This is the first installment of IR Week. I am posting a number of articles I have published over the years on various topics of East Asian international relations and Chinese politics. This first post is a piece that ran in the KLA Times on March 16, 2003. I think the main outlines of the analysis still hold up fairly well two and a half years later.
North Korea's greatest threat to its
neighbors is not nuclear weapons. South Korea, China and Japan share a
more immediate fear of a precipitous collapse of the Pyongyang regime.
For President Bush to work constructively with East Asian countries, he
will have to play a larger role in keeping Kim Jong Il in power,
however unpalatable that may be for him. The problem is most
palpable for South Korea. If an East German- like meltdown of the
party-state apparatus occurred in North Korea, it would unleash a human
and economic catastrophe on the South. North Korea's economy has
been in decline for more than a decade, ever since its erstwhile ally,
the Soviet Union, disappeared. It has nothing to trade except fear,
exchanging promises to limit its nuclear and missile capabilities for
cash and food. Famine has, in the last 8 1/2 years, claimed 2 million
to 3 million lives. Should the Pyongyang government suddenly
fall, and its military no longer stand between the famished North and
the well-fed South, it is safe to say that millions of people would
surge toward Seoul in search of food. Even if the South could stem the
human tide, it would be immediately responsible for the nourishment and
health care of all 22 million people in the North. The full
economic cost imposed on the South by an abrupt political
disintegration of the North is difficult to gauge with confidence.
Estimates run from tens of billions of U.S. dollars to trillions. The
World Bank suggests it could run as high as $2 trillion to $3 trillion,
roughly five times South Korea's gross domestic product. Absorbing this
cost, even if it runs only in the hundreds of billions, could seriously
weaken the South's economy, at least in the short run. Former
President Kim Dae Jong's "sunshine policy" of opening trade and
investment links to the North is, therefore, a wise choice. It is
predicated on the hope that a gradual improvement of the North's
economy will reduce the costs of eventual national reunification. South
Korea's new president, Roh Moo Hyun, knows there is really no economic
alternative, and in his recent inaugural address he pledged to pursue a
"policy for peace and prosperity" with the North that essentially picks
up where Kim left off. Perhaps, then, the Bush administration
should not have been surprised, as it reportedly was, to learn that the
incoming Roh government was less fearful of a nuclear bomb to its north
than of pell-mell regime change there. A nuclear North is certainly a
threat to the South, and to the region as a whole, but not quite so
pressing, in the eyes of Asian leaders, as the economic and immigration
crisis that state failure would most certainly bring. China and
Japan share South Korea's outlook. Starving North Koreans have been
trickling into China's northeastern provinces for years. They have
desperately stormed foreign embassies in Beijing in hopes of gaining
asylum. Chinese leaders worry that the growing numbers of illegal
Korean immigrants could exacerbate rising crime rates and other social
ills associated with the chronic unemployment ravaging their
northeastern rust-belt cities. A full-scale collapse of North Korea
would create a major humanitarian crisis that would spill across
China's borders and worsen economic conditions in an already
hard-pressed region. Japan too worries about the reverberations
of a North Korean collapse. Although they do not face the same kind of
direct problems China confronts, Japanese leaders would be pressured to
take in refugees from a North Korean crisis, and they would be expected
to play a part in financing the costs of unification. An increase in
regional instability, moreover, could disrupt Japan's trade and
investment with key partners in China and South Korea, making it all
the more difficult to enliven its chronically sluggish economy. So, Japan and China have an interest in propping up North Korea, at
least long enough to ease the tumult of future reunification. They also
share a longer-term strategic interest, one that is rarely mentioned in
public. For both of them, a divided Korea is safer than a united Korea.
After reunification, in 10 or 20 years, Korea could emerge as a very
powerful country, perhaps with nuclear arms. From Tokyo's perspective,
a Chinese-Korean alliance could challenge its economic and military
interests in the region. The mirror image applies to Beijing: A
Japanese-Korean alliance, however unlikely that might seem at present,
could limit Chinese power and options. China and Japan will not,
therefore, push against North Korea so hard that it might fall because,
for them, a nuclear North Korea now might be less of a threat than a
united Korea in the future. Of course, all involved -- Japan, China and
South Korea -- have real concerns about North Korean nuclear
capabilities. Japan might have the most to fear. In 1998, North
Korea test-fired a multiple-stage ballistic missile over Japanese
territory. It seems fairly certain that Pyongyang has the capability to
reach any Japanese target with virtually any sort of warhead. Without their own nuclear force to deter a North Korean launch --
something that China has -- Japanese strategic planners have suggested
that they might have to build their own bomb. That could spark China to
increase its arsenal and impel South Korea to consider a nuclear
program for itself and even raise the alarm in Taiwan that it should
not be left out in the nonnuclear cold. China would not sit idly by in
the face of a Taiwan bomb, and so on. But even such worst-case
scenarios are not enough to deflect the attention of East Asian states
away from the consequences of a North Korean collapse. After all, Kim
Jong Il might not use the bombs he makes. He might be playing for a new
deal, to be paid off again, as he was in 1994, to keep a lid on his
nuclear threat. Or, he might be most interested in regime survival. In
that case, nuclear weapons are useful only to the extent that they
deter others from attacking him. He might want them in just the same
manner the U.S. and Soviet Union wanted them during the Cold War: to
ensure, paradoxically, that they are not used. With these sorts of
interpretations clouding the military analysis, leaders in China, Japan
and South Korea must weigh the uncertain danger of North Korean bombs
against the sure hazards of North Korean collapse. Beijing,
Tokyo and Seoul understand that they have to work with Kim Jong Il,
even if he is responsible for famine and repression. Japanese Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi went so far in search of cooperation that he
made the first trip of any Japanese prime minister to Pyongyang last
fall. His effort stood in marked contrast to the detachment of Bush. Threatening North Korea will not work. Its conventional military
weapons alone could cause terrible devastation to the South. And if the
North does have a bomb, a preemptive military strike against it could
spark nuclear retaliation against Japan. If the Bush administration
wants to manage the various threats posed by North Korea, it will have
to accept a cruel conundrum: shaking hands with a repulsive dictator in
order to create conditions that might, in the not-too-distant future,
reduce him to an unhappy memory.
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