Using Korean refugees as leverage on China? It’s a thought, anyway
The current crisis in North Korea shines a harsh light on all the usual solutions and finds them wanting.
Sanctions? As the world-weary and resigned Allahpundit writes: Symbolic sanctions are a perfect non-solution to an unsolvable problem.
Yes, the UN Security Council acted with surprising alacrity; but no, the sanctions lack the economic pressure that China and South Korea could bring to bear, as well as enforcement measures–for example, it makes searching North Korean ships for banned material discretionary rather than obligatory.
As this editorial in the Australian cogently states: That this pusillanimous policy is seen as a sign that the UN is determined to get tough with North Korea demonstrates how little the world has come to expect from the Security Council.
“The Security Council.” One of those names that has become Orwellian, doing the opposite of what it purports. No real security to be found there-.
So what’s left? With main player China uncooperative in knocking off Kim Jong-il, and no one wanting to anger the North Koreans or to destablize the region through military action, are we back to the Fifties, as Dennis Byrne writes? Is the MADness of Mutually Assured Destruction our only hope?
And would Kim even be amenable to the arguments of MAD, considering that it’s based on leaders having some sort of regard for the continuing existence of the people of their own nations? One wonders just how mad Kim Jong-il is–because, despite its name, MAD is based on the premise that leaders are at least somewhat rational.
John O’Sullivan, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, has a different idea. He finds all the current “solutions” wanting, but suggests a possible way to force the Chinese to “turn the Chinese key in the lock.”
Take a look. The short version of his premise is that Korean refugees to China are routinely returned to be worked to death in their land of origin, a Chinese policy that constitutes a violation of UN human rights treaties China itself has signed.
So what, you say, and rightly so. What good do those treaties do anyway? O’Sullivan thinks, however, that there’s a chance that something worthwhile can come of them:
There is a large and growing left-right coalition of Korean Americans, traditional human rights groups and evangelical churches. They were the political forces behind the North Korean Human Rights Act passed two years ago by Congress…They will now be raising the issue of North Korean refugees in Washington, on TV, in churches, in rallies and on the Internet.
North Korean refugees will eventually become a bipartisan political issue on the scale of the plight of Soviet Jews in the 1970s. Just as that issue produced the Jackson-Vanik amendment, forcing the Soviets to choose between allowing their emigration or losing access to the U.S. market, so the plight of North Korean refugees will eventually present China with a similar choice. And trade with America is vastly larger and more important to a fast-growing capitalist China than it was to a stagnant and impoverished Soviet Union.
O’Sullivan realizes, of course, that China could retaliate by “selling its U.S. bonds and provoking a fiscal crisis and a trade war simultaneously.” But he concludes that China’s interests lie in installing a regime in North Korea that isn’t so much of a loose cannon as the present one, and this pressure might just help it to realize that. America’s interests, of course, lie in that direction as well. It’s a scenario in which everybody would win except Kim Jong-il.
O’Sullivan concludes:
…if Beijing were to make a few telephone calls to its favorite generals in Pyongyang, suggesting they would benefit from his overthrow and the gradual liberalization of his regime, it could advance its own interests and seek some reward from Washington, Tokyo and the U.N. for being an international good neighbor.
A consummation devoutly to be wished.
So, how realistic is this option? And how dangerous? Not very, and somewhat. But then, consider those alternatives…
It’s as real as you can make it. And as unreal as the obstructionists can make it.
The Reps should be pushing a 10% import tax on Chinese goods, and possibly Korean ones as well — for not having a tighter sanctions regime.
The real justice issue is this: should the US or China support some other generals, almost certainly with blood on their hands, in a coup to topple Kim ill sicko — and replace him?
Realpolitik says yes; nuke danger trumps democracy and free trade both.
Mad (but not crazy?) Mullahs are watching, too.
…FOR the past several months, I’ve been wrapping up lengthy interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with a fundamental question: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?” ….
A few months later, I asked the F.B.I.’s spokesman, John Miller, about Mr. Bald’s comments. “A leader needs to drive the organization forward,” Mr. Miller told me. “If he is the executive in a counterterrorism operation in the post-9/11 world, he does not need to memorize the collected statements of Osama bin Laden, or be able to read Urdu to be effective. … Playing ‘Islamic Trivial Pursuit’ was a cheap shot for the lawyers and a cheaper shot for the journalist. It’s just a gimmick.”
