Crossing lanes with China is not crossing wires
■"U.S. and North Korea Envoys Meet Ahead of 6-Nation Nuclear Talks," by Jim Yardley and David E. Sanger, New York Times, 26 July 2005, p. A3.■"Sisyphus in China: U.S. Lawyer's Antipiracy Task is Endless," by Neil King Jr., Wall Street Journal, 26 July 2005, p. A17.
■"In Search of a New Energy Source, China Rides the Wind," by Howard W. French, New York Times, 26 July 2005, p. A4.
America's Chris Hill meets with his North Korean counterpart prior to the official opening of the 6-party talks hosted by Beijing. This is a concession on our part, as we've been holding firm to our demand that Pyongyang deal with all of the region's major powers (us, South Korea, China, Russia, Japan) at once. That approach didn't get Kim to the table. Why? It scares him. Plus the delay gave him time to move ahead rapidly on his WMD capabilities.
Now we're warning of even more severe economic repercussions if these talks fail, but there's nothing we can do more to NK. The real leverage, of course, is with Beijing, which wants to keep its relationship with Washington cool right now, given all of the other economic issues on the table - -plus Hu Jintao's first trip to the US in September.
As the first article says, "Failure in these talks could deeply sour the relationship."
But all that implies is that there is massive cross-lane linkages, in direct contrast to the U.S. approach to try and keep everything (economics, political, security) in a series of separate lanes. This is a weird, anti-diplomatic approach if ever there was one. We need Beijing on security and they need us on economics (mostly our forbearance as they deal with a host of issues -- like the massive piracy that goes on in China today and the regime's neverending search for the technologies and reserves for their rising energy requirements). Why in God's name deny these obvious linkages? This approach remains beyond my capacity to explain.