Recalculating the North Korea Equation

One byproduct of tensions with the People’s Republic of China over the South China Sea (to be followed, shortly, I believe by tensions over the friction between the PRC and Taiwan ruled by the DPP) is the opportunity for the United States to abandon the useful but by now threadbare fiction that the massive U.S. military presence in East Asia is needed to protect the world from North Korea.

Rapprochement between the United States and North Korea is one of those things US strategists dream about, I expect: Burma style outreach extracting North Korea from China’s orbit and turning the PRC’s northeasterly neighbor into a US-friendly outpost and gadfly.

I’ll bet Kim Jung-un dreams about it as well.

North Korea has never been a PRC satellite.  It chafes under China’s thumb and yearns for an independent foreign policy, by which it can profitably play off the PRC against the ROK against Japan against the United States.

North Korean is in diplomatic contact with the United States through the DPRK’s UN mission, by exchange of delegations, and unpublicized US visits to North Korea on the issue of recovery of remains of American servicemen killed during the Korean War.

In order to demonstrate his willingness to go the extra mile in outreach to the United States as well as secure his rule, Kim Jung-un inaugurated his reign by executing the DPRK’s point man for PRC relations, Jang Sung-taek.  Kim was taking a leaf from the Burma rapprochement playbook; in Burma’s case it killed a dam, the Myitsone project funded by the PRC, in order to show it was ready to distance itself from the PRC for the sake of better relations with the US.

Jang’s demise apparently yielded little in the way of improved US-North Korean relations, so I have a picture of Kim drumming his fingers impatiently as he looks around the conference table saying, “Sheesh, who do I have to kill to get better relations with the US?” and everybody sliding nervously in their chairs and trying to avoid eye contact.

Kim’s ambitions are well-known to the PRC.  I wonder if it secretly exults every time North Korea detonates a nuclear device or fires off a missile in defiance of UN sanctions in a misguided effort to engage the US, since these provocations allow the PRC to present itself as an indispensable restraint to North Korean misbehavior and continue to imprison North Korea within the cage of the Six Party Talks, thereby pre-empting bilateral discussions between various interested parties and the DPRK.

It is now accepted writ that, whatever happens, North Korea will never surrender its nuclear weapons capability.  One reason is, of course, Libya.

As we note the fourth anniversary of the passing of Muammar Gaddafi, we should also remember the immense, expensive effort he made to satisfy US demands, not only on non-proliferation but on counter-proliferation of nukes and other WMDs.

Gaddafi revealed and decommissioned his nuclear and chemical WMD programs under international inspection, acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention, re-opened Libya’s oil industry to foreign investment, and ponied up over US$1 billion in compensation for the Lockerbie bombing (if, as some suspect, Iran engineered Lockerbie as retaliation for the U.S. shootdown of Iran Air 655, the mullahs of Tehran must be grateful indeed).  In return, Libya got normalized relations, a U.S. shield from terrorism lawsuits, visits from Condoleezza Rice and Tony Blair, and the pleasure of receiving, incarcerating, and abusing repatriated anti-Gaddafi dissidents.  The “Libya model” was actually touted as a precedent for bringing North Korea in from the cold.

Those expectations took a knock, understandably, when the US took advantage of the defenselessness of Qaddafi’s regime to overthrow it and murder him.

When one considers that President Obama got his Nobel Peace Prize for expected achievements in non-proliferation, the fact that he dropped the hammer on Libya, the most conspicuous example of peaceful integration of an adversarial state into the non-proliferation regime, and thereby virtually guaranteed the perpetuation and expansion of the North Korean program, is rather ironic.

The DPRK’s nuclear program is marketed as a deterrent to US regime-change fiddling and, indeed, US ambitions to overturn the North Korean regime are always burbling if not on the front burner.  From 2005 until 2007, US North Korean policy was handed over to regime-change enthusiasts of dubious competence under the leadership of John Bolton and Bob Joseph, and an ambitious plan to suffocate, destabilize, confront, and eventually topple the DPRK was derailed only by the conspicuous failure of the Iraq adventure and the thrashing of the GOP in the 2006 midterms.

My take on the situation is the US knows North Korea is panting for better relations with the United States but feels no hurry to make a move until Kim Jung-il does some more groveling on the nuclear issue—and sticks it to the PRC a lot more.

