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发帖数: 4825 | 1 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/opinion/will-north-korea-beco
Op-Ed Contributor
China’s Newest Province?
By VICTOR CHA
Published: December 19, 2011
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NORTH KOREA as we know it is over. Whether it comes apart in the next few
weeks or over several months, the regime will not be able to hold together
after the untimely death of its leader, Kim Jong-il. How America responds —
and, perhaps even more important, how America responds to how China
responds — will determine whether the region moves toward greater stability
or falls into conflict.
Mr. Kim’s death could not have come at a worse time for North Korea.
Economically broken, starving and politically isolated, this dark kingdom
was in the midst of preparations to hand power over to his not-yet-30-year-
old son, the untested Kim Jong-un. The “great successor,” as he has been
dubbed by the state media, is surrounded by elders who are no less sick than
his father and a military that chafed at his promotion to four-star general
last year without having served a day in the army. Such a system simply
cannot hold.
The transition comes at a time when the United States has been trying to get
nuclear negotiations back on track. Those efforts have now been replaced by
a scramble for plans to control loose nuclear weapons, should the regime
collapse.
And yet Washington remains powerless. Any outreach to the young Mr. Kim or
to other possible competitors could create more problems during the
transition, and would certainly be viewed as threatening by China. Since Kim
Jong-il’s stroke in 2008, the United States and South Korea have been
working on contingency plans to deal with just such a situation, but they
all thought they would have years, if not a decade.
The allies’ best move, then, is to wait and see what China does. Among
China’s core foreign-policy principles is the maintenance of a divided
Korean Peninsula, and so Beijing’s statements about preserving continuity
of North Korea’s leadership should come as no surprise. Since 2008 it has
drawn closer to the regime, publicly defending its leaders and investing
heavily in the mineral mines on the Chinese-North Korean border.
But even as Beijing sticks close to its little Communist brother, there are
intense debates within its leadership about whether the North is a strategic
liability. It was one thing to back a hermetic but stable regime under Kim
Jong-il; it will be harder to underwrite an untested leadership. For Xi
Jinping, expected to become China’s president over the next year, the first
major foreign policy decision will be whether to shed North Korea or
effectively adopt it as a province.
All indications are that Beijing will pursue the latter course, in no small
part because of a bias among its leadership to support the status quo,
rather than to confront dramatic change. And yet “adopting” North Korea
could be dramatic in itself. China may go all in, doling out early
invitations and new assistance packages to the young Mr. Kim, conditioning
them on promises of economic reform.
While some observers hope that Kim Jong-il’s death will unleash democratic
regime change, China will work strongly against that possibility, especially
if such efforts receive support from South Korea or the United States.
Given that Beijing has the only eyes inside the North, Washington and Seoul
could do little in response.
Yet even China’s best-laid plans may come apart. The assistance may be too
little, too late, especially given the problems the new leadership will face
. A clear channel of dialogue involving the United States, China and South
Korea is needed now more than ever.
And yet such a dialogue is completely absent since Kim Jong-il’s stroke.
Beijing has deflected every official and unofficial overture from Washington
to have quiet discussions on potential North Korean instability. Before,
China let its fears of Western interests get the better of it; wiser Chinese
judgment should lead authorities to open such a channel now. The three
sides should open with a conversation on all our fears about what could
happen in a collapsing North — loose nukes, refugee flows, artillery
attacks — and how each would respond.
With so little known about the inner workings of this dark kingdom,
miscalculation by any side in response to developments inside the North is a
very real possibility given the hair-trigger alerts of the militaries on
the peninsula.
None of this will be easy. For China, the uncertainty surrounding North
Korea comes against the backdrop of Mr. Obama’s “pivot” to Asia and
assertion that the region is America’s new strategic priority. This has
already created insecurities in Beijing that will make genuine dialogue with
the United States even more challenging — and thus all the more necessary.
Victor Cha, a professor at Georgetown and author of the forthcoming book “
The Impossible State: North Korea, Past, and Future,” was director of Asian
affairs at the White House from 2004 to 2007. |
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