Update:
I am willing to grant that China disrupted rare earth shipments to Japan over the Diaoyutai/Senkaku incident.
That's a distinction I should have made in the Asia Times article, and I regret not doing so.
Given the quota system/smuggling structure of China's rare earth trade, it would be easy to slow or stop exports simply by ordering heightened vigilance by customs, perhaps with the instruction that the validity and authenticity of export documentation such as licenses had to be reconfirmed at a higher level. Keith Bradsher's article in the October 28 New York Times provides a detailed and plausible picture of a slowdown in Chinese rare earth exports.
The purpose would have been to send a pointed rebuke to Maehara, point out to Japan's business community that Maehara is not the best steward of Japan's relationship with China, and remind Japan that business with China is as important as Japan's security relationship with the United States.
In other words, a discrete use of enforcement power to send a message of dissatisfaction, not an embargo that could be construed as a violation of WTO regulations, damage China's image as an exporter, or threaten Japanese industry (given the significant stockpiles it holds), let alone a declaration of economic war against the West using rare earths as a weapon (considering the inevitable and expected entry of non-Chinese producers into the market as most of Chinese rare earths disappear into Chinese end-uses and exports dry up).
Of course, the effect was the exact opposite.
Maehara skillfully parried an attack on his brinkmanship over Diaoyutai/Senkaku and repurposed and escalated it into declarations of a Chinese attack on Japan, Europe, and the United States; and the U.S. government and the Western media dove in.
The point of my article--that the rare earths issue has been knowingly, dishonestly, and cynically inflated into an incident of anti-Chinese hysteria--still stands.
But it would have been a better article if I had addressed the Chinese action that probably triggered the firestorm.
My apologies.
CH 10/29/10
I usually discount China-bashing rhetoric pretty heavily.
But then I read a quote from David Shambaugh in the New York Times.
“This administration came in with one dominant idea: make China a global partner in facing global challenges,” said David Shambaugh, director of the China policy program at George Washington University. “China failed to step up and play that role. Now, they realize they’re dealing with an increasingly narrow-minded, self-interested, truculent, hyper-nationalist and powerful country.”
When Dr. Shambaugh says something like that, one has to think about it.
Shambaugh is one of the deans of modern China political studies. I have appended his gigantic resume to the end of this post because it’s too long to include here.
Dr.Shambaugh definitely has the ear of the media, and I assume his counsels hold sway in the White House as well. Jeffrey Bader, the administration’s China man, and Shambaugh share membership in the same Brookings Institute boffin brotherhood.
And if the Chinese have lost David Shambaugh, the U.S. China policy is headed for the deep freeze.
The issue, as I see it, is that Shambaugh is a serious “responsible stakeholder” proponent and analyzes Chinese foreign policy in terms of its difficulties in conforming to the “responsible stakeholder” paradigm.
In June 2010, as China’s foreign policy problems snowballed, he wrote:
Another reason for Beijing’s tentativeness likely derives from China’s not sharing the liberal values and norms that underpin most international institutions and system, although China has benefited enormously from them. It is difficult to be a “responsible stakeholder” – to use Robert Zoellick’s famous phrase – in an international system with which one does not share and practice the operating values at home and was not “present at the creation” to shape the system in the first place.
Meaning that China is finding it difficult to live up to certain norms in order to be recognized as a member in good standing of the international system win the approval and active support of the United States for its geopolitical goals, playing ball on human rights, global warming, nuclear non-proliferation, trade, Iran…you get the picture.
Basically every area of U.S.-China disagreement.
Chinese editorial pages tend to harp on the deficiencies of the international system—two big wars and a global financial collapse in the last decade—and pontificate furiously on the subject of whether insisting that the Chinese acknowledge the universal validity of Western values and liberal democracy is borderline racist or maybe even misguided.
These arguments are usually dismissed in the West under the “Commies are afraid of democracy” rubric.
Let’s leave that question to the philosophers.
As a practical matter, Dr. Shambaugh’s ire towards China can, I think, be traced to his preference for “responsible stakeholderism” as the desirable alternative to a U.S. foreign policy of containment.
There is a significant military, national security, and political constituency for containment, especially within the United States.
I think Dr. Shambaugh is upset at China’s obstreperous non-stakeholderism because it is empowering the backwards-looking and destabilizing containment narrative.
His disappointment may be exacerbated if he himself was promoting that "one dominant idea” of responsible stakeholderism to the incoming Obama administration and takes its unraveling as a personal reproach.
The biggest problem is that some of our key allies don’t really follow these values either.
Again, I will leave the question of whether an idealist Hegelian construct like a global norm merely masks the continual and ineluctable pursuit of material interests to the philosophers.
Let’s just talk about the nitty-gritty of some of what’s been going on in the last year.
Narrow-minded? Self-interested? Truculent? Hyper-nationalist?
Pretty good descriptions of President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea and Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara of Japan.
You can also call them “aggressive, resourceful, and determined in advancing their national interests using the tools at hand”.
For Japan and South Korea to stand up to China to pursue their national interests, U.S. support is needed, whether it comes in the guise of anti-Communism, democratic solidarity, or “responsible stakeholderism”.
So, whatever the United States is selling this geopolitical season, Japan and South Korea have to be buying.
South Korea cares about reunification with North Korea on the most favorable terms possible.
Japan cares about having the United States as a credible and committed ally to counter China’s growing economic and military influence in East Asia.
In fact, I would argue that, especially for Japan, the U.S.-ally dynamic doesn’t represent shared commitment to advancing universal norms.
I think it’s just the opposite: national particularism on the model of Israel’s relations with the United States.
In 2009, the Obama administration tried to leverage a post-Bush perception of the United States as an honest broker with the Muslim world to deal directly with Tehran and craft a win-win resolution to the Iran stand-off.
However, the U.S. government was outmaneuvered by Israel and its allies inside the United States.
Instead, the U.S. has acquiesced to a narrative of the existential threat to Israel from Iran and its nuclear program, so nothing gets done in Middle East diplomacy without the a priori requirement of allaying Tel Aviv’s insatiable security concerns.
As a result, the Obama administration’s signature foreign policy initiative, its bedrock norm, if you will, nuclear non-proliferation, has been forced to take a back seat to Israel’s insistence that its nuclear arsenal not be acknowledged, let alone regularized within the structure of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
U.S. relations with Japan incorporate a similar dynamic.
The United States argues that its presence in the western Pacific is a necessary and highly desirable pre-emption of the Japanese government’s willingness to restore a regional role to its military and trigger an arms race with China.
Japan, like Israel, is deeply suspicious of U.S. staying power in the region and doesn’t want to be the helpless victim stuck holding the bag if Washington decides to cut a deal with its enemy for the sake of the global good.
So, this year, East Asia has seen a string of incidents that have forced the United States to acknowledge Japanese security concerns, while pitching China relations in the deep freeze.
On the issue of the Daioyutai/Senkaku Islands, the Obama administration notified Japan in August that it was not interested in explicitly supporting Japanese sovereignty over the islands.
One month later, Seiji Maehara took the deliberately provocative step of ordering the arrest and trial of a Chinese trawler captain under Japanese law for a collision in Diaoyutai territorial waters—over the reservations of his cabinet—and triggered an epic row with China.
The United States had no alternative but to stand with its main Pacific ally--albeit in ambiguous and unenthusiastic terms whose significance escaped the Western press.
It is safe to say that engagement with China by the United States on the Diaoyutai/Senkaku issue—and any possibility that the U.S. could be recognized by China as an honest broker on the other island issues, such as the Paracels—is dead as a doornail.
Also in 2010, South Korea’s Lee Myung-bak used the Cheonan outrage to reset the North Korea issue away from the China/Six Party Talks track onto a West vs. Kim Jung-il and China track.
To be fair, if North Korea did sink the Cheonan, as appears likely, Lee was responding to an identical Nork tactic: generating a polarizing incident that would force reluctant ally China to stand by Pyongyang.
In any event, after the U.S. backed South Korea’s desire to wave the Cheonan bloody shirt at the Security Council, Beijing doubled down on its support of Kim Jung Il.
The chances for the U.S. and China to get together, great-power style, to negotiate a North Korean endgame on terms that might please Beijing more than Seoul have presumably diminished significantly as a result.
Maybe the Obama administration entered office with the idea of “win-win” international system accommodating Chinese interests and aspirations but its allies have driven it into “zero-sum” territory.
It’s not just China.
The lesson is, national interest always trumps universal norms, for our allies as well as our enemies.
China, Japan, and South Korea are all “responsible stakeholders” in terms of their national interests…and “irresponsible stakeholders” in terms of the global norms that the Obama administration wants the world to uphold.
And the Obama administration is, I would assert, guilty of the same vice.
I think the Obama administration realizes it got punked by Maehara on Diaoyutai/Senkaku…but that didn’t prevent a repeat of the same pattern of Japanese provocation and U.S. escalation on the manufactured issue of China’s rare earth exports.
The criticisms of China may be unfair and hypocritical but Gosh, it is an election year in the United States and China-bashing sure is popular…
So I would say that to understand what’s going on, we should stop listening to the norms-based criticisms championed by David Shambaugh…and actually watch the national-interest related antics of the various parties involved.
Perhaps we should recognize that a foreign policy that primarily serves the national interests of the U.S. and its allies while using the rhetoric of global norms to deny China the same right to advance its interests is unlikely to be productive of anything except continued friction.
Actually, Dr. Shambaugh obliquely conceded the point in a thoughtful op-ed he wrote for China Daily in March 2010. Just substitute “United States” for “China”. And for “abroad”, “Many countries” and “world”, substitute “China”.
Does Chinese diplomacy offer a unique "model" in international affairs? Here, the answer is yes-at least rhetorically. ..Unfortunately, despite years - even decades -of promoting these concepts, they mainly fall on deaf ears abroad. Many countries do not wish to emulate and practice these concepts. The world is now more interested in what China does on the world stage, not what it says.
