The US Secretary of State Rex W Tillerson paid a visit to Japan this month. After meeting with his Japanese counterparts, he expressed that the US needed a “different approach” to North Korea’s escalating nuclear threat although he did not specify further on the nature of the approach.
As The New York Times quoted from the joint press briefing of Tillerson and Japan’s Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, the US secretary of state said: “The diplomatic and other efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea (DPRK) to a point of de-nuclearisation have failed.”
According to him, the US had spent $1.3 billion for DPRK to abandon its nuclear program.
After that brief visit in Japan, Tillerson met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. Western media reported that, beside several bilateral issues, the tension of the Korean peninsula was also discussed.
While Tillerson was in Japan, the US President tweeted: “North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been ‘playing’ the US for years. China has done little to help.”
It is apparent that Tillerson will seek Chinese consent regarding the different approach. On the other hand, China has proposed a dual suspension formula to reduce tension and solve the Korean crisis gradually.
At a media conference, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi explained the formula by saying: “As a first step, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) may suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale US-Republic of Korea (South Korea) military exercises.”
Since the US has not given any details of the different approach, one can assume that the country is seeking Chinese consent for a military assault inside North Korea to topple Kim Jong-Un’s regime.
From a historical perspective, the modern-day Korean crisis is an outcome of the Second World War. Japanese forces occupied the Korean peninsula, and Russian and US forces snatched the land from the defeated Japanese and divided the Korean land into two parts on the basis of 38 parallel lines and two political ideologies -- north and south, communism and capitalism: The Asian Berlin wall.
One is pro-Soviet and other is pro-US. Later, in the early 50s, they engaged themselves in unavoidable warfare with direct support from Soviet Russia, China, and the US.
The consequence of the war was 1.2 million deaths, an armistice treaty, and a return to the 38 parallel lines. In the last 60 years of truce between DPRK and South Korea, we saw how an ethnic Korean population was divided by two different ideologies and socio-political economic systems.
By adjusting with the oddity of the division line -- which was drawn by the super-powers -- North and South Korea both have developed their respective ways of lives, although there remains a difference in perspectives.
Under the Trump administration, the US will seek to enhance and continue to impose geo-political pressure on China. On the other hand, China enhanced her development diplomacy with the Asian countries by funding infrastructural projects worth billions of dollars.
Meanwhile, the US-China tension in the South China Sea is also increasing.
US-led West and regional allies, Japan and South Korea, are very worried about North Korean nuclear war capacity and missile developments
Now, it is apparent that the US has been losing its grip on the South Korean political establishment. But who will fill the leadership gap of South Korea? The main opposition party, the Democratic Party, which is an alliance of Germany-based Progressive Alliance, can play a crucial role in forming the future government.
But the party doesn’t enjoy full support from the US yet, since the Progressive Alliance rejected several of Trump’s policies, such as the wall between the US-Mexico border and travel ban for six Muslim countries.
According to media reports, the US-led West and regional allies, Japan and South Korea, are very worried about North Korean nuclear capacity and missile developments.
Currently, the relation between China and DPRK is not going well, but they are not hostile to each other. China, accompanied with the UN, imposed several sanctions over North Korea on different occasions of her weapon tests.
On the other hand, DPRK enhanced and diversified its trade with Russia, Mongolia, Australia, and other countries. Although DPRK and China have some strategic differences, they will act as a single entity while confronting the potential America-Japan-South Korea joint threat.
To avoid a future catastrophe that can severely harm Chinese globalisation and domestic security, China will try to prevent such US action on North Korea.
But in the 21st century, when the US is a dying hegemony and has been losing grip in South Korea, and China is promoting its own idea of globalisation, does China need such strategic defense that DPRK has been giving for years in Korean peninsula?
Additionally, Russia -- a country that supported North Korea, also raised concern over DPRK’s nuclear tests. By studying the recent Chinese-Russian ties, one can easily come to a conclusion that those countries are not enjoying a fruitful diplomatic relation under the present leadership of Kim Jong -Un, and, at the same time, they are worried about North Korea’s present nuclear and missile capacity.
Russia and China both know that North Korea can appear as a threat to their respective geo-political strategies in Korean peninsula. But North Korea cannot be a bigger threat than the US in the foreseeable future because it has not invaded any country yet.
For regional safety and from a geo-strategic perspective, China and Russia should try to incorporate North Korea in their respective development projects like BRI, the maritime silk route, or even the Eurasian economic union.
Such inclusions will boost DPRK’s confidence and force it to take responsibilities in global -- collective and multi-polar -- development. Isolating North Korea from the rest of the world will not serve the objective to create a secure world. It only presents the rationality to make more devastating weapons for self-defense.
It is suggested that China, Russia, and North Korea can sign a Korean Peninsula defense pact where parties concerned will enhance trilateral defense mechanisms and draw red lines of national interests for peace and security in the region.
Rajeev Ahmed is a geo-political analyst and strategic thinker.
