and met China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping. He entreated his neighbour to take over the leadership of the Communist world and assume patronage of his country. Deng rejected the pleas. His famous words “Tao guang yang hui” (“Keep a low profile”), China’s foreign policy doctrine for the following decades, were uttered for the first time in front of the elder Kim during that meeting. China, however, did provide — and still does — just enough material support to help a close neighbour. Beijing dislikes the idea of instability on its northeastern border that might result from a state collapse. But the notion of a client state based on an ideological bond is simply wrong.

The second misperception is that it’s time for action, because marathon talks over many years failed to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programme.

Today, Trump seems to be freeing the US from the neoconservative and liberal-interventionist policies of the past. For the first time in 16 years, the American side has come out and said rather unequivocally that the foremost priority is disarmament.

Numerous uncertainties and risks still remain. How would the US verify denuclearisation? How could Pyongyang trust that Washington would honour a commitment not to pursue regime change later, as it did in Libya? Would China be willing to step in and fill the gap between the two parties’ promises?

But the US and China finally have a clear path — pressuring North Korea from their respective directions to first halt its nuclear programme and then negotiate its rollback in exchange for the survival of the state. And the unprecedentedly close working relationship between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the Korean nuclear issue can help keep it moving forward. With Trump’s new approach, choosing one goal over the other, the United States may finally get what it wants. Eric X. Li is a venture capitalist and political scientist in Shanghai.

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