Speaking of what people do, I go after Japan’s Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara in two articles.
One digs into the Diaoyutai/Senkaku dustup at The Asia-Pacific Journal: High Stakes Gamble as Japan, China and the U.S. Spar in the East and South China Seas,The Asia-Pacific Journal, 43-1-10, October 25, 2010.
The other addresses the rare earth ruckus at Asia Times: Japan Spins Anti-China Merry-Go-Round.
On a less contentious note, I use Xie Chaoping’s history of the San Men Xia Dam fiasco, The Great Relocation, to explore the convoluted modern history of Yellow River hydrology in an article for the upcoming print edition of Counterpunch. The subscribe link is here.
Dr. David Shambaugh’s cv:
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs
Director, China Policy Program, Elliott School of International Affairs
George Washington University
Professor Shambaugh is recognized internationally as an authority on contemporary Chinese affairs and the international politics and security of the Asia-Pacific region. He is a widely published author of numerous books, articles, book chapters and newspaper editorials. He has previously authored six and edited sixteen volumes. His newest books are China's Communist Party: Atrophy & Adaptation; American and European Relations with China; and The International Relations of Asia (all published in 2008). Other recent books include Power Shift: China & Asia's New Dynamics (2005); China Watching: Perspectives from Europe, Japan, and the United States (2007); China-Europe Relations (2007); Modernizing China's Military (2003); The Odyssey of China's Imperial Art Treasures (2005); and The Modern Chinese State (2000). Professor Shambaugh is a frequent commentator in international media, and has contributed to leading scholarly journals such as International Security, Foreign Affairs, The China Quarterly, and The China Journal.
Before joining the faculty at George Washington, he taught at the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, where he also served as Editor of The China Quarterly (the world's leading scholarly journal of contemporary Chinese studies). He also served as Director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1985-86), as an analyst in the Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research (1976-1977) and the National Security Council (1977-78), and has been a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution since 1998. He has received numerous research grants, awards, and fellowships -- including being appointed as an Honorary Research Professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (2008- ), a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2002-2003), a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of World Economics & Politics (2009-2010), and a visiting scholar at institutions in China, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Russia, Singapore, and Taiwan.
Professor Shambaugh has held a number of consultancies, including with various agencies of the U.S. Government, The Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The RAND Corporation, The Library of Congress, and numerous private sector corporations. He serves on several editorial boards (including International Security, Journal of Strategic Studies, Current History, The China Quarterly, China Perspectives) and is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, National Committee on U.S. China Relations, the World Economic Forum, The Council on Foreign Relations, Pacific Council on International Policy, Committee on Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP), The Asia Society, Association for Asian Studies, and International Studies Association.
Professor Shambaugh received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan, an M.A. in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of International Studies (SAIS), and B.A. in East Asian Studies from The Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. He also studied at Nankai University, Fudan University, and Peking University in China.
Showing posts with label Cheonan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cheonan. Show all posts
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Sunday, October 03, 2010
World War III Public Service Announcements
A lot of matches are flying around the Chinese tinderbox.
Fortunately, most parties involved seem more interested in scoring political points than making a genuine and risky effort to push back China.
However, as the example of Sarajevo tells us, sometimes wars happen when nations become prisoners of their own posturing.
So it's worthwhile to take a careful and critical look at what's happening in China's backyard with U.S. allies Japan and South Korea and wannabe regional partner Vietnam, and the political circus surrounding valuation of the RMB.
1. Let Japan Teach Us How to Start a Pacific War
I have two articles up at Asia Times in recent days.
One covers the waterfront, as it were, concerning tensions in the China and South China Seas.
Simply put, the tension in the seas surrounding China is not caused by Chinese aggressiveness; it is the logical outcome of the Obama administration's return-to-Asia strategy. South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam are emboldened to stand up to China because the United States stands behind them. Kind of.
Most recent case in point: the flare-up over Captain Zhan, the Chinese fishing trawler captain arrested by the Japanese for colliding with two Japanese coast guard vessels.
As my article at Asia Times points out, the hard line on the issue of Captain Zhan was pushed by Seiji Maehara, current Japanese Foreign Minister and one of the most energetic advocates of the U.S.-Japan special relationship within the DPJ.
Nevertheless, China was blamed for escalating the crisis.
An amusing sideline to the whole issue was Maehara's unsuccessful efforts to inveigle the U.S. into supporting his stand on Captain Zhan, even after Prime Minister Kan was apparently eager, nay anxious, to put the matter behind him.
Japanese and U.S. willingness to tug the dragon's whiskers is even more overt in the South China Sea, where Secretary of State Clinton and Maehara's predecessor as FM, Katsuya Okada, rather irresponsibly injected themselves in the local disputes in order to curry favor with Vietnam which, I must admit, looks like it got jobbed when the PRC seized the Paracels from a South Vietnamese garrison in 1974.
The South China Sea is a fruit salad of flags, conflicting claims, and interested countries waving three-hundred year old historical records to advance their arguments. As long as the principle of free transit continues to be adhered to by all parties, muddling through looks to be the best solution; promoting an adversarial multilateral process simply won't work, IMHO.
The generally godawful Western reporting on the subject demonstrates that foreign affairs correspondents of the access-journalism persuasion did not have their gullibility circuits blown by their performance in the runup to the Iraq war. Japanese reporting on Maehara's contortions, in particular, seemed to elevate wishful thinking to an editorial policy.
The whole story can be found at Asia Times. It seems the headline writers at AT made a slight slip, entitling the story Japan poured oil on troubled waters. It looks like Japan is doing quite the opposite.
2. If We Can't Have a Real War, How About a Trade War
Japan also figures in the second story, which concerns U.S. handwringing over the Chinese trade surplus and the undervalued RMB.
The main justification for compelling a revaluation is the precedent of the 1985 Plaza Accord, by which the United States strongarmed Japan into an enormous revaluation of the yen, from somewhere around 250 to 120 yen to the dollar.
Paul Krugman of Princeton University argues vociferously that a punitive tariff will strengthen the yuan de facto and rebalance the trade books whether China likes it or not.
Ronald MacKinnon of Stanford University (the "Princeton of the West" as they say in Palo Alto) says that's an illusion.
My personal feeling is that in economics, as William Goldman wrote about Hollywood, "Nobody Knows Anything".
I think there is nostalgia for the Plaza Accord simply because we had enough muscle to twist Japan's arm until it cried Uncle!
More nationalist empowerment than economic logic, that is to say.
But the Plaza Accord didn't solve America's trade deficit problem, and it totally screwed up Japan's economy.
In addition to the dismal example of the Plaza Accord, the PRC has compelling contemporary reasons not to revalue the RMB per U.S. demands.
Two reasons, actually: the flow of hot money that a stated revaluation policy would attract, and the dangerous effect of hot money on China's real estate bubble--a bubble that is financing anywhere from a third to half of local government spending inside China.
If the reader desires a comprehensive overview of the politics of currency revaluation--and the dismal role of the dismal science in the debate over the Chinese trade surplus--I document the atrocities at China plays by its own currency rules.
3. Let's Turn North Korea Into Iraq. It's the Only Place Where One Might Call That an Improvement
Finally, Korea.
Because of space and topic limitations in my AT pieces, I didn't address South Korea, the third leg of the rather rubbery tripod of U.S. allies seeking to make political and geostrategic hay from the U.S. "return to Asia".
However, a while back the Korea Times yielded a news report so magnificent that I believe it deserves special commemoration.
The backstory is that the Lee Myung-bak government of South Korea and the Obama adminstration decided to move away from the Six Party Talks, which gave considerable prestige to China but yielded negligible progress.
The alternative was apparently a policy of malign neglect, ignoring the DPRK (and China) and betting that the ROK and USA could sweep in to pick up the pieces when the Kim Jung Il regime finally fell on its ass for good.
The orchestrated reaction to the Cheonan sinking, demanding further isolation and destabilizing sanctions against the Pyongyang regime through the UN Security Council, western governments, and Japan, seems part of this policy.
And China assumed the role of the heavy, questioning both the conclusions of the Cheonan investigation (neither China nor Russia, the two nations with the best foreign understanding of North Korea's military capabilities, were invited to join the investigation) and the way the U.S. and ROK pursued the issue through the UN and outside the Six Party Talks framework.
I assume James Steinberg of the National Security Council and Kurt Campbell, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, are the American Richelieus who have conceived and executed this rather subtle policy, which has China writhing rather angrily on a cleft stick nowadays.
But whatever clever policy civilians formulate, the military can screw up with ham-fisted obviousness.
Courtesy of Korea Times:
It is noteworthy that the U.S. military believes there are successful lessons from our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan that can be applied to invading and occupying North Korea.
Hey, it's not just attacking and killing!
Well, it's still mostly attacking and killing.
If General Sharp had more time, I'm sure he could have mentioned some other features of American COIN policy, such as: encouraging sectarian and ethnic division to assist pacification and security; rampant corruption; death squads; extensive use of brutal and unregulated mercenaries; and the creation of a weak, divided government unable to provide security and dependent on American good offices and continued U.S. military support.
I'll bet it's all in the latest version of the Ulchi Freedom Guardian video game: Tender Claws of Freedom!
Fortunately, most parties involved seem more interested in scoring political points than making a genuine and risky effort to push back China.
However, as the example of Sarajevo tells us, sometimes wars happen when nations become prisoners of their own posturing.
So it's worthwhile to take a careful and critical look at what's happening in China's backyard with U.S. allies Japan and South Korea and wannabe regional partner Vietnam, and the political circus surrounding valuation of the RMB.
1. Let Japan Teach Us How to Start a Pacific War
I have two articles up at Asia Times in recent days.
One covers the waterfront, as it were, concerning tensions in the China and South China Seas.