However, I think there’s a conundrum here for US strategists. 

Today, the most compelling strategic foundation for the DPRK nuclear weapons program—and one that receives virtually no play in the public media--is to deter the PRC.  The PRC has extensive interests and assets, economic, strategic, covert, what have you, inside North Korea, and undoubtedly has game plans to intervene militarily in North Korea in case of a succession crisis—or even before.  But then there’s Mr. Nuke.  So it’s not so surprising that the PRC publicly shares the US interest in DPRK denuclearization.  And it’s not so surprising that the DPRK nuclear program is not exactly withering away, despite the salutary effect this would have on Pyongyang-Washington ties.

The true significance of North Korea to its neighbors near and far, however, is not as a scary nuclear boogeyman; it is because North Korea is the last fat piece of meat on the East Asian economic table.

Cheap, tractable labor, abundant resources, a central position as a gateway to the Pacific for Russia and a trade artery for Japan and the West into the Manchu-Mongolian heartland…no wonder the Korean peninsula was the keystone for Japanese empire-building in the 20^th century.

Investment is poised to pour into North Korea from South Korea, the PRC, Russia, and Japan.  North Korea’s economic potential, not its nuclear program, is Kim Jung-il’s ultimate bargaining chip.  And the prospect of negotiating a gigantic payday on favorable terms is probably an important factor holding the DPRK elite together after the loss of Soviet support, the PRC tilt to the ROK, and virtually non-stop crotch-kicking administered by the US and Japan.

So when one examines the jockeying that goes on around North Korea, remember that managing—and profiting from—the integration of the Hermit Kingdom into the world economic system is at the back of everybody’s mind.

And we’re not talking about some “open door” kumbaya action where everybody works together to make sure North Korea, its resources, and its workers are efficiently exploited. 

The PRC, in particular, sees the competition to “win” North Korea as zero sum, because it does not want to see a pro-US/Japan-tilting regime on its border.

China’s grip on North Korea’s foreign policy has been strengthened, presumably inadvertently, by the US all-in commitment to Japan as the linchpin of the pivot to Asia.  South Korea is getting hammered by Abenomics, particularly the weakening of the yen, and gets little relief from the United States.

South Korea has pivoted –heh- towards China, to the chagrin of the United States, and for the time being sees its interests best served by tag-teaming with Beijing on DPRK policy.

And I think it’s also little understood that Japan, which is locked in its own zero-sum death match with South Korea, does not want to see North and South reunited and the North’s economic potential contributing to a supersized Korean republic whose economic and military vitality would quickly eclipse Japan’s.

This perspective helps explain this remarkable report torn, as they say, from today’s headlines:

Tokyo rejects Seoul’s sovereignty over North

Oct 22,2015

A top Japanese defense official rejected South Korea’s stance that North Korea is also its sovereign territory and that Tokyo would need Seoul’s consent to ever send troops to the northern parts of the Korean Peninsula.

Gen Nakatani, Japan’s defense minister, made the remark during a meeting with a group of Japanese reporters in Seoul on Tuesday following South Korea-Japan defense ministerial talks at Seoul’s Ministry of National Defense earlier in the day.
…
Article 3 of the South Korean Constitution states that the territory of the Republic of Korea “shall consist of the Korean Peninsula and its adjacent islands.”

Based on the constitution, South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense has maintained a position that Japan needs to obtain the South Korean government’s permission to deploy its troops anywhere on the Korean Peninsula. Japan recently revised its security laws to enable its Self-Defense Forces to participate in overseas missions, particularly if an ally such as the United States is attacked.

During the defense ministers’ talks on Tuesday, Han stressed that North Korea is legally the South’s territory under the constitution and that the Japanese Self-Defense Forces must obtain Seoul’s consent to enter the North in times of emergency, a senior Defense Ministry official said.

Nakatani, however, rejected the stance, saying, “Seoul, Washington and Tokyo must cooperate on this matter,” according to the official.

Following the talks, the two ministers issued a joint press statement.

“The Japanese Self-Defense Forces, when they operate within the territory of a third country, must obtain the concerned country’s consent under international laws,” the statement said.

It was the first time that a joint press statement was issued after Korea-Japan ministerial talks.

