The Marmot’s Hole

As you can imagine, there’s a ton of blog stuff out there about North Korea. Allow me to link to some of the better stuff out there:

• The incomparable Joe Katzman of Winds of Change writes that North Korea is the “wrong focus.” Instead, the United States should focus on China, which Joe believes hasn’t, isn’t and won’t do a thing to stop North Korea’s nuke plans unless Beijing is made to understand that North Korea will cost them bigtime. In particular, he believes China should be told in no uncertain terms that the United States is willing to assist regional friends like Taiwan, South Korea and Japan with developing their own independent nuclear deterrents if Beijing feels it’s not up to the task of twisting Pyongyang’s arm. “How China chooses to fix the North Korea problem after that and thus stop all of these initiatives is, of course, up to them,” Joe writes. “Welcome to the big leagues, and have a nice day.”Talk about retaliating against North Korea’s nuclear program by encouraging U.S. allies in the region to go nuclear themselves has been around for some time—you’ll recall Charles Krauthammer’s call in the WaPo for Washington to play its “Japan Card” all the way back in January 2003. In theory, I agree with this approach—if China wants to be a Great Power, it needs to act like one, and acting like a Great Power occasionally entails twisting an ally’s arm to ensure they don’t do something incredibly stupid, the idea being that if you don’t, other Great Powers will let their clients do incredibly stupid things you won’t like, like giving Taiwan nuclear capabilities. Moreover, if the United States is willing to live with a state like North Korea with The Bomb, there’s no reason to keep the fingers of relatively reasonable (and friendly) actors like South Korea and Japan away from the button, too.

  For the record, though, as disappointed as I am with China’s passive attitude toward North Korea, I don’t believe North Korea is dancing to Beijing’s tune, and much to his credit, Joe doesn’t argue that that is.  Great Powers have their “loose cannon” allies that don’t always listen.  We had the Israelis and the South Africans, the Soviets had the Cubans (Moscow learned of Cuban intervention in Angola when they read about it in the papers the next morning), and the Chinese might have the North Koreans.  Throughout its history, North Korea has been a notoriously shitty ally, expecting tons of aid and giving nothing in return.  In fact, it spent 50 years blackmailing the rival Soviets and Chinese with threats of defecting to the other side.  The North Koreans are reportedly unhappy about being China’s “bitch”—its nuclear program, its desire for “normal” relations with the United States and the aid games it plays with South Korea can be seen along these lines—and it’s even said that Pyongyang bumped up the date of its nuclear test in order to give China the middle finger.  After all, the Korean term used disparagingly by North Korea to refer to South Korea’s dependency on the United States—sadaejueui (usually translated by the KCNA as “flunkeyism”)—originally referred to the neo-Confucian Korean kingdom of Joseon’s subservient relationship with none other than the Middle Kingdom.  What I’m trying to say is that the North Koreans are nothing if not nationalistic, and I’m willing to cut the Chinese a little slack as long as I believe they’re making an honest effort to get Pyongyang to behave.  The coming weeks should be quite telling.

• Daniel Drezner examines whether sanctions are the best policy for North Korea.  Of particular note is how he (or rather Ralph Cossa) suggests getting China and South Korea on board for potentially regime-killing sanctions.

To be updated later…