Simply put, the tension in the seas surrounding China is not caused by Chinese aggressiveness; it is the logical outcome of the Obama administration's return-to-Asia strategy. South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam are emboldened to stand up to China because the United States stands behind them. Kind of.
Most recent case in point: the flare-up over Captain Zhan, the Chinese fishing trawler captain arrested by the Japanese for colliding with two Japanese coast guard vessels.
As my article at Asia Times points out, the hard line on the issue of Captain Zhan was pushed by Seiji Maehara, current Japanese Foreign Minister and one of the most energetic advocates of the U.S.-Japan special relationship within the DPJ.
Nevertheless, China was blamed for escalating the crisis.
An amusing sideline to the whole issue was Maehara's unsuccessful efforts to inveigle the U.S. into supporting his stand on Captain Zhan, even after Prime Minister Kan was apparently eager, nay anxious, to put the matter behind him.
Japanese and U.S. willingness to tug the dragon's whiskers is even more overt in the South China Sea, where Secretary of State Clinton and Maehara's predecessor as FM, Katsuya Okada, rather irresponsibly injected themselves in the local disputes in order to curry favor with Vietnam which, I must admit, looks like it got jobbed when the PRC seized the Paracels from a South Vietnamese garrison in 1974.
The South China Sea is a fruit salad of flags, conflicting claims, and interested countries waving three-hundred year old historical records to advance their arguments. As long as the principle of free transit continues to be adhered to by all parties, muddling through looks to be the best solution; promoting an adversarial multilateral process simply won't work, IMHO.
The generally godawful Western reporting on the subject demonstrates that foreign affairs correspondents of the access-journalism persuasion did not have their gullibility circuits blown by their performance in the runup to the Iraq war. Japanese reporting on Maehara's contortions, in particular, seemed to elevate wishful thinking to an editorial policy.
The whole story can be found at Asia Times. It seems the headline writers at AT made a slight slip, entitling the story Japan poured oil on troubled waters. It looks like Japan is doing quite the opposite.
2. If We Can't Have a Real War, How About a Trade War
Japan also figures in the second story, which concerns U.S. handwringing over the Chinese trade surplus and the undervalued RMB.
The main justification for compelling a revaluation is the precedent of the 1985 Plaza Accord, by which the United States strongarmed Japan into an enormous revaluation of the yen, from somewhere around 250 to 120 yen to the dollar.
Paul Krugman of Princeton University argues vociferously that a punitive tariff will strengthen the yuan de facto and rebalance the trade books whether China likes it or not.
Ronald MacKinnon of Stanford University (the "Princeton of the West" as they say in Palo Alto) says that's an illusion.
My personal feeling is that in economics, as William Goldman wrote about Hollywood, "Nobody Knows Anything".
I think there is nostalgia for the Plaza Accord simply because we had enough muscle to twist Japan's arm until it cried Uncle!
More nationalist empowerment than economic logic, that is to say.
But the Plaza Accord didn't solve America's trade deficit problem, and it totally screwed up Japan's economy.
In addition to the dismal example of the Plaza Accord, the PRC has compelling contemporary reasons not to revalue the RMB per U.S. demands.
Two reasons, actually: the flow of hot money that a stated revaluation policy would attract, and the dangerous effect of hot money on China's real estate bubble--a bubble that is financing anywhere from a third to half of local government spending inside China.
If the reader desires a comprehensive overview of the politics of currency revaluation--and the dismal role of the dismal science in the debate over the Chinese trade surplus--I document the atrocities at China plays by its own currency rules.
3. Let's Turn North Korea Into Iraq. It's the Only Place Where One Might Call That an Improvement
Finally, Korea.
Because of space and topic limitations in my AT pieces, I didn't address South Korea, the third leg of the rather rubbery tripod of U.S. allies seeking to make political and geostrategic hay from the U.S. "return to Asia".
However, a while back the Korea Times yielded a news report so magnificent that I believe it deserves special commemoration.
The backstory is that the Lee Myung-bak government of South Korea and the Obama adminstration decided to move away from the Six Party Talks, which gave considerable prestige to China but yielded negligible progress.
The alternative was apparently a policy of malign neglect, ignoring the DPRK (and China) and betting that the ROK and USA could sweep in to pick up the pieces when the Kim Jung Il regime finally fell on its ass for good.
The orchestrated reaction to the Cheonan sinking, demanding further isolation and destabilizing sanctions against the Pyongyang regime through the UN Security Council, western governments, and Japan, seems part of this policy.
And China assumed the role of the heavy, questioning both the conclusions of the Cheonan investigation (neither China nor Russia, the two nations with the best foreign understanding of North Korea's military capabilities, were invited to join the investigation) and the way the U.S. and ROK pursued the issue through the UN and outside the Six Party Talks framework.
I assume James Steinberg of the National Security Council and Kurt Campbell, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, are the American Richelieus who have conceived and executed this rather subtle policy, which has China writhing rather angrily on a cleft stick nowadays.
But whatever clever policy civilians formulate, the military can screw up with ham-fisted obviousness.
Courtesy of Korea Times:
South Korea and the United States have executed “realistic” training exercises to respond to various types of internal instability in North Korea, the top U.S. military general said Thursday.
Such drills were held during the latest Ulchi Freedom Guardian computerized simulation exercise from Aug. 16 to 26, said Gen. Walter Sharp, commander of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK).
…
[W]e take lessons learned out of Iraq and Afghanistan that we think apply here in the ROK and exercise those also,” he said. “So one of the things that we have learned out of Iraq and Afghanistan is that you can be fighting and attacking at one area and defending at another area.”
The main mission is to stabilize and protect the population in the area, he said, adding both militaries are designing such exercises to ensure that they “are able to not only to defend, not only able to attack and kill, but also able to provide humanitarian assistance” to help ensure security and stability for everyone in the region.
Sharp said North Korea stabilization operations are to be conducted by both governments.
It is noteworthy that the U.S. military believes there are successful lessons from our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan that can be applied to invading and occupying North Korea.
Hey, it's not just attacking and killing!
Well, it's still mostly attacking and killing.
If General Sharp had more time, I'm sure he could have mentioned some other features of American COIN policy, such as: encouraging sectarian and ethnic division to assist pacification and security; rampant corruption; death squads; extensive use of brutal and unregulated mercenaries; and the creation of a weak, divided government unable to provide security and dependent on American good offices and continued U.S. military support.
I'll bet it's all in the latest version of the Ulchi Freedom Guardian video game: Tender Claws of Freedom!
Monday, September 06, 2010
Remember the Cheonan!...Or Not
I wonder how serious the US and ROK are about this strategy. For Lee Myung-bak and his conservative, anti-Sunshine Policy Grand National Party, there seems to be some electioneering and political flummery involved.
For President Obama, there is a certain geopolitical logic in embarrassing China in front of the nations of East Asia by pushing it into the role of protector of Kim Jung Il's pariah regime. Also, the chance to expand North Korea-related sanctions comes at a very opportune time--in the US campaign to roll back Iran's nuclear program.
The first article, Timing key as US stir-fries sanctions, makes the case that the Obama administration--which had apparently promised not to punish China for refusing to follow U.S. national sanctions against Iran's energy and financial sector in return for China's yes vote on UN sanctions--might threaten sanctions against Chinese banks over North Korea instead in order to gain leverage over China on the Iran issue.
The second, China makes its North Korea move, covers what might be characterized as China calling South Korea and America's bluff: China's decision to use the occasion of a visit to Northeast China by Kim Jung Il to announce its continued support for the DPRK--a most significant declaration as the impoverished dictatorship tries to navigate dangerous political waters toward the elevation of Kim Jung Il's untested third son, Jung Un to the role of dear-leader-in-waiting.
In return, Kim, who has yearned to negotiate directly with the United States, announced his desire--greeted with hearty Chinese approval--to return to the Six Party Talks.
Faced with this display of China's virtually unequivocal support for the DPRK, Lee Myung-bak folded rather quickly.
Instead of insisting on a North Korean apology over the Cheonan affair as a precondition for recommencing the Six Party Talks, the ROK announced it would be satisfied to pursue the case in parallel with the talks.
On balance, it seems plausible that North Korea did sink the Cheonan (despite the considerable risks and difficulties involved) in order to foment a crisis on the peninsula and compel China to support it (not only diplomatically but financially) against the Seoul-Washington axis, whose malign indifference (and unwillingness to countenance bailing out the staggering DPRK food and energy sectors) was probably more of a threat to the regime's existence than international sanctions or military action.
At least for now, Kim Jung Il's risky bet seems to have paid off handsomely, and appreciation for his wiliness and boldness within the DPRK elite will probably smooth the transfer of the Kim family business to Kim Jong Un.
South Korea, on the other hand, seems to have blotted its copybook rather badly.
Lee Myung-bak nakedly desired to be the George Bush to a Cheonan 9/11, but large chunks of the suspicious South Korean electorate failed to rally around him.
The ROK military muddled the evidentiary waters around the sinking with sufficient secrecy, incompetence, and cover-up to allow enough doubt to creep into its Cheonan findings that the Chinese government--despite the indignant fulminations of the Obama administration--was able to block censure of the DPRK at the UN with little difficulty and limited geopolitical embarrassment.
The Cheonan incident offers interesting parallels with a famous outrage in American history: the mysterious destruction of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898.
The Maine was in Havana showing the flag to overawe the Spanish colonial masters of Cuba.
A massive explosion destroyed the ship and killed 252 sailors and officers on board outright; another 14 died later of their wounds.
It appeared unlikely that Spain--acutely aware of its military weakness vis a vis the United States--would mine its own harbor and endanger its own ships for the sake of pulling off a catastrophic provocation against the U.S.
Nevertheless, a U.S. court of enquiry conducted in Havana shortly after the disaster drew on the findings of Navy divers who examined the wreck to conclude that an external mine had destroyed the ship.