“A third country, in this statement, means Korea,” a ministry official said. “Japan accepted our demand that it must ask for our consent if it wants to send Self-Defense Forces to the Korean Peninsula.”

Nakatani effectively reversed that understanding only hours after the ministerial talks.

“It’s not the first time that Japan backstabbed us,” a Seoul official said. “Before arranging the ministerial talks, the Defense Ministry made clear that the meeting couldn’t take place without resolving the history issue. And yet, Japanese lawmakers made a surprise visit to the Yasukuni Shrine on the morning of the talks. We still went ahead with the meeting, but Japan backstabbed us again.”

The fracas also fueled criticism of the diplomatic skills of Seoul’s Defense Ministry. Last week, Defense Minister Han was rebuffed by his U.S. counterpart, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, after making an appeal for technology transfers for a fighter jet.

The rejection came while Han was accompanying President Park Geun-hye on a trip to Washington. The media and some politicians said Park’s presidential diplomacy with the country’s main ally was undercut as a result.

To connect the dots, which frankly don’t need much connecting, Japan is declaring the right to intervene unilaterally in the North if and when things turn to ttong.  This of course refers to pre-emptively taking out North Korea’s scary missiles if and when Japan deems it necessary; and it also might mean some kind of expedition to inject Japanese power into the North during a succession crisis on the pretext of securing DPRK missile and nuclear assets that could conceivably threaten Japan.

I expect this piece of Japanese middle-finger anti-diplomacy will not receive any meaningful pushback from the United States and the ROK will, as a result, cleave even closer to the PRC in trying to work out a joint plan to manage the destiny of the North.

So there are at least two complicating factors for the US game plan for North Korea.  The first, as mentioned above, is that the DPRK is unlikely to abandon its nuclear deterrent.  Second, the US tilt toward Japan as its crucial pivot enabler is driving South Korea, the most important and committed player on the future of North Korea, into the arms of the PRC.

In my opinion, the US pivot and the Japanese alliance is baked into US policy for the foreseeable future.

If the US really wants to “do something” about North Korea to pull it more into the US orbit, I suspect it will involve some creating fudging about the existence and character of the North Korean nuclear arsenal.  There is, after all, the Indian precedent for the US turning a blind eye toward someone’s nukes in return for some kind of geopolitical advantage.

But maybe we’ll have to wait for a president who did not win a Nobel Prize for nuclear non-proliferation for that to happen.

Turkish Whistleblowers Corroborate Seymour Hersh Report of False Flag Sarin Gas Attack in Syria

This is quite the bombshell delivered by two CHP deputies in the Turkish parliament and reported by Today's Zaman, one of the top dailies in Turkey.

It supports Seymour Hersh's reporting that the notorious sarin gas attack at Ghouta was a false flag orchestrated by Turkish intelligence in order to cross President Obama's chemical weapons "red line" and draw the United States into the Syria war to topple Assad.

If so, President Obama deserves credit for "holding the line" against the attack despite the grumbling and incitement of the Syria hawks at home and abroad.

And it also presents the unsavory picture of an al-Qaeda operative colluding with ISIL in a war crime that killed 1300 civilians.

I find the report credible, taking into full account the fact that the CHP (the rival left-center Kemalist party) and Today's Zaman (whose editor-in-chief, Bulent Kenes was recently detained on live TV for insulting Erdogan in a tweet) are on the outs with Erdogan.

Considering the furious reaction it can be expected to elicit from Erdogan and the Turkish government, the temerity of CHP and Today's Zaman in running with this story is a sign of how desperate their struggle against Erdogan has become.  Note that the author is shown only as "Columnist: Today's Zaman".

I expect the anti-Erodgan forces hope this will be a game changer in terms of U.S.and European support for Erdogan.

It will be very interesting to see if and how the media in the U.S. covers this story.  In case it doesn't acquire enough "legs" to make into US media, here are some choice bits from the Zaman piece:

CHP deputies: Gov’t rejects probe into Turkey’s role in Syrian chemical attack

Two deputies from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) have claimed that the government is against investigating Turkey's role in sending toxic sarin gas which was used in an attack on civilians in Syria in 2013 and in which over 1,300 Syrians were killed.

CHP deputies Eren Erdem and Ali Şeker held a press conference in İstanbul on Wednesday in which they claimed the investigation into allegations regarding Turkey's involvement in the procurement of sarin gas which was used in the chemical attack on a civil population and delivered to the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to enable the attack was derailed.

