North Korean puzzle

S P SETH

Even as I write, there is no way to predict how the Korean crisis would work out. It could just be a war of words with both the US and the North Korean regime engaged in a game of who would blink first? Such brinkmanship could easily get out of control and lead to military conflict. And when we talk of military conflict, it means loss of human lives and destruction all around. It is even worse because the antagonists, the US and North Korea, have nuclear weapons, that can cause incalculable disaster.

True, the US is militarily the world’s most powerful country with the potential to totally destroy North Korea and much more, but it is no consolation if North Korea with its small nuclear and missile arsenal could rain havoc on parts of the US. Pyongyang has already threatened to shoot missiles in the direction of the US territory of Guam, which houses large US air and naval facilities in the Pacific.  The US has been sending its bombers on patrol missions to the Korean peninsula, with Pyongyang fearing that it is all part of the US military plans to bring down the North Korean regime. Indeed, every year the joint US-South Korean military exercises raise the temperature, with Pyongyang threatening counter measures.

And with Trump as the US President, it seems at times that the world might be sitting on the brink of disaster. Trump has threatened, “fire an fury” on the Kim Jong-un regime. And when Pyongyang threatened retaliation, Trump reportedly said that obviously his “fire and fury” message wasn’t tough enough. He, therefore, reminded North Korea “things will happen to them like they never thought possible.” 

What it meant was left imprecise but it was mistakenly a stark warning that North would be obliterated, though how the boundaries of this obliteration would remain confined only to North Korea and not affect China- and even South Korea, Japan and the US- was left unclear. Trump formulates his policy, if it might be called that, as edicts to be followed by the far and flung parts of the US ‘Empire’ and his preferred way of issuing these edicts is by way of Twitter.

But, even though the US is the world’s most powerful military state, North Korea refuses to follow and implement Trump’s edicts. An important reason is that it has, over the years, built it up a small nuclear arsenal, and believed to have miniaturized a nuclear warhead to reach parts of the US. And that nuclear deterrence, however small and not so quite perfect, might prevent the US from going ahead with its threats.

It would, therefore, seem that North Korea would hold its ground. It has withstood all sorts of pressures for denuclearization, believing that this alone has saved it from the fate that met the likes of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. Indeed, threats from Trump declaring that the US is “locked and loaded” seem to have only made it more determined.

What does the US do in such a situation where its unmistakably powerful military machine is unable to make its threats credible? It could launch a pre-emptive strike as Trump has said that all options are on the table. The fear though is that North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un appears as crazy, if not more, than Trump. And faced with the prospect of annihilation, he might do the unthinkable and hit the US and its allies. In other words, both Kim and Trump seem to be propagating the ‘mad man theory’ to strike fear on the other side. One wouldn’t like to know who is the real ‘mad man’, considering the scale of resultant devastation?

Trump is simultaneously seeking to exercise pressure on China, with only limited success, to rein in North Korea. And as part of it, he has been telling China that he might make it worthwhile for them in other ways. Trump reportedly has said that, “I think China can do a lot more, yes, and I think China will do a lot more.” Why might China do more? Because: “Look, we have trade with China. We loose hundreds of billions of dollars a year on trade with China [with a huge trade surplus in China’s favor]. They know how I feel. It is not going to continue like that. But if China helps us, I feel a lot differently towards trade, a lot differently towards trade.” In other words, if China were to ‘persuade’ North Korea to a process of denuclearization, the US might not go ahead with investigating China’s shoddy trade practices. China is, therefore, being asked to cut off North Korea’s lifeline by stopping or substantially reducing its fuel and food supplies and overall trade.

China is not happy with North Korea’s nuclear program, and lately voted for a unanimous UN Security Council resolution to impose further sanctions. But Beijing doesn’t want to be part of any international action to bring down the Pyongyang regime and destabilize its border, resulting in large-scale movement of refugees from North Korea. Besides, any collapse of the North Korean order might make the South Korean political alternative much more feasible, with China facing the prospect of a South Korean-US military border.

China, therefore, favors resumption of six-party talks to include US, Russia, Japan, China, and South and North Korea. But the track record of these talks hasn’t been good, basically because Pyongyang is not willing to commit itself to denuclearization before any tangible progress on its political and economic security. China has suggested that the US and South Korea should suspend their joint military exercises, which tend to aggravate North Korea’s sense of insecurity leading to another round of dangerous nuclear/missile antics on its part.

Pyongyang regards that its nuclear deterrence as its lifeline.  Any requirement about its prior commitment to denuclearization is unlikely to materialize. It is, therefore, fervently hoped that the realization of the scale of devastation from a potential nuclear confrontation will somehow keep the antagonists at bay.

It is, however, a prayer but not a policy.