As in the Cheonan case, there was a lot of back and forth about the presence or absence of stunned and dead fish and erupting water columns in order to determine whether or not an external explosion had been involved. Also, conspiracy theories emerged, including notions that the sinking was a false-flag operation by Cuban revolutionaries intent on luring the U.S. into a war with Spain, or even sabotage by the Maine's own crew.
War with Spain--under the slogan Remember the Maine! To Hell with Spain! was the outcome. The rapid U.S. victory led to the acquisition of an attractive portolio of imperial interests in Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam for the young republic.
The hulk of the Maine remained a grim monument in Havana harbor for the next 14 years, until it was circled by a cofferdam, repaired enough to float, raised and towed out to sea for a ceremonial sinking in 600 fathoms of water just outside the Cuban three-mile limit.
A second investigation based on examination of the wreck inside the cofferdam largely affirmed the original finding of an external mine.
However, Admiral Hyman Rickover revisited the issue in a private investigation in 1974. His team came to the conclusion that the Maine had "without a doubt" been sunk by an internal explosion.
The most likely cause in this case would have been spontaneous combustion of wet bituminous coal in a bunker adjacent to one of the ship's magazines. The heat of combustion could have been conducted through the bulkhead between the bunker and the magazine and detonated the ship's own munitions. Apparently, spontaneous combustion was a not uncommon problem during the Maine era, having occurred, according to one study, 13 times between 1895 and 1898.
Then National Geographic muddied the waters somewhat with a computer model supporting the possibility that a perfectly-placed 100 lb. keg of powder could have destroyed the Maine.
However, consensus opinion today appears to support an internal explosion.
The various arguments are summarized in a 2009 report by the Law Library of Congress entitled The Destruction of the Maine (1898).
The coal issue was an interesting piece of imperial management forgotten in these days of diesels, gas turbines, and nuclear-powered vessels. Any nation with global military aspirations had to solve the equation of commerce, conquest, and alliance that would assure that its navy would never be more than two weeks from a big pile of coal. Coaling the ship was an all-day affair for the entire crew, shoveling hundreds of tons of the black stuff into bunkers of various shapes and sizes. Stokers made up more than half of the ship's company, extracting coal from the bunkers and feeding it into the maw of the boilers.
The Spanish-American War was also the golden era of American yellow journalism, typified by William Hearst's instruction to Frederic Remington, who wanted to come home from Cuba in March 1898: "Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war."
New York Herald correspondent J.L. Stickney reported the destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila from the deck of Admiral Dewey's flagship Olympia (now on display in Philadelphia): "a hoarse cry 'Remember the Maine'...arose from 500 men at the guns."
In 1928, a Marine Lieutenant present at Manila noted dryly:
"When we left Hong Kong the date of our latest mail was March 27. At that time the slogan, 'Remember the Maine,' had not yet been invented...So, although it contradicts every account of the battle I have seen, in the interest of truth it should be recorded that 'Remember the Maine' was never shouted 'in a hoarse chorus by officers and men.'" (Taken from The Fate of the Maine, by John Edward Weems. For this interesting book, published by Henry Holt in 1958, Weems was able to interview four survivors of the Maine disaster.)
For the Cheonan, as well as the Maine, the human toll is immense and indisputable but the truth remains an uncertain quantity.
After the break, more on the Maine, Kipling, 19th century military technology, and trends in journalistic prevarication.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Cheonan Clown College, Part II
Update: Consider this can of worms officially closed! Do not open!
The United States on Wednesday rejected a call by North Korea for a new investigation of the sinking of a South Korean warship in March that Seoul blames on Pyongyang. The U.S. said the findings of a South Korean inquiry that attributes the attack to North Korea are "compelling."
The State Department said another investigation of the sinking is unwarranted and the focus of the world community should now be on coming up with an appropriate response to Pyongyang's provocative behavior.
The comments follow a North Korean request to the UN Security Council for a new inquiry into the March 26 sinking of the South Korean navy ship, the Cheonan. Pyongyang wants another investigation under UN auspices in which both North and South Korea would participate.
...
Pyongyang denies responsibility and said in a letter to the Security Council on Wednesday that the most reasonable way to settle the matter is for the two Koreas to conduct a joint investigation.
At a news briefing here, State Department Spokesman Philip Crowley said the United States "sees no ambiguity" about who sank the ship and that it is time for North Korea to accept responsibility.
CH,6/30/10
"There's a difference between restraint and willful blindness to consistent problems."
President Obama, on Chinese reticence on accepting the results of the international investigation of the Cheonan and supporting condemnation of North Korea at the UN Security Council.
Hmmm. Problems like using the wrong clipart to illustrate your slide show on North Korean perfidy.
When queried by journalists about discrepancies between the CHT-02D torpedo that attacked the Cheonan and the one depicted in the diagram, investigators said Tuesday that the pictured torpedo was of the model PT-97W and that the error was due to "a mix-up by a staff member while preparing for the presentation."
A South Korean military spokesman said the error was discovered after the press conference and a presentation of the evidence in front of the UN Security Council featured the correct diagram.
Actually, a "consistent problem" in the ROK's Cheonan case has been revelations of falsification of military records concerning the incident and, today, roughly five weeks after the fact, acknowledgment of an embarrassing flub in South Korea's presentation of its airtight case.
As I've stated before, there are solid reasons to believe that North Korea pulled off the attack.
There are also solid reasons to believe that the investigation is an evidentiary clusterf*ck, and the reason that South Korea is only asking for a meaningless "president's letter" from the UN Security Council is that the dossier has as many holes (and as bad a smell) as a piece of moldy Swiss cheese.
As China is by now well aware, President Obama's enthusiasm for this shoddy case has everything to do with his interest in supporting Lee Myung-bak's South Korea as an upgraded military and strategic counterweight to China.
Today, courtesy of the New York Times, the Obama administration tried to walk back its harsh public scolding of China at the G20 summit. “The toughest part of a generally positive” talk, as the inevitable anonymous official put it.
However, I suspect that the toothpaste is pretty much out of the tube by now.
The United States on Wednesday rejected a call by North Korea for a new investigation of the sinking of a South Korean warship in March that Seoul blames on Pyongyang. The U.S. said the findings of a South Korean inquiry that attributes the attack to North Korea are "compelling."
The State Department said another investigation of the sinking is unwarranted and the focus of the world community should now be on coming up with an appropriate response to Pyongyang's provocative behavior.
The comments follow a North Korean request to the UN Security Council for a new inquiry into the March 26 sinking of the South Korean navy ship, the Cheonan. Pyongyang wants another investigation under UN auspices in which both North and South Korea would participate.
...
Pyongyang denies responsibility and said in a letter to the Security Council on Wednesday that the most reasonable way to settle the matter is for the two Koreas to conduct a joint investigation.
At a news briefing here, State Department Spokesman Philip Crowley said the United States "sees no ambiguity" about who sank the ship and that it is time for North Korea to accept responsibility.
CH,6/30/10
"There's a difference between restraint and willful blindness to consistent problems."
President Obama, on Chinese reticence on accepting the results of the international investigation of the Cheonan and supporting condemnation of North Korea at the UN Security Council.
Hmmm. Problems like using the wrong clipart to illustrate your slide show on North Korean perfidy.
Cheonan Investigators Presented Wrong Torpedo Diagram
In a blow to conclusions that are already under attack from leftwing politicians and activists, a team of experts that investigated the sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan have admitted showing a diagram of the wrong North Korean torpedo when they presented their findings at a press conference on May 20.When queried by journalists about discrepancies between the CHT-02D torpedo that attacked the Cheonan and the one depicted in the diagram, investigators said Tuesday that the pictured torpedo was of the model PT-97W and that the error was due to "a mix-up by a staff member while preparing for the presentation."
A South Korean military spokesman said the error was discovered after the press conference and a presentation of the evidence in front of the UN Security Council featured the correct diagram.
Actually, a "consistent problem" in the ROK's Cheonan case has been revelations of falsification of military records concerning the incident and, today, roughly five weeks after the fact, acknowledgment of an embarrassing flub in South Korea's presentation of its airtight case.
As I've stated before, there are solid reasons to believe that North Korea pulled off the attack.
There are also solid reasons to believe that the investigation is an evidentiary clusterf*ck, and the reason that South Korea is only asking for a meaningless "president's letter" from the UN Security Council is that the dossier has as many holes (and as bad a smell) as a piece of moldy Swiss cheese.
As China is by now well aware, President Obama's enthusiasm for this shoddy case has everything to do with his interest in supporting Lee Myung-bak's South Korea as an upgraded military and strategic counterweight to China.
Today, courtesy of the New York Times, the Obama administration tried to walk back its harsh public scolding of China at the G20 summit. “The toughest part of a generally positive” talk, as the inevitable anonymous official put it.
However, I suspect that the toothpaste is pretty much out of the tube by now.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Has the Tipping Point in US-China Relations Been Reached?
All Sticks, No Carrots, and the Occasional High Profile Insult
This looks like a calculated slap in the face:
The US president has accused China of "wilful blindness" in remaining silent over North Korea's suspected sinking of a South Korean warship in March.
Barack Obama said he hoped that Hu Jintao, his Chinese counterpart, would recognise that North Korea crossed a line in the sinking of the Cheonan warship, which killed 46 South Korean sailors.
...
He said he understood that North Korea and China were neighbours, "there's a difference between restraint and wilful blindness to consistent problems".
Obama held talks with Hu on the sidelines of the summit and said he had been "blunt" with him on the issue of North Korea.
"My hope is that President Hu will recognise as well that this is an example of Pyongyang going over the line," he said.
...
China, which is Pyongyang's main international ally, has so far remained non-committal on the issue, prompting Obama to say that shying away from the harsh facts about North Korea's behaviour was "a bad habit we need to break".
