The Calculus of China and North Korea

With North Korea’s increasing nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities and its historically over-the-top rhetoric (from a Western perspective), what are we faced with?  Especially, when the president escalates his rhetoric to match North Korea’s.  How much of all this talk is real and how much is bravado or B.S.?  The world cannot afford two chest-thumping, egocentric leaders creating an unnecessary war.  Unfortunately, we are at the point of losing the generational memory of what a major war produces and we have never truly witnessed a nuclear war with weapons of today’s magnitude.  It is too easy to make threats when their consequences  are not truly understood.  "Those who do not understand the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them."

The picture is cloudy and what I offer here is conjecture. 

There are three major powers in the world: the United States, Russia, and China.  The United States is somewhat of the “odd man out” in this trio, but we won’t assume that Russia and China are the best of friends either.  Each country stands to gain at the others’ expense in terms of world influence, trade, and economic prosperity all of which translate into political popularity at home.  Each government has a populace to placate.  All three have incentive to hamstring the others.  This is the backdrop for any crisis.

Let’s focus on the U.S. and China for the moment.  Why are the Chinese dragging their feet on stopping nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula?  There are stated reasons like having a buffer with prosperous South Korea and avoiding a refugee crisis if the Korean dictatorship collapses.  Still, these seem like minor points compared to nuclear weapons in the hands of Kim Jong-un.  When the obvious isn’t the explanation, then there is usually something less obvious behind it. 

China can tolerate Kim so long as his aggressive focus is on America and not China.  It’s a safe bet that Kim is smart enough not to antagonize his powerful neighbor.  Better to pick on someone a safe distance away who is opposing him anyway.  Kim needs a demon to distract his people from their hardships and who better than the warlike U.S.A.  With wars in Viet Nam, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria on our slate, the U.S. counts as recent history’s most war-involved nation. 

With 60 years of government propaganda and no connection to the outside world, the North Korean people are the most brainwashed population possible.  This makes it easy to demonize the U.S.A.  Generations of people in North Korea have no way of distinguishing fact from fiction (although one suspects human nature makes them believe in something better than what they have).  The net effect is a nation that could blindly get involved in a nuclear holocaust not knowing the truth of what they were facing.  That includes Kim himself.  They’ve had 60 years of North Korean Kool-Aid.

All this makes North Korea a convenient proxy for both China and Russia to use to antagonize and distract the U.S.  Proxy wars are great for the ones using the proxy because the cost is asymmetric.  The proxy and its opponent take the beating while the proxy’s supporting player remains safe.   China and Russia used North Vietnam as a proxy against the U.S. in the 60's.  The U.S. used Afghan rebels as proxies against Russia in the 80's.  Iran is using a variety of Middle East terrorist groups as proxies against the U.S.  today.  China can use North Korea as its proxy against the U.S. as well.  In chess, this amounts to using a pawn against the queen - easy to sacrifice.  Young Kim Jong-un may be too naive or egotistical to notice his pawn status.

How far do you advance the proxy pawn before you hold it back or do you sacrifice it?  For China, the answer may lie in its economy.  China has long been dependent on exports for its economic growth and stability.  That is changing.  Now that China has built an industrial base and gotten technology from the West (legally and illegally), it is on the brink of economic self-sustainability.  In order words, domestic Chinese consumption and trade with other nations can maintain prosperity without the need for the U.S. market as it has existed in the past.  The point at which the scales tip far enough in that direction, is the point at which China can prod North Korea into a nuclear war with the U.S.  If that happens, the damage in Asia is confined to Korea with China only marginally affected. 

Losing North Korea would have virtually no economic effect on the world because of its historic isolation (that’s not to minimize the loss of human lives).  However, just a handful of nuclear weapons detonated on three or four key U.S. cities would have asymmetric and disastrous consequences for the U.S.  Such an event could then propel China upward in the world economy at almost no cost to itself.  One reason the U.S. rose as an economic power after WWII is because Europe was in ruins.

That’s a worst case scenario, or is it?  How likely is it that North Korea has made such seemingly rapid gains in its nuclear and ballistic missile technology?  Did they do it all themselves?  That seems unlikely.  Who would have helped them?  The answer isn’t hard to discern.  Any country with a grudge against the U.S. and some nuclear and missile expertise could have helped them.  And, if that country needed money, it makes them even more suspect.  High on that list are Iran and Pakistan.  It could also include rogue elements inside Russia whose nuclear management capabilities are less than stellar.  Less likely, but still possible culprits, are the Chinese and Russia governments.