Taking the floor first, Erdem stated that the Adana Chief Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation into allegations that sarin was sent to Syria from Turkey via several businessmen.

...

"The MKE [Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation] is also an actor that is mentioned in the investigation file. Here is the indictment. All the details about how sarin was procured in Turkey and delivered to the terrorists, along with audio recordings, are inside the file," Erdem said while waving the file.

Erdem also noted that the prosecutor's office conducted detailed technical surveillance and found that an al-Qaeda militant, Hayyam Kasap, acquired sarin, adding: "Wiretapped phone conversations reveal the process of procuring the gas at specific addresses as well as the process of procuring the rockets that would fire the capsules containing the toxic gas. However, despite such solid evidence there has been no arrest in the case. Thirteen individuals were arrested during the first stage of the investigation but were later released, refuting government claims that it is fighting terrorism," Erdem noted.

Over 1,300 people were killed in the sarin gas attack in Ghouta and several other neighborhoods near the Syrian capital of Damascus, with the West quickly blaming the regime of Bashar al-Assad and Russia claiming it was a "false flag" operation aimed at making US military intervention in Syria possible.

...

The purpose of the attack was allegedly to provoke a US military operation in Syria which would topple the Assad regime in line with the political agenda of then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his government.

CHP deputy Şeker spoke after Erdem, pointing out that the government misled the public on the issue by asserting that sarin was provided by Russia. The purpose was to create the perception that, according to Şeker, “Assad killed his people with sarin and that requires a US military intervention in Syria.”

He also underlined that all of the files and evidence from the investigation show a war crime was committed within the borders of the Turkish Republic.

"The investigation clearly indicates that those people who smuggled the chemicals required to procure sarin faced no difficulties, proving that Turkish intelligence was aware of their activities. While these people had to be in prison for their illegal acts, not a single person is in jail. Former prime ministers and the interior minister should be held accountable for their negligence in the incident," Şeker further commented.

Erdem also added that he will launch a criminal complaint against those responsible, including those who issued a verdict of non-prosecution in the case, those who did not prevent the transfer of chemicals and those who first ordered the arrest of the suspects who were later released.

...

The Truth Behind Hillary's "China Hunt" at Copenhagen

When we met in Copenhagen in 2009 and, literally, President Obama and I were hunting for the Chinese, going throughout this huge convention center, because we knew we had to get them to agree to something. Because there will be no effective efforts against climate change unless China and India join with the rest of the world.

  Hillary Clinton at the Democratic debate 10/13/15

Clinton's debate assertion matches her version of events in Hard Choices, confirming, I suppose, that she provided the talking points to her ghostwriter and then took the trouble to memorize them.

They are, unfortunately, pretty far shy of the truth.

Courtesy of India’s First Post, an excerpt from Hard Choices:

"President Obama and I were looking for Premier Wen Jiabao in the middle of a large international conference on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark," she recalls. "We knew that the only way to achieve a meaningful agreement on climate change was for leaders of the nations emitting the most greenhouse gases to sit down together and hammer out a compromise, especially the US and China," she said. 

"But the Chinese were avoiding us." "Worse, we learned that Wen had called a 'secret' meeting with the Indians, Brazilians, and South Africans to stop, or at least dilute, the kind of agreement the United States was seeking. When we couldn't find any of the leaders of those countries, we knew something was amiss and sent out members of our team to canvass the conference center," she writes. "Eventually they discovered the meeting's location. After exchanging looks of 'Are you thinking what I'm thinking?' the President and I set off through the long hallways of the sprawling Nordic convention center…

"In a makeshift conference room whose glass walls had been covered by drapes for privacy against prying eyes, we found Wen wedged around a long table with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and South African President Jacob Zuma. Jaws dropped when they saw us. 'Are you ready?' said President Obama, flashing a big grin," Clinton claims. 

"Now the real negotiations could begin. It was a moment that was at least a year in the making," she adds. 

 

Horsepucky as far as the “we broke up China’s cabal and got the real negotiations going” thing. The cabal held firm, the loyalty of the West's not-yet-bought-and-paid-for proxies among the smaller nations cracked, US objectives were not met, and the whole episode was a mega-fracaso.