Obama said he wanted the UN Security Council to produce a "crystal-clear acknowledgment" of the North's alleged action, which would require the co-operation of veto-wielding member China.
...
Obama, who met Lee Myung-Bak, the South Korean president, on the sidelines of the G20 summit, said it was "absolutely critical that the international community rally behind him and send a clear message to North Korea that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable".
It looks like President Obama has decisively put his eggs in the ROK basket, backing South Korean president Lee Myung-bak on the Cheonan sinking, putting aside his previous doubts about the KORUS FTA (US-South Korea Free Trade Agreement) to push for its ratification, and encouraging South Korea's ambitions to upgrade its regional profile to what looks like parity or more with the PRC.
I was struck with Korea Times' coverage of President Lee's remarks at the Toronto summit:
South Korea to represent voices of emerging countries at Seoul summit
TORONTO ― President Lee Myung-bak said Sunday (local time) that Korea will help countries reach an agreement on establishing a global financial safety net at the next Group of 20 Summit, slated for November in Seoul, to prevent the recurrence of a global financial crisis.
Korea will also host a meeting of 100 CEOs from globally renowned companies ahead of the G-20 Summit to discuss ways to boost private investment and the issues of global trade, investment and corporate responsibility.
Lee made the pledges in his closing remarks at the final session of the two-day Toronto summit.
The initiatives are in line with Korea's efforts to represent the voices of emerging and poorer nations on the global stage so that countries, rich or poor, can work together under a shared goal of achieving sustainable, balanced long-term growth, according to Seoul officials.
"Representing the voices of emerging countries" used to be China's self-assigned role.
Beyond the ROK-USA strategic romance, Beijing probably noticed that one other country that has yet to endorse the Cheonan report was not accused of "wilfull blindness": Russia.
That would lead one to believe that Russian President Medvedev had--upon the conclusion of a successful US visit during which he became "the first iPhone 4 owner in Russia" and President Obama was apparently unfazed by the uncovering of a large Russian spy ring operating within the United States--either signed on to the US position, or the Obama administration was staking out its Cheonan stance pre-emptively, expecting that Russia would decide to line up with the United States in order to avoid endangering the reset.
People's Daily English edition promptly ran a Global Times editorial pointedly titled "Blindness to China's efforts on the Peninsula ".
"Blindness". Get it?
It went on to say:
US President Barack Obama groundlessly blamed China for "blindness" to North Korea's "belligerent behavior" in an alleged attack on the South Korean navel vessel the Cheonan while speaking at the G20 summit Monday.
His words on such an important occasion, based on ignorance of China's consistent and difficult efforts in pushing for peace on the peninsula, has come as a shock to China and the world at large.
As a close neighbor of North Korea, China and its people have immediate and vital stakes in peace and stability on the peninsula. China's worries over the North Korean nuclear issue are by no means less than those of the US.
The US president should have taken these into consideration before making irresponsible and flippant remarks about China's role in the region.
Characterizing the US president as "irresponsible and flippant" is a convenient indicator that US-China relations are headed for the meat locker.
Another indication is the Chinese announcement that it will conduct live fire naval exercises as a riposte to the US-ROK joint exercises scheduled June 30 to July 5, which may or may not include a US aircraft carrier sailing around the Yellow Sea between the Korean peninsula and the Chinese mainland.
I came across another interesting and possibly telling news item relevant to the widening US-China rift.
I hazard most people don't get around to reading the Nepali press, but the news outlet Republica had an fascinating and carefully reported article by Kosh Raj Koirala entitled
Squeezed between China and West over Tibet
KATHMANDU, June 28: Department of Immigration (DoI) sent nine Tibetans to jail on April 30 after they refused to pay fines for illegally entering Nepal. The detention evoked so much diplomatic pressure from Western countries, mainly the US, that the Tibetans were released after five days in jail.
The pressure was so intense that officials at the Nepali embassy in Washington DC had to call up the Immigration Office in Nepal, asking it to release the arrested.
Following the release, Nepali immigration authorities have not detained any more Tibetans though there is a sustained flow of Tibetans to Kathmandu. DoI these days quietly hands over Tibetans illegally coming to Nepal to UNHCR-Nepal [UN High Commissioner for Refugees] without taking legal action as it used to in recent years.
...
Officials in Nepal fear that there could be a well-coordinated organization involved in bringing Tibetans illegally to Nepal and later sending them to Dharamshala, India and to Western countries through the help of UNHCR.
According to Koirala, it appears that the Tibetan Reception Center, which works with the UNHCR, is paying a bounty of Rs25,000 (about US$350) to policemen to bring Tibetans who have entered Nepal illegaly to the UNHCR-Nepal for eventual patriation to Dharmsala and the West, instead of turning them over to the Department of Immigration.
Interestingly, the DoI was not apparently planning to repatriate the Tibetans to China (although there had been rumblings of a China-friendly policy of shipping Tibetans back to the TAR); they simply wanted to fine them, and the Tibetans went to jail only because they refused to pay the fine.
Sordid commerce is apparently a factor in these escapes:
...arrested Tibetans said, during interrogations, that brokers brought them to Nepal with promises to take them to Western countries where they could lead comfortable lives. Those arrested even disclosed that they each paid Chinese Yuan 15,000 to 17,000 [US$2300 or so] to brokers.
So it's interesting that the UN is apparently helping Tibetan refugees to evade Nepalese jurisdiction. Nepal is under intense pressure from China to keep a lid on the flow and activities of Tibetans, so maybe UNHCR is just going the extra mile to shield Tibetans under new circumstances.
However, what's really interesting was the concerted pressure from the US and the Western countries to make sure that this dubious arrangement is sustained, even to the point of demanding the release of some guys who were apparently in jail just because they refused to pay a fine.
Tibet is a core interest of China. Reaffirmation of the one-China policy (including Chinese sovereignty over Tibet) was supposed to be the key concession granted by the US in the laborious negotiations with China over participation in the UN Iran sanctions discussions.
I guess the Chinese are finding out they should have read the fine print, and "acknowleding PRC sovereignty over Tibet" does not preclude "promoting the establishment of protected emigration routes to offshore havens for potentially anti-PRC Tibetans".
Speaking of U.S.-China deals that aren't turning out the way Beijing prefers, I have an article up at Asia Times entitled China in US sanctions cross-hairs (my suggested title, Stuart Levey, father of the North Korean atomic bomb, is back, did not make the cut).
It makes the case that the Obama administration has done a much better job than the Bush administration in laying a solid legal and diplomatic foundation for using US national Iran sanctions to pressure China on energy-related business in Iran and, for that matter, what else it wants to (like North Korea, RMB revaluation, etc.) and China may find that the US may be preparing to honor the imputed "We'll support UN sanctions if you won't pursue national sanctions against us" deal in the breach, as it were.
What interests me as that, as far as I can see, the Obama administration policy toward China is all sticks no carrots. The consequences of crossing the United States are meant to be dire, but I haven't seen any significant proffered benefits to China for toeing the U.S. line, other than the intangible ones--like not having President Obama insult your President at high profile international forums.
It will be interesting to watch this play out, especially in the run-up to the 2010 US congressional elections.
This looks like a calculated slap in the face:
The US president has accused China of "wilful blindness" in remaining silent over North Korea's suspected sinking of a South Korean warship in March.
Barack Obama said he hoped that Hu Jintao, his Chinese counterpart, would recognise that North Korea crossed a line in the sinking of the Cheonan warship, which killed 46 South Korean sailors.
...
He said he understood that North Korea and China were neighbours, "there's a difference between restraint and wilful blindness to consistent problems".
Obama held talks with Hu on the sidelines of the summit and said he had been "blunt" with him on the issue of North Korea.
"My hope is that President Hu will recognise as well that this is an example of Pyongyang going over the line," he said.
...
China, which is Pyongyang's main international ally, has so far remained non-committal on the issue, prompting Obama to say that shying away from the harsh facts about North Korea's behaviour was "a bad habit we need to break".
Obama said he wanted the UN Security Council to produce a "crystal-clear acknowledgment" of the North's alleged action, which would require the co-operation of veto-wielding member China.
...
Obama, who met Lee Myung-Bak, the South Korean president, on the sidelines of the G20 summit, said it was "absolutely critical that the international community rally behind him and send a clear message to North Korea that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable".
It looks like President Obama has decisively put his eggs in the ROK basket, backing South Korean president Lee Myung-bak on the Cheonan sinking, putting aside his previous doubts about the KORUS FTA (US-South Korea Free Trade Agreement) to push for its ratification, and encouraging South Korea's ambitions to upgrade its regional profile to what looks like parity or more with the PRC.
I was struck with Korea Times' coverage of President Lee's remarks at the Toronto summit:
South Korea to represent voices of emerging countries at Seoul summit
TORONTO ― President Lee Myung-bak said Sunday (local time) that Korea will help countries reach an agreement on establishing a global financial safety net at the next Group of 20 Summit, slated for November in Seoul, to prevent the recurrence of a global financial crisis.
Korea will also host a meeting of 100 CEOs from globally renowned companies ahead of the G-20 Summit to discuss ways to boost private investment and the issues of global trade, investment and corporate responsibility.
Lee made the pledges in his closing remarks at the final session of the two-day Toronto summit.
The initiatives are in line with Korea's efforts to represent the voices of emerging and poorer nations on the global stage so that countries, rich or poor, can work together under a shared goal of achieving sustainable, balanced long-term growth, according to Seoul officials.
"Representing the voices of emerging countries" used to be China's self-assigned role.
Beyond the ROK-USA strategic romance, Beijing probably noticed that one other country that has yet to endorse the Cheonan report was not accused of "wilfull blindness": Russia.
