Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

A very sensible and lowest cost option.

There are a couple major risks for China
1) this is against its traditional diplomatic policy of non-interference (N.B. China is very careful in this definition, Taiwan/Tibet fall with Chinese boundary in PRC definition and count as domestic affair. NK is definitely international)
2) the reaction of SK, which China is very mindful of, especially given SK share its worry on the "Japan threat". China would prefer to notify SK as well.
3) problem arised from (2): (a) hard to keep secrecy; (b) too messy as SK is a democracy and govt changes. Roh may endorse a Chinese plan today but the next govt may not.

Therefore, the "coup" should best be planned by other parties, esp ethnic koreans. China could silently assist but it will not take a lead.

---
Then there is the question of reality. The pro-China faction in NK has been purged by Kim Il-sung in 1960s. Since 1970s or so there is actually very little contact between China and NK at the party-level. So the potential coup leaders are almost entirely cut off from contacts abroad, incl China.

What we need to do is to encourage more of KJI's China trip, to establish more opportunity for NK middle/senio official to travel in China (and Vietnam as well, if possible). As a result, even if there is no coup, the experience will likely to trigger a China-style reform.

---

I largely agree with Tom's envision of the various countries involved. with a few caveats
1) I am not sure if SK "relatively happy" is good enough for China to act. China needs to nsure SK is jolly happy.
-- Although SK should not worry, because unlike the probelm across the Taiwan strait, the 2 Korea's identify with each other very well. SK should feel quite comfortable that NK as temporary mentee of China, because, in the long run, NK will fall back to SK
2) Japan SHOULD be happy with the missile (and nuke) off the table. But that does not necessarily mean it would. Some of the right-wing in Japan desperately need NK as the bogeyman for re-arm. These people would prefer the NK regime to stay.

It would be nice for China to step up in Korea and for other potential sys admin countries to help elsewhere in the world. The credibility of the U.S. is at a low point so it seems doubtful we can do anything short term in the gap.If the Chinese, Indians and the Russians join the Euros in lending us a hand, that could change.

And we wouldn't have to trade Taiwan to get rid of Kim, either.

A beautiful future.

The Chinese are probably going to have to do something like this. Their ongoing economic prosperity will be threatened by a messy, violent termination of the Kim regime, such as Kaplan laid out in the current Atlant.

The US should encourage this resolution to the maximum extent possible. A Chinese de facto annexation of the North would spare us the clean up costs, and it would allow China to deal with the mess on its own timetable instead of in the midst of a multi-million refugee scramble on the Yalu during a civil war or conflict with ROK and its US ally.

It seems like all the variables point this way. Only the USA's apparent desire for a starring role in this drama seems to stand in the way. Time for us to bow out, and let the people in the neighborhood deal with their psycho neighbor.

Now Dan, it was never a trading of Taiwan for North Korea, but simply disallowing Taipei to trade Globalization IV for their self-actualization needs.

Interesting scenario that gives me some hope but...

Whoever calls the music, and however everyone pairs up, nothing happens until China shows up for the prom.

Let's hope their new pro-US guy is an RSVP.

Tom,

Excuse me, I meant trading to "terminate Taiwan's defense guarantee in order to bring Beijing to Kim's table."

Besides being bad in itself, sacrificing the security to a multipart because a party dictatorship is insulted is not a lesson we want to teach Beijing. And especially not when the dictatorship's arguments boil down to racial politics for an offshore state that was ruled from the mainland for all of one thousand days in the 20th century.

@Dan

A couple things:

1) There has never been any formal "guarantee" from US. The Taiwan Relation Act is "an American option to defend Taiwan". Search the pro-independence sites/blogs you will see many discussion on the TRA. Or you can read the texts yourself.
2) I don't think Tom's rationale about Taiwan is about avoiding to insult CCP. But let's see what Tom says.
3) It is not about 1000days in 20th century either. Inside the island of Taiwan itself this is a hot topic, whether one take the last 100 day, 100 month, 100 years or 500 years. There is really no point it biasing in how to chop history up.
The US should encourage the 2 sides to stay peacefully and seek a peaceful solution. I don't think US needs to take side on this debate/conflict. e.g. The situation of Taiwan is not too different from Chechenya, except that about half the people in Taiwan do not endorse independence. Do you think US should send troop to defend the independence of Chechenya?

