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May 1, 2009
Exclusive: The Illusion of Chinese Help against North Korea
On April 5th, North Korea tested a ballistic missile with intercontinental range under the guise of launching a satellite that would beam revolutionary propaganda to the world. In response, the UN Security Council adopted a declaration condemning the test as a violation of a 2006 resolution and demanded that there be no more launches. The next day (April 14th), Pyongyang announced it would withdraw from the Six Party Talks which have been negotiating over its nuclear program since 2003. The six parties are China (the host), Russia, Japan, North and South Korea, and the United States.
Pyongyang claims it has begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods at the Yongbyon complex to increase its stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium. The facility was supposed to be “disabled” in late 2007, but North Korea dragged its feet on fulfilling this commitment during 2008. On April 29th, Pyongyang threatened more nuclear bomb and missile tests. The Kim Jong Il regime also said it would start enriching uranium, though it is widely believed that North Korea already has a clandestine uranium program.
Thus, as President Barack Obama celebrated his first 100 days in office, North Korea had turned the clock back to 2003 in terms of negotiations, after having pocketed years of continued weapons development and a number of U.S. concessions. In 2006, North Korea tested a nuclear device without provoking any serious retaliation. In 2008, the U.S. released some embargoed North Korean funds and removed Pyongyang from the list of states that support terrorism.
North Korea has been able to resist pressure from the “international community” because of the diplomatic and economic backing it has received from China, supported by Russia, both at the UN and at the Six Party Talks. Beijing sent its army into brutal combat with U.S.-led UN forces to defend North Korea, and conquer South Korea if possible, in the 1950s. Its aim of keeping Pyongyang as its buffer state has not changed.
Beijing gave yet another example of its diplomatic strategy on April 16th. At a press conference, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu again stated China’s boilerplate claim that it seeks “to promote denuclearization on the Peninsula through the Six-Party Talks.” But the real purpose of the talks was given by Jiang’s use of another bit of standard Chinese rhetoric, “We hope relevant parties could all proceed from the overall and long-term interest, exert calmness and restraint, and properly handle relevant issue so as to safeguard the Six-Party Talks and contribute to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia.” Calmness and restraint mean that no party should take action against North Korea, because they would upset stability and peace in the region. The Six Parties are to talk endlessly, but do nothing, allowing Pyongyang to maintain its despotic regime and the military programs meant to defend the regime. It is the talks that are to be safeguarded, because they are Beijing’s device for controlling the situation and keeping the U.S. (and Japan) at bay
The origins of the Six Party Talks explain why they have been a success for China and a failure for the United States. The talks were launched by Beijing in 2003, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. On January 29, 2002, President George W. Bush had called Iraq, Iran and North Korea an “axis of evil.” Destroying one of the “axis” regimes sent a shock wave through the other two rogue states. Baghdad fell in April, 2003 and by August, both North Korea and Iran had entered negotiations to head off feared military strikes by the United States. Beijing termed the Six Party talks as a way to find a “peaceful diplomatic solution” to North Korea’s nuclear program in contrast to the Iraq solution.
However, by 2004 the momentum of the U.S. intervention in Iraq had been lost due to inadequate planning on how to actually change a regime. And by 2006, the U.S. military threat was fading as the Iraq insurgency dragged on and American popular support for the war effort declined. There was no energy left in Washington to drive a new confrontation with anyone, anywhere; especially if it meant running afoul of China. Pyongyang and Tehran were both heartened by the Democratic victory in the 2006 Congressional elections. And with the end of the hated Bush administration in 2008, the talks had served their purpose. The North Korean and Iranian regimes have survived, and are still moving ahead with their aggressive agendas.
John C. Wohlstetter, a senior fellow at Discovery Institute, correctly identified China as the problem in an April 8 op-ed in the Washington Times. He argued that “In 2001, the Bush administration tossed away its best geostrategic opportunity when China sought to enter the World Trade Organization. The United States could have vetoed entry, thus costing China enormously valuable preferential trade access. But we declined to pressure China – which supplies 80 percent to 90 percent of the North's energy needs – to cut off the North, which would have toppled the regime within months.” What he did not discuss was why the Bush administration missed this opportunity, and why the Obama administration does not seem inclined to pursue this option either.
U.S. China policy has been run by and for the benefit of transnational corporations who want to profit from shifting production to low-cost Chinese sites, while investing in the rise of a new great power. They do not want anything to upset relations with Beijing, and certainly do not want economic leverage used – at their expense, to shape the larger political balance.
Business dominance of post-Cold War foreign policy started with President Bill Clinton. Human rights were the concern of Clinton, who came into office thinking he could use trade as leverage with Beijing on this issue. But as his Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade Jeffrey Garten wrote in his 1997 book The Big Ten, “I saw no issue which raised more concern and emotion in the business community than the tying of trade to human rights in China.” This concern went beyond the human rights issue to corporate opposition to any return to “Cold War” containment policies towards Beijing that could jeopardize the foreign investment climate in China. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce even sponsored tours of major American cities by the Chinese ambassador, where local business elites were treated to Beijing’s views on major international topics to promote “understanding.”