What happens when North Korea joins this club of sketchy international nuclear powers?  (The U.S., Britain, France, Israel, and India aren’t sketchy.)  North Korea as an impoverished nation with nuclear weapons has a huge incentive to sell them on the black market to terrorist organizations.  If it is bad to have an unhinged nation-state holding nukes, having even more unhinged terror groups in possession of them is worse.  Once the bomb is out of the box of government control and in the hands of independent actors, deterrence goes out the window.  There is no place to retaliate; no one to suffer the consequences.  The threat of terrorism escalates to an unimaginable level.  In response, democratic countries will be forced into ever tighter security measures and freedom will further erode.  The inconvenience of the TSA will look like nothing compared to protecting against a rogue nuclear weapon - a fact Hollywood has consistently illustrated.  The greatest threat is not North Korea using nukes against the U.S.A., it is North Korea as the nuclear shopping mall for terrorists who then act as their proxies.

Leaving that train of thought for the moment, let’s look at what can be done from the U.S.A.’s side.  There are five major options. 

1.  Economic sanctions.  These have worked like a bad sieve.  Smuggling has provided North Korea what it needs.  Complete sanctions like a blockade are required.  However, those would probably push it over the edge into some form of war rather than merely collapse the regime.

2.  Limited conventional military action.  This would entail surgical strikes at key facilities and key leadership.  While this might blunt some progress temporarily, it would more likely add proof of U.S. aggression and incentive for later retaliation against the U.S.  It would be hard to cut out all the cancer in Korea; what was left would grow back more aggressively.

3.  Large scale military action.  With a large North Korean army and the distance of the Korean peninsula from the U.S., a conventional war is unwinnable.  With the U.S. at war in Iraq/Syria and Afghanistan, another war front is militarily untenable.  Hitler was taught that lesson on the Russian front.  Bush had to relearn it when he added Iraq to Afghanistan.

4. Nuclear war.  While devastating, this is the only practical way to wage war at this distance.  With its overwhelming nuclear superiority, the U.S. could bomb North Korea into submission.  The price would be our world reputation and our ownership of global nuclear contamination.  It would drive non western countries into the influence spheres of China and Russia.  We would win one way and lose another.  And, if we wait too long, maybe we get hit with a few nukes from North Korea that devastate us as well.

5.  Negotiations.  There have been no direct negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea on nukes at this point.  The U.S. has relied on China as an intermediary to influence North Korea and we can see now why they have little incentive to do so.  By remaining aloof and ratcheting up our rhetoric, we play into the hands of North Korean propagandists and we increase the likelihood of misjudging each other.  Unfortunately, North Korea has repeatedly demonstrated the uselessness of negotiations by using them to get what they want and then reneging on the terms. 

All of this points out the difficulty in achieving any solution.  No avenue is without its pitfalls.  The difference is the degree of disruption each is likely to create both short and long-term.  It is a time for the coolest heads to prevail.  So what could be the best course of action?

It probably begins with unconditional direct negotiations.  The best way to misunderstand your adversary is not to talk to him.  The more dialogue that happens, the better the chance of finding a solution.  But, negotiations have to be fast and eventually conditional.  North Korea cannot use them as a delaying tactic again to advance its nuclear program.  Any agreement has to have stringent verification.

If negotiations fail to work, then a full scale blockade would logically follow - nothing in or out of the country.  That requires China’s complete commitment, which is not likely.   Whether a blockade would force North Korea to negotiate or flip it into war is the  unknown risk. 

What follows next presumes China’s neutrality in an escalating conflict and that is a risky assumption.

Assuming a blockade cannot be effectively established, the next action is limited military strikes on key targets, especially the leadership.  This must be quick, intensive, and unrelenting until there is a signal that regime change can happen.  The North can be expected to respond by attacking civilian centers in the South immediately, so minimizing its ability and willingness to do so is essential.

Assuming that limited military action leads to full-scale conventional war, the final move is either a protracted conventional struggle with the army of South Korea carrying the battle, or the use of nuclear weapons against a greater North Korean army.  At that point, there is little use of trying to predict additional events.  

The object of all these actions has to be stopping and undoing North Korea’s nuclear program.  If North Korea was a stable democracy with a reasonable government, allowing it to gain nuclear weapons would carry less risk.  Unfortunately, it falls into the category more akin to Nazi Germany.  Therefore, denying it nuclear weapons is necessary.  Not just because North Korea might use them against the U.S., but even more because of the danger of North Korea passing nuclear weapons into terrorist hands.  There is no way to trust a morally bankrupt dictatorship to keep any agreement to control a nuclear arsenal.  This is especially true given North Korea’s track record on agreements.  Therefore, not having any weapons is essential and strict verification is needed. 

The best hope is the opening of North Korea to commerce and the gradual de-indoctrination of its people by exposure to the West.  It would be a slow process to erode the communist propaganda of the last 60 years, but the least destructive solution.