Following is a guest entry from L. Gordon Flake, executive director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation.
A Chinese proverb holds that one shouldn’t attempt to write literature before Confucius. Given China’s unfortunate history with opium, it might seem equally presumptuous to explain concepts associated with treating narcotics addiction to Chinese officials.
However, given the likely prominence of North Korea on the agenda when US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao meet in Washington this week, it’s essential that Chinese officials understand the very real change in US views embodied in the use of the word ‘enabling’ to describe recent Chinese policy toward North Korea.
This means more than to simply ‘make possible.’ In the case of drug addicts, ‘enabling’ behaviours are those that shield the drug user from the full consequences of his or her addiction and thus inhibit a change in behavior. A caring parent motivated by love may continue to provide housing, money and transportation to a wayward child. China’s decision to ignore the evidence on the sinking of the Cheonan, to host Kim Jong-il not once but twice in the wake of that tragedy, and more recently to not only refuse to call North Korea to task for shelling civilians, but to actually block action by the UN Security Council to condemn disturbing developments in North Korea’s nuclear programme, may have been motivated by a concern for internal stability in North Korea. In both cases, however, the effect is equally counterproductive.
For the better part of a decade, cooperation on responding to the challenge posed by North Korea and its nuclear programme has been a relative highlight in US-China relations. However, following China’s failure to hold North Korea to account after the sinking of the Cheonan early last year, US officials began to accuse China of wilfully ignoring North Korean behavior.
This rhetoric changed dramatically after China once again failed to respond to, and actively blocked, the international community’s response to a horrific November during which North Korea announced it was constructing a light water nuclear reaction, revealed a modern uranium enrichment facility (both in clear violation of standing UN Security Council sanctions resolutions and North Korea’s own commitments under the September 19, 2005 agreement of the Six party Talks) and most egregiously shelled a South Korean island killing civilians in what can only be described as an act of war.
As a result, US officials have now begun to openly and in private accuse China of ‘enabling’ North Korean behavior.
In early December, Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made clear his view that the ‘reckless behavior of the North Korean regime’ was ‘enabled by their friends in China.’ Most recently, in setting the stage for this week’s summit meeting, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a major address on US-China ties including a significant portion on North Korea wherein she made clear the consequences of China’s current approach and the correlation between that approach and recent provocations: ‘We fear and have discussed this in depth with our Chinese friends, that failure to respond clearly to the sinking of a South Korean military vessel might embolden North Korea to continue on a dangerous course. The attack on Yeonpyeong Island that took the lives of civilians soon followed.’
China and the United States continue to have very real shared interests and concerns on the Korean Peninsula. This week’s summit meeting is likely tocall for continued cooperation. However, for the sake of such cooperation, Chinese leaders need to realize that their current approach is counterproductive, threatening not only US-China cooperation, but the very stability of the Korean Peninsula and the region. What’s required isn’t for China to abandon its erstwhile ally, but simply to stop shielding North Korea from the consequences of its actions. If it can’t do that, in the eyes of many in Washington, China will be increasingly be viewed as no longer part of the solution, but part of the problem.
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Nathan
China will surely stop protecting N.Korea….the day America stop protecting the worst humanrights violator…. ISRAEL!
megakids
No way! When these people in Wall Streets hold on to the lower torso of the politicians’ anatomy. Money is power!
Mishmael
If China should not help North Korea get away with the consequences of its choices, then will America not enable South Korea to get away with a devastating war in Korea? For that matter, who will enable China to be able to ignore the effects of destabilizing population transfers to its northeast?
If American diplomats hope they will “set a new tone” or “change the facts on the ground” with passive-aggressive rhetoric, then they are mistaken. American policies toward North Korea have not changed, and neither has the military balance changed significantly. Why should China alter its security calculations based upon the random acts of violence? China knows it will not alter North Korean strategy if they became openly hostile to them, because the North already believes in autarky. American and South Korean demands are not of the kind that will fundamentally alter the balance of power on the Korean peninsula, but can only appease the populations of South Korea and America.
What should be done, and indeed what the North have actually stated is the only thing which will change their calculations, is full on one-on-one dealings with the Americans. This, they believe, is their destiny – to confront the bogeyman that they perceive. America has nothing whatsoever to lose from such an endeavor. No one will think of them as weak, or naive, or pressured. It is leadership to change one’s strategy if it does not work, to pursue pragmatism and to seek alternate solutions. However, they wont do it, because they apparently fear the appearance of being weak more than they fear the weapons of the north.
John Chan
This paper is full of gunsmoke and mafia blackmail threats. Is the author leading the warmongers in the US to setting up stage for a regime change of North Korea? Or the article tries to intimidate China not to provide aids to her poor and weak neighbour when the US and its lackeys turn North Korea into killing zone like Iraq. Are South Koreans going to let it happen to their compatriots? If they do, I wonder how historians are going record the cowardice of South Korean in the history book.
The tone of this article surely reveals the true nature of the world biggest bully, the US. Bush’s doctrine “you are either with me, or you are against me” surly is in full display here. It seems testing J-20 is not enough to put those war merchants back into bottle. Maybe it is time for China to test some more new fancy weapons to ensure the peace in Asia is kept, and remind the US and its lackeys that the current year is 2011 not 1839.
North Korea won’t be so agitated, if there isn’t any foreign troop stationed on the Korean soil. The foreign troop on the Korea peninsula reminds Koreans the ugly Imperial Japanese occupation and colonization of Korea. If the US really cares peace and stability for the Koreans, all the US has to do is to withdraw its troops and military hardware back to Hawaii, I bet the two Koreans will sit down and talk peace in no time.
The author and the US officials accused China as a problem because China refused to join the mobsters to harass North Korea, their sense of fairness and decency are twisted beyond comprehension.