Speaking just before a 1999 trip to Asia, President Clinton claimed, “Perhaps for the first time in history, the world’s leading nations are not engaged in a struggle with each other for security or territory. The world clearly is coming together.” His attitude was in keeping with the euphoria that had followed the fall of the Berlin Wall a decade earlier. As the distinguished historian Sir Michael Howard noted in his brief but insightful 2000 essay The Invention of Peace, “In the last decade of the twentieth century the liberal inheritors of the Enlightenment seemed once again poised to establish peace.” Indeed, there was even discussion of whether history itself, as the tale of strife, was at an end. Thus, the 1994 Framework Agreement with North Korea where the communist regime had apparently been bought off by the pledge of economic development (including peaceful nuclear energy) seemed logical.
The liberal business view held even after the 9/11 attacks woke up most of America to the fact that the world was still a dangerous place. Garten, now dean of the Yale School of Management, published The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda for Business Leaders in 2002. In it, he charged the Bush administration had fallen under the influence of “hard-line nationalists” who would slow the pace of commercial globalization. He argued, “Only one group has the experience, the knowledge, the perspective, and the clear self-interest to provide some countervailing influence to the dangerous ways that Washington is throwing around American military power – and that is the nation's top business leaders.” These pages were excerpted in Business Week (October 14, 2002).
Garten’s sentiments were ominously similar to those expressed in a Federation of British Industries memo on appeasement written in 1938. “Captains of industry had long recommended that meetings of businessmen...might perhaps be a suitable means of bringing about a return to common sense” said the memo in regard to improving relations with Nazi Germany.
The peak of pro-China business influence in the Bush administration was reached when Henry Paulson was appointed Treasury Secretary. Paulson had made a personal fortune as CEO of Goldman Sachs by promoting financial deals with Beijing. He launched the Strategic Economic Dialogue to take control of China policy. He needed to head off the growing concern in Congress and at the Pentagon about Beijing’s ambitions, so the door would remain open for trade and investment.
The Wall Street Journal understood the need to portray economics as a positive incentive rather than as a source of leverage. In an October 16, 2006 editorial, the paper tried to give credit for the UN resolution condemning North Korea’s nuclear test to Paulson, rather than to UN ambassador John Bolton or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The column cited China’s alleged cooperation at the UN as “one more reason to congratulate Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who recently prevented a U.S.-China blowup by persuading Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham to drop a Senate vote on their 27.5% tariff bill against China.” The message was, if China is allowed to continue running a huge trade surplus, Beijing will help the U.S. in diplomacy.
It hasn’t worked out that way. Beijing had watered down the 2006 UN resolution so it was toothless, just as it has undermined every other action at the UN. It received accolades by voting for something that posed no threat to North Korea, thus gaining a double diplomatic victory. It will undoubtedly play this game again. At some point, Beijing will orchestrate Pyongyang’s return to the Six Party Talks, thus winning more applause for leadership. North Korea will gain some further concessions to join a process designed to protect it under the cover of its allies in Beijing and Moscow. A “win-win” outcome for America’s rivals, but a lose-lose outcome for the United States.
American help to China has amounted to over $1.5 trillion via the trade deficit since 2000, the primary source of Beijing’s massive hard currency reserve being held over the head of Washington and the world. Foreign investment and technology transfers have helped to narrow the capability gap between U.S. and Chinese military forces. The gains to Beijing have been very high in exchange for some empty rhetoric and a few meaningless votes at the UN.
There has been no trade off between commerce and security. On both fronts the outcome has been negative for America’s ability to remain the preeminent force in world affairs. The balance of power (economic and military) has been moving towards China and its rogue allies.
The Obama administration has added the State Department as co-chair of the strategic dialogue with China, which should weaken the Treasury as the front for the business appeasement lobby. But “should” and “will” are two different words. On her first trip to China, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised China for its help at the Six Party Talks and begged for Chinese money just like Treasury has been doing.
In his landmark essay “Power versus plenty as objectives of foreign policy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” [World Politics, October, 1948], the eminent economic historian Jacob Viner warned, “where the merchants to a large extent shared directly in government, major political considerations, including the very safety of the country or its success in wars in which it was actually participating, had repeatedly to give way to the cupidity of the merchants.” This lesson must be learned in Washington so national strategy can replace private profit as the engine of policy. Until then, China will continue to use North Korea as a foil to advance its own strategic interests at the expense of the United States and its allies.
FamilySecurityMatters.org William Hawkins is a consultant specializing in international economic and national security issues.
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