20101227 Keep a nervous eye on the North

Keep a nervous eye on the North

By Sushil Seth

Even though the situation on the Korean Peninsula was defused in the wake of the South Korean military drills on Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea, it came pretty close to a blow up.

Pyongyang had threatened “deadlier” retaliation if Seoul went ahead with its exercises. South Korea went ahead anyway. The stakes this time were much higher for North Korea with the inclusion in the exercise of about 20 US troops. In other words, the US was committed to its South Korean ally against any military escalation from Pyongyang.

Pyongyang had retaliated against a South Korean military drill last month by firing on Yeonpyeong, killing four people and destroying homes. Therefore, it didn’t seem like an empty threat when the North threatened havoc.

But the inclusion of US soldiers in the exercise was probably an important factor in dissuading Pyongyang for fear that any resultant injury and/or fatality of US personnel might invite US retaliation.

Besides, Seoul stood its ground and mobilized forces against any threat from the North. The emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, called to defuse the situation, found China and Russia urging the South to back off. But the US stood by its ally.

Seoul was in a quandary. For a long time, Pyongyang had come to exercise a veto of sorts on the South’s peninsular policies by threatening retaliation of one sort or another, more often than not threatening annihilation. Seoul often backed off for fear of a war, since its capital is within easy range of North Korean artillery.

However, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s administration decided to challenge Pyongyang’s veto on Seoul’s security policy by following up its military drills on Yeopyeong with a large-scale military exercise, just south of the heavily armed border.

While Russia and China condemned the new exercise and called for restraint, the US backed its ally’s right to hold the drill. This is looking increasingly like a renewed Cold War visiting the Korean Peninsula.

The North, of course, has threatened retaliation, declaring that it was “fully prepared to launch a sacred war of justice … based on the nuclear deterrent at any time necessary to cope with enemies’ actions.”

The threat, however, seems slightly less forbidding than the case has been before. For instance, Pyongyang’s threat has a moral dimension “to launch a sacred war of justice.”

And it doesn’t threaten nuclear war per se, but the possible use of nuclear deterrent “to cope with enemies’ actions.” In other words, the overall terminology seems comparatively less belligerent.

Pyongyang obviously was not anticipating another, and much larger, South Korean military exercise, right across the border. Having backed off from threatened retaliation after the South’s military drills on Yeonpyeong, it sought to put the best face on the situation by taking the moral high ground, declaring it “did not feel any need to retaliate against every despicable military provocation.”

Why? Because “the world should properly know who is the true champion of peace and who is the real provocateur of a war,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency said in a blast against the “puppet warmongers” in the South. However, it also wanted to create some sort of diplomatic momentum — at least the appearance of it.

This is where the unofficial visit to North Korea of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, the former US representative to the UN, came in handy. Pyongyang let it be known through Richardson that it would let in inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to its Yongbyon nuclear complex. It has also reportedly agreed to ship 12,000 nuclear fuel rods to an outside (so far unspecified) country. And Pyongyang is agreeable to the formation of a military commission and to institute a hotline between the two Koreas.

However, the US is not buying into this new diversion that the North wants to create to get out of an ugly war-like situation it created in the first place. And Pyongyang might even be willing to go back to the six-nation nuclear talks to get out of a sticky situation. Though, if the recent history of nuclear talks is anything to go by, Pyongyang might be keen to use it as a bargaining chip to get all sorts of concessions from the US, Japan and South Korea.

Because it is a bargaining counter, the North is not keen to dismantle its entire nuclear program for the promise of economic aid, political legitimacy and the construction of nuclear power reactors (by both the South and Japan) powered by low-grade nuclear fuel, without the potential of producing atomic bombs.

Pyongyang would like its denuclearization (if it were to happen at all) sequentially based on specific concessions from its dialogue partners, with each successive step on the denuclearization ladder. The trouble, though, is that with its preferred sequential approach, the North can always go back to reviving the entire nuclear cycle at any time, if not satisfied with what it is getting in return. It has happened before with the tardy progress of the 1994 nuclear deal and new political problems during former US president George W. Bush’s administration.

Therefore, one shouldn’t read too much into Pyongyang’s concessions (with or without possible denuclearization talks at some point) that seem tactical to defuse a dangerous situation. The US, in any case, doesn’t seem in any hurry to get back to any kind of dialogue with Pyongyang without tangible progress on the nuclear issue.

At the same time, though, the situation between the two Koreas remains quite tense.

The Korean issue has much wider implications. It is tied to China’s committment to the North, Japan’s fear of the North’s nuclear program and China’s regional bellicosity (backed with its military build up), and apparent US determination to stick around the Asia-Pacific region with its allies.

Japan, for instance, is becoming increasingly concerned about China’s combative regional posture. Beijing is asserting its sovereignty over the South China Sea, ignoring the rival claims of other Southeast Asian countries. It has also sought to go ahead with gas exploration in the East China Sea, where Japan claims sovereignty over the Senkaku or Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), claimed also by Taiwan and China.

This has created some ugly incidents, with potential to get uglier if not handled with care.

China’s high pitch nationalist reaction against the detention of the captain of a Chinese fishing trawler that collided with two Japanese patrol boats is an example in point. Japan caved in by releasing the captain and defused the situation.

Japan’s new National Defense Program Guidelines point to China’s military activities and lack of transparency as matters “of concern for the regional and global community.”

The new strategic doctrine shifts the emphasis on defending the country’s northern borders from Russia to confront the new situation arising from the rise of China. And to this end, it is planning a significant increase in its naval defenses.

For instance, it will increase from four to six the number of destroyers equipped with Aegis anti-ballistic missile technology. This will strengthen the joint missile shield it is developing with the US. Japan is also enlarging its submarine fleet from 16 to 22.

Japan also sees “North Korea’s nuclear and missile issues [as]… grave destabilizing factors to regional security.” And with China unwilling or unable to restrain North Korea, it is easy to imagine Japan’s sense of a security threat.

The combination of China’s so-called “peaceful rise” and North Korea’s gung-ho behavior is leading some regional countries to draw even closer to the US to counter a dangerous situation. Will this keep a lid on China’s ambitions and North Korea’s brinkmanship? Only time will tell.

Sushil Seth is a writer based in Australia.