Dr Börje Ljunggren :
With the threat from North Korea’s nuclear breakout growing daily, repair of Sino-US relations has assumed new urgency. The meeting between the US and Chinese presidents, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, in April could bring their relations and the security situation in Northeast Asia to a new crossroads.
The gravity of the threat was highlighted when North Korea fired a rocket engine, with the capacity to propel an intercontinental ballistic missile, on March 18 while US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Beijing. In a short time, North Korea has become a de facto nuclear power conducting, just in 2016, two nuclear tests and 21 missile tests and this year at least six increasingly advanced missile tests.
East Asia is facing its most acute and trying security challenge in many years, and established major powers may not have viable solutions. Nothing less than a grand bargain is needed.
The international community has failed to contain a failed state, one as poor, backward and isolated as North Korea, and allowed a grave security dilemma to emerge.
North Korea’s nuclear development has, in fact, been on the international agenda for more than 20 years.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, on which the country was deeply dependent for its subsistence, substantial international humanitarian assistance staved off mass starvation.
An ambitious Western initiative was launched in 1995 when the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or KEDO, was founded by the United States, South Korea and Japan to implement the 1994 US-North Korea Agreed Framework intended to freeze North Korea’s indigenous nuclear power plant development centered at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, suspected of being a step in a nuclear weapons programme.
KEDO’s principal activity was to construct two light-water reactor nuclear-power plants in North Korea to replace planned reactors. The project was ultimately terminated, primarily because of North Korea’s continued and extended failure to perform required steps in the project agreement.
During the last year of the Clinton administration, North Korea’s Kim Jong-il had an opportunity to put his country on a new path as the United States and North Korea reached an advanced stage in their bilateral negotiations.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made an historic visit to Pyongyang and President Bill Clinton stood ready to fly to Pyongyang to sign an agreement. But Kim dragged his feet and the opportunity was lost as President George Bush rather than Al Gore entered the White House and labelled the country part of an axis of evil along with Iran and Iraq.
All this happened in the era of comprehensive inter-Korean dialogue driven by the “sunshine policy” of South Korea’s President Kim Dae-jung, the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Kim was determined to make history, and in 1999 even went to Pyongyang for an inter-Korean summit. As chairman of the European Council, then Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson went to Pyongyang in spring of 2001, heading a troika including EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana and EU Commissioner Chris Patten.
They held five hours of talks with Kim and a two-year moratorium on missile tests was agreed, but in late 2002 it became evident that North Korea still pursued its nuclear development programme. A less than predictable and promising period abruptly ended.
The UN Security Council agreed to a sequence of sanctions, with Chinese consent. Sanctions have not, however, had the intended effects, as North Korea has since continued to pursue its nuclear ambitions. Beijing and Washington have each accused the other of being the main cause for the lack of results.
A string of North Korean missiles and tests, combined with Trump’s ascent to power, has created a new sense of urgency. Beijing does not want tensions to escalate on the Korean Peninsula, instead urging all parties to cool down. Washington wants firm actions against Pyongyang, and Beijing wants talks that could produce a North Korean moratorium on tests, an end to annual US-South Korean military exercises and cancellation of THAAD. The Six-Party talks should be resumed, a non-option for the US. Some form of Three-Party talks – including the United States, China and North Korea – may be an alternative.
The meeting of the US and Chinese presidents in Florida may be more likely to produce tangible results than just a few weeks ago. While in Beijing, Tillerson vowed that the United States is ready to develop relations with China “based on the principles of non-confrontation, no conflict, mutual respect and win-win cooperation,” wording from a Chinese songbook.
North Korea will be high on the agenda during the meeting between leaders of the world’s two largest economies. Perhaps history can lay the foundation for a surprise grand bargain on Korea, making the East Asian Peace less fragile. Clearly, there is no military option – it could cost more than a million lives and do irreparable damage to US-Chinese relations.
(Dr Börje Ljunggren is former Swedish ambassador to China and author of The Chinese Dream – Xi, Power and Challenges, April 2017. – Yale Global)