That would lead one to believe that Russian President Medvedev had--upon the conclusion of a successful US visit during which he became "the first iPhone 4 owner in Russia" and President Obama was apparently unfazed by the uncovering of a large Russian spy ring operating within the United States--either signed on to the US position, or the Obama administration was staking out its Cheonan stance pre-emptively, expecting that Russia would decide to line up with the United States in order to avoid endangering the reset.
People's Daily English edition promptly ran a Global Times editorial pointedly titled "Blindness to China's efforts on the Peninsula ".
"Blindness". Get it?
It went on to say:
US President Barack Obama groundlessly blamed China for "blindness" to North Korea's "belligerent behavior" in an alleged attack on the South Korean navel vessel the Cheonan while speaking at the G20 summit Monday.
His words on such an important occasion, based on ignorance of China's consistent and difficult efforts in pushing for peace on the peninsula, has come as a shock to China and the world at large.
As a close neighbor of North Korea, China and its people have immediate and vital stakes in peace and stability on the peninsula. China's worries over the North Korean nuclear issue are by no means less than those of the US.
The US president should have taken these into consideration before making irresponsible and flippant remarks about China's role in the region.
Characterizing the US president as "irresponsible and flippant" is a convenient indicator that US-China relations are headed for the meat locker.
Another indication is the Chinese announcement that it will conduct live fire naval exercises as a riposte to the US-ROK joint exercises scheduled June 30 to July 5, which may or may not include a US aircraft carrier sailing around the Yellow Sea between the Korean peninsula and the Chinese mainland.
I came across another interesting and possibly telling news item relevant to the widening US-China rift.
I hazard most people don't get around to reading the Nepali press, but the news outlet Republica had an fascinating and carefully reported article by Kosh Raj Koirala entitled
Squeezed between China and West over Tibet
KATHMANDU, June 28: Department of Immigration (DoI) sent nine Tibetans to jail on April 30 after they refused to pay fines for illegally entering Nepal. The detention evoked so much diplomatic pressure from Western countries, mainly the US, that the Tibetans were released after five days in jail.
The pressure was so intense that officials at the Nepali embassy in Washington DC had to call up the Immigration Office in Nepal, asking it to release the arrested.
Following the release, Nepali immigration authorities have not detained any more Tibetans though there is a sustained flow of Tibetans to Kathmandu. DoI these days quietly hands over Tibetans illegally coming to Nepal to UNHCR-Nepal [UN High Commissioner for Refugees] without taking legal action as it used to in recent years.
...
Officials in Nepal fear that there could be a well-coordinated organization involved in bringing Tibetans illegally to Nepal and later sending them to Dharamshala, India and to Western countries through the help of UNHCR.
According to Koirala, it appears that the Tibetan Reception Center, which works with the UNHCR, is paying a bounty of Rs25,000 (about US$350) to policemen to bring Tibetans who have entered Nepal illegaly to the UNHCR-Nepal for eventual patriation to Dharmsala and the West, instead of turning them over to the Department of Immigration.
Interestingly, the DoI was not apparently planning to repatriate the Tibetans to China (although there had been rumblings of a China-friendly policy of shipping Tibetans back to the TAR); they simply wanted to fine them, and the Tibetans went to jail only because they refused to pay the fine.
Sordid commerce is apparently a factor in these escapes:
...arrested Tibetans said, during interrogations, that brokers brought them to Nepal with promises to take them to Western countries where they could lead comfortable lives. Those arrested even disclosed that they each paid Chinese Yuan 15,000 to 17,000 [US$2300 or so] to brokers.
So it's interesting that the UN is apparently helping Tibetan refugees to evade Nepalese jurisdiction. Nepal is under intense pressure from China to keep a lid on the flow and activities of Tibetans, so maybe UNHCR is just going the extra mile to shield Tibetans under new circumstances.
However, what's really interesting was the concerted pressure from the US and the Western countries to make sure that this dubious arrangement is sustained, even to the point of demanding the release of some guys who were apparently in jail just because they refused to pay a fine.
Tibet is a core interest of China. Reaffirmation of the one-China policy (including Chinese sovereignty over Tibet) was supposed to be the key concession granted by the US in the laborious negotiations with China over participation in the UN Iran sanctions discussions.
I guess the Chinese are finding out they should have read the fine print, and "acknowleding PRC sovereignty over Tibet" does not preclude "promoting the establishment of protected emigration routes to offshore havens for potentially anti-PRC Tibetans".
Speaking of U.S.-China deals that aren't turning out the way Beijing prefers, I have an article up at Asia Times entitled China in US sanctions cross-hairs (my suggested title, Stuart Levey, father of the North Korean atomic bomb, is back, did not make the cut).
It makes the case that the Obama administration has done a much better job than the Bush administration in laying a solid legal and diplomatic foundation for using US national Iran sanctions to pressure China on energy-related business in Iran and, for that matter, what else it wants to (like North Korea, RMB revaluation, etc.) and China may find that the US may be preparing to honor the imputed "We'll support UN sanctions if you won't pursue national sanctions against us" deal in the breach, as it were.
What interests me as that, as far as I can see, the Obama administration policy toward China is all sticks no carrots. The consequences of crossing the United States are meant to be dire, but I haven't seen any significant proffered benefits to China for toeing the U.S. line, other than the intangible ones--like not having President Obama insult your President at high profile international forums.
It will be interesting to watch this play out, especially in the run-up to the 2010 US congressional elections.
Friday, June 11, 2010
South Korean Clown College Now In Session on Cheonan Sinking
Pathetic.
That's the only word to describe the Board of Audit report on the Cheonan sinking response.
From Korea Times:
State auditors Friday accused Gen. Lee Sang-eui, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), of being absent from the defense ministry's main command and control center on the night of March 26 when a South Korean Navy ship sank in the West Sea.
The JCS chief is also suspected of pretending that he was present at the control center throughout the night using a falsified document, according to officials at the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI).
...
On Thursday, the BAI recommended the Ministry of National Defense punish 25 ranking military personnel, including Gen. Lee, for mishandling the North's attack on the Cheonan.
Lee slept at his office while under the influence of alcohol before showing up at the control center at 5 a.m. the next day, a BAI official said.
On March 26, Lee allegedly drank several shots of whiskey at a dinner with some 30 military officers in Daejeon, after holding a meeting with them on military preparedness.
Lee arrived at the headquarters of the Ministry of National Defense in Seoul, about one and a half hours after the incident was reported, the auditor said.
From Chosun Ilbo:
Watchdog Sees No Merit in 'Flock of Birds' Story
The Board of Audit and Inspection on Thursday said there is no very good reason to believe that the Sokcho, the nearest warship to the scene of the sinking of the ill-fated corvette Cheonan, fired at a flock of birds rather than a submarine on the day the Cheonan sank in the West Sea.
The military said the Sokcho had initially thought its target was a North Korean submarine fleeing after attacking the Cheonan and fired 135 shots with 76-mm cannon. However, the military claimed close investigation of the radar tracking device revealed that the shape sailors saw was a flock of birds.
The BAI's assessment is apparently based on testimony of sailors that the Second Naval Command ordered them to change their stories. The Sokcho initially reported to the Second Naval Command that sailors saw what appeared to be a new type of North Korean submarine, but the command ordered officers to change their testimony to a flock of birds in a briefing to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on March 27.
The BAI pointed out that military regulations ban speculation, addition or omission in initial reports to higher authorities. "Even during the audit, officers on the Sokcho did not change their opinion that it was a submarine and insisted that the radar tracking device did not show the image that could seen as a flock of birds," a BAI official said. "It is hard to understand how the change was made in reporting procedure."
He added the board believes the command acted out of fear of punishment over failing to take proper action in the initial stages after the sinking.
I'm not saying the South Korean response was pathetic.
I think the audit is pathetic.
I'm willing to believe that a North Korean mini-sub shadowed by a full-sized sub sank the Cheonan, even though the attack occurred against a modern ASW corvette, allegedly offshore of a joint U.S.-ROK ASW base, in waters with currents so violent that half of the Cheonan wreck was swept almost four miles away before it hit the bottom.
I'm also willing to believe that the South Korean military had a less-than-slam-dunk evidentiary case, and wouldn't be above using what bent cops in the U.S. call a "throwdown piece"--pitching a North Korean torpedo screw in the ocean to put the onus on the NORKs.
I do not believe that, in the aftermath of the sinking of an ROK naval vessel that claimed 46 lives, the Second Naval Command would suppress the story that its ship had alertly shelled a retreating submarine and instead lie to their Joint Chiefs of Staff that they idiotically fired on a flock of birds.
The audit looks more like an effort to plug some embarrassing holes in the official narrative and provide some pre-emptive sunshine inoculation to some questionable actions--including the ROK military's apparently serial enthusiasm for falsifying crucial records.
Add to chain-of-custody issues rumors that the survivors of the Cheonan have been sequestered to keep them from talking to the press, and the fact that the fuel is continually added to "friendly fire" allegation by shifting stories on the status of the Foal Eagle joint US-ROK military exercise (I believe the most recent reports have operations going on 75 miles away--just over the horizon, darn it!-- on the night of the incident), the South Koreans do not have a particularly sweet-smelling dossier to hand over the UN Security Council.
I wonder if the ROK report on the Cheonan would stand up to intense, critical scrutiny--of the kind that Israel's assault on the Mavi Marmara would receive--at the UN Security Council.
Maybe that's why South Korea isn't asking for censure or condemnation and may just settle for a grumpy letter from the president of the UNSC--their case is far from airtight.
But it's easier to blame the Chinese for shielding North Korea at the UNSC.
Pathetic.
That's the only word to describe the Board of Audit report on the Cheonan sinking response.
From Korea Times:
State auditors Friday accused Gen. Lee Sang-eui, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), of being absent from the defense ministry's main command and control center on the night of March 26 when a South Korean Navy ship sank in the West Sea.
The JCS chief is also suspected of pretending that he was present at the control center throughout the night using a falsified document, according to officials at the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI).