And so Katami comes to the USA with the cooperation of the US Department of State (“Whom says they want to hear him speak”) and exposes a mix of views some unacceptable and yet including a number of somewhat conciliatory ones.

And then, Maliki sees the “nut case President” from Iran who offers “assistance” (And, whom may be afraid of losing his “fair” standing with the Mullahs).

Just perhaps everyone sees a kind of rapprochement writing on the walls situation and we all need to set the battle space before proceeding? Saving face and all….

Taking the defense guarantee (yes, Sun, it's an option on paper but it's a guarantee inside the Pentagon) off the table indeeds helps us get China's help on North Korea, but I would make the argument absent North Korea altogether.

The defense guarantee is from another age. Removing it makes sure we don't have an accidental war with China and that Taiwan remains reasonable in its approach. It will hardly give Beijing a green light to invade. This is slippery-slope-ism and nothing more.

We need an East Asian NATO to free up resources for the Long War (ours freed and China's tapped) and to eliminate great power war in Asia. Taiwan-the-security-scenario stands in the way. We need to remove that scenario. Doing so will hardly sacrifice or trade Taiwan to China. That's already been done by Taiwan itself economically.

Having done that, it seems pointless to me to retain this military obligation from another era.

China's made its desires and its intent clear--for decades now. So long as we keep this scenario in our back pocket in the Pentagon, the Leviathan is overstuffed and the SysAdmin is starved. Thousands of US Marines and Army will die as a result of this over-ripe strategic fixation remaining in tact over the coming years.

I think that outcome is incredibly wrong.

Tom: I know you've had a go at Robert D. Kaplan before, but his cover piece in the October Atlantic cries out for a good shellacking. His NK-collapse scenario plots far too many moves ahead far too confidently. More fog-of-war humilty and less channeling of Red Storm Rising or The Third World War would help.

Actually, it reminds me most of Brigadier Pudding, an addled WWI veteran in Gravity's Rainbow who sets out in the 1930s to write Things That Can Happen in European History. Before he can work out all the permutations that would follow on the death of PM Ramsay MacDonald, MacDonald has died...

A question I asked a while back: As long as we're going to insist on building the NMD, is there any reason we couldn't offer it to Russia and China? It would be as big an olive branch to them as this coup would be for us. It would offer them reassurances against a war with us (we would then have the same defences). Also against a retaliation by NK if they join us-- unless they could engineer a coup like this, turning against the Kim regime could have nasty consequences for them.

Michael,

NMD is essentially an offensive weapon -- you can attack with your first strike, and First Strike + NMD should be enough to prevent a meaningful retaliation. So being protected by NMD doesn't mean much, as long as it is run by the US.

It's a good idea (whether or not it's a good deal is another matter), but other countries are rational to be worried.

Dan,
This makes sense. As long as the system was run by us alone, it wouldn't be attractive. What if it was run jointly by the countries protected by it, though? Or had separate controls for each country's portion of the system?

Another advantage to a deal with them would getting their help perfecting the system. From what I recall of earlier tests, there was some question of whether it would even work in practice; the only way for anyone to be protected by it may be for everyone to cooperate in its development. That way, everyone (in the Core) is defended or no one is defended.

Well, China has been making oblique references that the northern portion of the Korean peninsula was at one-time part of ancestreal-China separate from the "Korean" kingdom that occupied the portion roughly the same as the current ROK. Chinese "policy" has been that ancient portions of China were always inside the Chinese "sphere of influence"; separate from their "foreign" policy with the outside Nations and Nationalities.

And the Chinese have always had a profound sense of "China" and "not-China"....their own Middle Kingdom and the outer barbarian-world. The spin would be that they were coming to the assistance of their ancesteal-Chinese brothers, while establishing an effective-protectorate over North Korea. Which in the long-run might be preferable to a "sudden land-grab" by the ROK as the North Korean system implodes uncontrolably. Then the PRC and ROK could sort-out between themselves and the other regional players (the US, Japan and Russia) the long-term transition socially and economically.