Of course, I hadn’t asked about reading Urdu or Mr. bin Laden’s writings.
A few weeks ago, I took the F.B.I.’s temperature again. At the end of a long interview, I asked Willie Hulon, chief of the bureau’s new national security branch, whether he thought that it was important for a man in his position to know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. “Yes, sure, it’s right to know the difference,” he said. “It’s important to know who your targets are.”
That was a big advance over 2005. So next I asked him if he could tell me the difference. He was flummoxed. “The basics goes back to their beliefs and who they were following,” he said. “And the conflicts between the Sunnis and the Shia and the difference between who they were following.”
O.K., I asked, trying to help, what about today? Which one is Iran — Sunni or Shiite? He thought for a second. “Iran and Hezbollah,” I prompted. “Which are they?”
He took a stab: “Sunni.”
Wrong….
http://tinyurl.com/ycl5af
The thesis of this post assumes that China would be willing to replace Kim with a more stable leader and in the process benefit the U.S.
As someone who had worked on China and Korean issues for several decades, my view is that China will do anything that results in the weakening of the U.S. If this means that it has to put up with Kim, who is a huge irritant and growing danger to the U.S., it will. One of the key issues involved in this area is, indeed, refugees, which neither the ROK nor PRC want flooding into their countries in their starving millions if/when the DPRK collapses.
DANGEROUS DIPLOMACY
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/30777.html
PNCs link on dangerous diplomacy is a worth read. Carter at his best, “a cautionary example of hubris”.
“…concludes that China’s interests lie in installing a regime in North Korea that isn’t so much of a loose cannon as the present one…”
Ultimately, any diplomacy or sanctions done by the rest of the world will only be as effective as China wants them to be. They are the fulcrum. And snowonpine may be closest to where China stands,
Cox & Forkum’s cartoon on the subject is especially relevant.
As for the Sunni vs. Shiite business, I knew the answer to his questions just by reading Little Green Footballs. Funny how people will call the single best source of factual information about modern Middle Eastern culture “racist,” simply because it doesn’t try to hide the more barbaric actions the culture takes on a daily basis.
IMHO, the only leverage China will respect is for Japan and South Korea to have their own nuclear arsenal in reaction to the world’s inability to restrain and disarm NK. China will eventually be the only true super power on the planet and since I’ve harped on this before, I won’t again. I hope your grandkids like chop sooey.
I wish the rest of the world rots of ruck when that time comes.
Iranian Daily Close to Supreme Leader Khamenei: ‘If Any Country Such as North Korea, Concludes, for Political or Security Reasons, That It Must Have Nuclear Weapons, It Will Ultimately Succeed… Even if the Whole World Is Opposed…’
On October 12, 2006, the Iranian daily Kayhan, which is identified with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, published an editorial titled “Lessons from North Korea.”
The following are excerpts from the editorial: [1]
“North Korea Has Built A Nuclear Bomb Before the American’s Eyes… Despite the Great Pressure it Was Under, And [Despite] Years of Harsh International Sanctions – And No One Has Managed to Do Anything [Against it]”
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=iran&ID=SP132106
Nobody respects a paper tiger. But they will respect the Angel of Death when they are brought before the Judgement.
China won’t be the world’s only superpower for the same reason the Soviet Union wasn’t… because communism, even the soft socialism that Europe and China are trying to practice, cannot sustain themselves economically. China can’t survive on handouts; even if the entire world was gave them all their wealth, their government would just expand their bureaucracy until it needed more wealth than the entire world could produce.
The collapse of the Chinese superpower will be inevitable, though very destructive as well, and will only get more destrctive the longer they are propped up. I’m more worried about everyone ending up wearing veils and speaking Arabic for all eternity, instead. Islam, though built on fictions just like communism is, has withstood the test of time virtually unchanged since its inception, and could well last forever after destroying all forms of innovation on the planet.
But China is attempting to shed communism, in order to acquire a mercantile empire. They would be very satisfied so long as the money keeps rolling in for the elite leadership in China.
Islam lasts because they have oil. If China successfully gets a mercantile empire, they will then make a solid deal with the ME in return for oil. Thus, neither the ME nor China will go away once such an alliance is concluded.
You already see some of the threads with Iran vs China.