...
On Thursday, the BAI recommended the Ministry of National Defense punish 25 ranking military personnel, including Gen. Lee, for mishandling the North's attack on the Cheonan.
Lee slept at his office while under the influence of alcohol before showing up at the control center at 5 a.m. the next day, a BAI official said.
On March 26, Lee allegedly drank several shots of whiskey at a dinner with some 30 military officers in Daejeon, after holding a meeting with them on military preparedness.
Lee arrived at the headquarters of the Ministry of National Defense in Seoul, about one and a half hours after the incident was reported, the auditor said.
From Chosun Ilbo:
Watchdog Sees No Merit in 'Flock of Birds' Story
The Board of Audit and Inspection on Thursday said there is no very good reason to believe that the Sokcho, the nearest warship to the scene of the sinking of the ill-fated corvette Cheonan, fired at a flock of birds rather than a submarine on the day the Cheonan sank in the West Sea.
The military said the Sokcho had initially thought its target was a North Korean submarine fleeing after attacking the Cheonan and fired 135 shots with 76-mm cannon. However, the military claimed close investigation of the radar tracking device revealed that the shape sailors saw was a flock of birds.
The BAI's assessment is apparently based on testimony of sailors that the Second Naval Command ordered them to change their stories. The Sokcho initially reported to the Second Naval Command that sailors saw what appeared to be a new type of North Korean submarine, but the command ordered officers to change their testimony to a flock of birds in a briefing to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on March 27.
The BAI pointed out that military regulations ban speculation, addition or omission in initial reports to higher authorities. "Even during the audit, officers on the Sokcho did not change their opinion that it was a submarine and insisted that the radar tracking device did not show the image that could seen as a flock of birds," a BAI official said. "It is hard to understand how the change was made in reporting procedure."
He added the board believes the command acted out of fear of punishment over failing to take proper action in the initial stages after the sinking.
I'm not saying the South Korean response was pathetic.
I think the audit is pathetic.
I'm willing to believe that a North Korean mini-sub shadowed by a full-sized sub sank the Cheonan, even though the attack occurred against a modern ASW corvette, allegedly offshore of a joint U.S.-ROK ASW base, in waters with currents so violent that half of the Cheonan wreck was swept almost four miles away before it hit the bottom.
I'm also willing to believe that the South Korean military had a less-than-slam-dunk evidentiary case, and wouldn't be above using what bent cops in the U.S. call a "throwdown piece"--pitching a North Korean torpedo screw in the ocean to put the onus on the NORKs.
I do not believe that, in the aftermath of the sinking of an ROK naval vessel that claimed 46 lives, the Second Naval Command would suppress the story that its ship had alertly shelled a retreating submarine and instead lie to their Joint Chiefs of Staff that they idiotically fired on a flock of birds.
The audit looks more like an effort to plug some embarrassing holes in the official narrative and provide some pre-emptive sunshine inoculation to some questionable actions--including the ROK military's apparently serial enthusiasm for falsifying crucial records.
Add to chain-of-custody issues rumors that the survivors of the Cheonan have been sequestered to keep them from talking to the press, and the fact that the fuel is continually added to "friendly fire" allegation by shifting stories on the status of the Foal Eagle joint US-ROK military exercise (I believe the most recent reports have operations going on 75 miles away--just over the horizon, darn it!-- on the night of the incident), the South Koreans do not have a particularly sweet-smelling dossier to hand over the UN Security Council.
I wonder if the ROK report on the Cheonan would stand up to intense, critical scrutiny--of the kind that Israel's assault on the Mavi Marmara would receive--at the UN Security Council.
Maybe that's why South Korea isn't asking for censure or condemnation and may just settle for a grumpy letter from the president of the UNSC--their case is far from airtight.
But it's easier to blame the Chinese for shielding North Korea at the UNSC.
Pathetic.
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
The Cheonan Sinking and President Lee Myung-bak's China Agenda
I have a post up at Asia Times on South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's efforts to exploit the geopolitical potential of the Cheonan sinking.
It's called "The Cheonan Sinking...and Korea Rising".
President Lee has grand plans for South Korea, as indicated by a January 2010 Newsweek piece entitled, Lee Myung-bak wants to move his country to the center of the world.
This piece, which lists no author, is a gold mine of tin-eared PR flummery.
Lee is one of only two former CEOs to lead a major trading power—Italy's Silvio Berlusconi is the other—and he runs South Korea like the just-do-it boss he was at Hyundai, where staff called him "the Bulldozer." At Hyundai he led a company known for fearless forays into foreign markets...
I'm afraid that neither the interests of journalism nor propaganda are served by comparing one's subject to Silvio Berlusconi in the same sentence.
The mind is immediately overwhelmed by the Mussolini-meets-Tiberius-as-envisaged-by-Fellini image of Italy's pocket dictator, thereby undercutting any appreciation of Lee's bold and visionary free-market savvy.
I also tended to dismiss the claim that South Korea--which I perceive as largely a Japan Inc. clone with powerful, export-driven industrial groupings feasting on preferential access to credit and political influence--is perceived as "a dynamic alternative to both China's mighty command economy and Japan's no growth economy".
As to
South Korea, says U.S. Ambassador Kathleen Stephens, is "the best example in the post–World War II era of a country that has overcome enormous obstacles to achieve this kind of success."
Better than Germany? Japan? The Czech Republic? Singapore? Taiwan?
I was so unsure of the piece's provenance--was it an unidentified entry in an ROK advertising supplement, I wondered?--that I didn't use it as a source.
However, what I did use as a source was an April 12 interview with Lee Myung-bak by Fred Hiatt, jefe of Newsweek's parent company, the Washington Post.
The Newsweek article (or the supportive editorial attitude behind it) may well have been an enabling factor for the boon of the lengthy, exclusive interview, a softball-fest that enabled President Lee to make the same case in the article, together with some remarkably pointed swipes at China.
The interesting points are Lee Myung-bak's eagerness to raise the ROK's profile as a world power, and present his country as the politically and economically vigorous successor to sclerotic Japan as America's go-to guy in North Asia and counterweight to the PRC.
I analyze the South Korean response to the Cheonan sinking in this context.
President Lee clearly hopes to use the sinking as a 9/11-type event to galvanize support for himself, his party, and his worldview: confrontation with North Korea, partnership with the United States, and distancing from China.
Lee's outreach to the West--represented both by the composition of the international investigative team, which excluded China and Russia, and the desire to take this matter to the UN Security Council instead of mediation through the auspices of the Six Party Talks anchored by China--was undoubtedly noticed by Beijing...
...as was South Korea's push to use the incident as justification for fattening the South Korean defense budget.
However, because of the immense economic ties between the ROK and the PRC, both President Lee and China have taken pains to avoid overt friction over the issue.
What makes this interesting to me is the reunification angle.
The Kim regime has been around in Pyongyang for so long that, in the United States, the potential demise of the DPRK is little more than an interesting abstraction.
But as China and the ROK become more and more prosperous, the burden of succoring the North's twenty-three-million or so impoverished inhabitants looks less and less onerous.
As the Chinese and South Korean economies mature, the untapped potential of North Korea's population and resources look more and more attractive...
...and the interests and potential opposition of Kim Jung Il's isolated regime, bomb or no bomb, look less and less consequential.
Korea reunited and politically and militarily integrated under the leadership of Seoul would be a genuine alternative to Japan as a powerful U.S. ally and give China a lot to think about.
So I look at President Lee's moves on the Cheonan in the context of a reunification endgame that might begin sooner rather than later.
I speculate that South Korea would want to put North Korea into some kind of political receivership under UN auspices as a prelude to complete integration into the current ROK political structure
This would fit with President Lee's desire to place North Korea--and not just its nuclear and proliferation-related activities--on the Security Council agenda.
China clearly prefers continued regional muddling through the Six Party Talks and might still hope for the emergence of a authoritarian, economically more liberal, but politically independent successor regime in Pyongyang.
But I think that China recognizes that the post-Kim leadership cadre in Pyongyang is a discounted and wasting asset and Beijing would probably pay an an unacceptable political price by openly obstructing Korean reunification.
China's leadership may be starting to think about how it might have to coexist with a pro-US economic powerhouse of 65 million people literally at its doorstep.
It's called "The Cheonan Sinking...and Korea Rising".
President Lee has grand plans for South Korea, as indicated by a January 2010 Newsweek piece entitled, Lee Myung-bak wants to move his country to the center of the world.
This piece, which lists no author, is a gold mine of tin-eared PR flummery.
Lee is one of only two former CEOs to lead a major trading power—Italy's Silvio Berlusconi is the other—and he runs South Korea like the just-do-it boss he was at Hyundai, where staff called him "the Bulldozer." At Hyundai he led a company known for fearless forays into foreign markets...
I'm afraid that neither the interests of journalism nor propaganda are served by comparing one's subject to Silvio Berlusconi in the same sentence.
The mind is immediately overwhelmed by the Mussolini-meets-Tiberius-as-envisaged-by-Fellini image of Italy's pocket dictator, thereby undercutting any appreciation of Lee's bold and visionary free-market savvy.
I also tended to dismiss the claim that South Korea--which I perceive as largely a Japan Inc. clone with powerful, export-driven industrial groupings feasting on preferential access to credit and political influence--is perceived as "a dynamic alternative to both China's mighty command economy and Japan's no growth economy".
As to
South Korea, says U.S. Ambassador Kathleen Stephens, is "the best example in the post–World War II era of a country that has overcome enormous obstacles to achieve this kind of success."
Better than Germany? Japan? The Czech Republic? Singapore? Taiwan?
I was so unsure of the piece's provenance--was it an unidentified entry in an ROK advertising supplement, I wondered?--that I didn't use it as a source.
However, what I did use as a source was an April 12 interview with Lee Myung-bak by Fred Hiatt, jefe of Newsweek's parent company, the Washington Post.
The Newsweek article (or the supportive editorial attitude behind it) may well have been an enabling factor for the boon of the lengthy, exclusive interview, a softball-fest that enabled President Lee to make the same case in the article, together with some remarkably pointed swipes at China.
The interesting points are Lee Myung-bak's eagerness to raise the ROK's profile as a world power, and present his country as the politically and economically vigorous successor to sclerotic Japan as America's go-to guy in North Asia and counterweight to the PRC.
I analyze the South Korean response to the Cheonan sinking in this context.
President Lee clearly hopes to use the sinking as a 9/11-type event to galvanize support for himself, his party, and his worldview: confrontation with North Korea, partnership with the United States, and distancing from China.
Lee's outreach to the West--represented both by the composition of the international investigative team, which excluded China and Russia, and the desire to take this matter to the UN Security Council instead of mediation through the auspices of the Six Party Talks anchored by China--was undoubtedly noticed by Beijing...
...as was South Korea's push to use the incident as justification for fattening the South Korean defense budget.
However, because of the immense economic ties between the ROK and the PRC, both President Lee and China have taken pains to avoid overt friction over the issue.
What makes this interesting to me is the reunification angle.
The Kim regime has been around in Pyongyang for so long that, in the United States, the potential demise of the DPRK is little more than an interesting abstraction.
But as China and the ROK become more and more prosperous, the burden of succoring the North's twenty-three-million or so impoverished inhabitants looks less and less onerous.
As the Chinese and South Korean economies mature, the untapped potential of North Korea's population and resources look more and more attractive...
...and the interests and potential opposition of Kim Jung Il's isolated regime, bomb or no bomb, look less and less consequential.
Korea reunited and politically and militarily integrated under the leadership of Seoul would be a genuine alternative to Japan as a powerful U.S. ally and give China a lot to think about.
So I look at President Lee's moves on the Cheonan in the context of a reunification endgame that might begin sooner rather than later.
I speculate that South Korea would want to put North Korea into some kind of political receivership under UN auspices as a prelude to complete integration into the current ROK political structure
This would fit with President Lee's desire to place North Korea--and not just its nuclear and proliferation-related activities--on the Security Council agenda.
China clearly prefers continued regional muddling through the Six Party Talks and might still hope for the emergence of a authoritarian, economically more liberal, but politically independent successor regime in Pyongyang.
But I think that China recognizes that the post-Kim leadership cadre in Pyongyang is a discounted and wasting asset and Beijing would probably pay an an unacceptable political price by openly obstructing Korean reunification.
China's leadership may be starting to think about how it might have to coexist with a pro-US economic powerhouse of 65 million people literally at its doorstep.
Friday, May 21, 2010
The Sinking of the Cheonan and the Mystery of Buoy 3
If the Cheonan sinking turns out to be South Korea's Kennedy assassination, maybe Buoy 3 will be the conspiracy theorists' grassy knoll.
Asia Focus has an article up by a citizen journalist, Tanaka Sakai, entitled, Who Sank the South Korean Warship Cheonan? A New Stage in the US-Korean War and US-China Relations.
Tanaka notes a lot of mysterious salvage activity at Buoy 3, a third location near Baengnyeong Island (the bow and stern of the Cheonan sunk at the Buoy 1 and Buoy 2 locations, 6.8 km apart and 1.8 km and 6.4 km, respectively from Buoy 3).
Warrant Officer Han Joo-ho perished after a dive at Buoy 3. His memorial service was held at Buoy 3, and Tanaka speculates that he died in a mission to rescue the crew of an American submarine after a friendly-fire Mexican standoff.
It is difficult to tell where investigative reporting ends and the desire to avoid empowering the conservative ROK government with a 9/11-type narrative begins.
In any case, there seems to be enough ambiguity to keep the Cheonan pot boiling for a long, long time.
Asia Focus has an article up by a citizen journalist, Tanaka Sakai, entitled, Who Sank the South Korean Warship Cheonan? A New Stage in the US-Korean War and US-China Relations.
Tanaka notes a lot of mysterious salvage activity at Buoy 3, a third location near Baengnyeong Island (the bow and stern of the Cheonan sunk at the Buoy 1 and Buoy 2 locations, 6.8 km apart and 1.8 km and 6.4 km, respectively from Buoy 3).
Warrant Officer Han Joo-ho perished after a dive at Buoy 3. His memorial service was held at Buoy 3, and Tanaka speculates that he died in a mission to rescue the crew of an American submarine after a friendly-fire Mexican standoff.
It is difficult to tell where investigative reporting ends and the desire to avoid empowering the conservative ROK government with a 9/11-type narrative begins.
In any case, there seems to be enough ambiguity to keep the Cheonan pot boiling for a long, long time.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Pyongyang Pushes Back on Cheonan Sinking Story
Several people have pointed out that the Foal Eagle exercise officially ended March 18, well before the Cheonan sinking on March 26.
Not so.
According to the U.S.F.K. spokesman as reported by the Korea Times:
The "official" is a Pentagon official who was talking to Navy Times but "asked not to be identified because of the delicacy of the situation involving North and South Korea".
Maybe some reporting glitches here, but Foal Eagle was still going on with the participation of three Aegis-class destroyers. The Navy Times article does confirm that the U.S. ships were not at their base in Japan and, with the phrase "already at sea", welcomes the reader to draw the inference that the ships were not in the area when the Cheonan sunk. It will be interesting if the report on the sinking describes the location of friendlies at the time of the incident. (CH, 5/9/09)
Asia Times published an article, Pyongyang sees US role in Cheonan sinking, by Kim Myong Chol, identified as "often called an "unofficial" spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North Korea."
He asserts that North Korea had nothing to do with the March 26 sinking of the South Korean frigate Cheonan off the west coast of the Korean peninsula and on the South Korean side of the NLL (Northern Limit Line), the de facto and frequently disputed maritime border between the two antagonists.
Kim makes the interesting point that the Cheonan was engaged in an annual joint US/ROK military exercise known as Foal Eagle 2010 and several Aegis destroyers were in the area. Presumably all this high-tech military hardware would be able to detect the presence of a North Korean intruder.
He also raises the possibility of the Cheonan being done in by friendly fire.
It's reported that the Cheonan's sister ship, the Sokcho, was also in the area and marked the incident by firing wildly toward North Korean territory at a flock of birds on its radar instead of steaming to the Cheonan's rescue.
So shaky fire discipline by the Cheonan's own team during a complicated multi-vessel exercise near hostile territory looks like a potential hazard/explanation.
With this context, conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this paragraph from the Korea Times on May 7:
The multinational investigation team is also closely looking into the possibility that a North Korean submarine fired a German-made torpedo used both by South Korean and American navies in an attempt to dodge its responsibility.
The report of the team is supposed to be out around May 20.
H/T to DJ for the tip.
Not so.
According to the U.S.F.K. spokesman as reported by the Korea Times:
Navy Times, also not known as a Nork mouthpiece, reported the incident thusly:
A U.S. Navy group of four ships― three warships and one salvage vessel ― have joined South Korea's rescue and recovery operations for its sunken frigate, the Cheonan.
...
Kim Yong-kyu, spokesman for the U.S. Forces in Korea (USFK), provided information on the U.S. Navy's participation in operation.
The spokesman said its participation was made at the request of South Korean authorities.
The four U.S. ships belong to the U.S. 7th Fleet, based just south of Tokyo.
"They were participating in Key Resolve/Foal Eagle Exercise, a joint Korea-U.S. military drill which will continue until the end of April," the spokesman added.
The Japan-based cruiser Shiloh, destroyers Curtis Wilbur and Lassen and the salvage ship Salvor — carrying a team from Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 1 — were ordered to help with the search after the South Korean government asked the U.S. for help, a Pentagon official told Navy Times.
...
The U.S. ships were already at sea when the South Korean patrol ship Cheonan sank on Friday as part of the international exercise Foal Eagle, the official said. The cause of the sinking is still not clear.
The "official" is a Pentagon official who was talking to Navy Times but "asked not to be identified because of the delicacy of the situation involving North and South Korea".
Maybe some reporting glitches here, but Foal Eagle was still going on with the participation of three Aegis-class destroyers. The Navy Times article does confirm that the U.S. ships were not at their base in Japan and, with the phrase "already at sea", welcomes the reader to draw the inference that the ships were not in the area when the Cheonan sunk. It will be interesting if the report on the sinking describes the location of friendlies at the time of the incident. (CH, 5/9/09)
Asia Times published an article, Pyongyang sees US role in Cheonan sinking, by Kim Myong Chol, identified as "often called an "unofficial" spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North Korea."
He asserts that North Korea had nothing to do with the March 26 sinking of the South Korean frigate Cheonan off the west coast of the Korean peninsula and on the South Korean side of the NLL (Northern Limit Line), the de facto and frequently disputed maritime border between the two antagonists.
Kim makes the interesting point that the Cheonan was engaged in an annual joint US/ROK military exercise known as Foal Eagle 2010 and several Aegis destroyers were in the area. Presumably all this high-tech military hardware would be able to detect the presence of a North Korean intruder.
He also raises the possibility of the Cheonan being done in by friendly fire.
It's reported that the Cheonan's sister ship, the Sokcho, was also in the area and marked the incident by firing wildly toward North Korean territory at a flock of birds on its radar instead of steaming to the Cheonan's rescue.
So shaky fire discipline by the Cheonan's own team during a complicated multi-vessel exercise near hostile territory looks like a potential hazard/explanation.
With this context, conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this paragraph from the Korea Times on May 7:
The multinational investigation team is also closely looking into the possibility that a North Korean submarine fired a German-made torpedo used both by South Korean and American navies in an attempt to dodge its responsibility.
The report of the team is supposed to be out around May 20.
H/T to DJ for the tip.
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