 

I wrote a detailed backgrounder on Copenhagen soon after the debacle.  Here are some choice excerpts concerning the United States’ failure to “thwart”, indeed its inadvertent success in creating, the “BASIC” bloc (Brazil, South Africa with initials inverted for maximum acronym effect, India, and China) of affronted developing regional powers:

[T]he United States assiduously ignored the embarrassing fact of ostensible ally India’s move into the BASIC camp—and skated over the issue of how Washington’s conference planning found it lined up against both New Delhi and Beijing instead of playing one off against the other.


When one considers that the essence of U.S. diplomacy in Asia involves pushing China and India into opposition, forcing these two rivals into an alliance is a remarkable if dubious achievement.


India, for its part, was frank about its identity of interests with China, at least on the issue of climate change India has come out quite well in Copenhagen: Ramesh (Lead):

[Environment Minister] Ramesh said: “A notable feature of this conference is the manner in which the BASIC group of countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) coordinated their position.

“BASIC ministers met virtually on an hourly basis right through the conference; India and China worked very very closely together.”

…

 “India, South Africa, Brazil, China and other developing countries were entirely successful in ensuring there was no violation of the BAP [Bali Action Plan] (of 2007),” Ramesh said.

“Despite relentless attempts made by developed countries, the conference succeeded in continuing negotiations under the Kyoto Protocol for the post-2012 period”, when the current period of the protocol runs out.

Endquote. 

 

The original piece, long and filled with circumstantial detail, is still up at Japan Focus.

Another piece of dubious reportage from Hard Choices is Clinton’s rather counterintuitive explanation that outrage within the Chinese delegation was triggered by fear of the mad US negotiation skillz, rather than anger that the US team had forced its way into a private meeting between Wen and three other world leaders as if it was schooling misbehaving adolescents at a sleepover:

In one surprising display, one of the other members of the Chinese delegation …started loudly scolding the far more senior Premier.  He was quite agitated by the prospect that a deal might be at hand.

WaPo provided the context at the time:

China’s top climate change negotiator exploded in rage at U.S. pressure after Obama walked in on the Chinese while they were holding talks with the Indians, South Africans and Brazilians. After Obama asked whether the Chinese could commit to listing their climate targets in an international registry, Xie Zhenhua launched into a tirade, pointing his finger at the U.S. president… Wen instructed his Chinese interpreter not to translate Xie's fiery remarks. 

Apparently the fact that the US stunt—which, I note, Clinton is careful not to take responsibility for--caused Xie Zhenhua to berate President Obama, not Wen Jiabao, is one of those awkward items of narrative that demanded some creative bending and stretching.

Beyond placing the lumpy gristle of Copenhagen failure into the political memoir Cuisinart in order to output creamy Clintonian achievement, the book says very little about the objective that has been driving international climate change policy under President Obama: the desire to “kill Kyoto” i.e. collapse the current treaty and its messy framework of unbalanced obligations, big-and-small consensus, and rhetoric of moral claims on the developed world, with something more U.S.-friendly.

What really happened at Copenhagen was that President Obama had been unable to get national cap-and-trade legislation passed in the US.  Having never ratified Kyoto (with its binding emissions caps) and with no meaningful prospect of national legislation, the United States was unable to put any pressure on the People’s Republic of China to implement national caps and assist the world in moving beyond the Kyoto Protocol (which bound only the Annex 1 “advanced economies”) to a new regime in which all of the largest emitters (including China, India, Brazil, & South Africa) accepted binding caps.

Instead, President Obama and Secretary Clinton apparently came to Copenhagen with the idea that, absent meaningful US advances either on ratifying Kyoto or creating a new regime, the US would settle for half a loaf: incrementally weakening the Kyoto Protocol at Copenhagen so that it could be allowed to expire and the new regime, nonbinding and with the US and other major powers calling the shots (embodied in the “Denmark draft”) would emerge from its ashes.

In tactical terms, this meant attacking the PRC instead of working with it, by dangling the promise of mitigation money linked to transparency concessions to break the united front of China and the G-77 bloc of small countries.

In PR terms it meant that the virtually foreordained failure of the conference would be laid at China’s feet, something that the PRC was not quite prepared for, and which probably accounted for Xie’s furious but untranslated set-to with President Obama.

During the "President Obama walks on water" period, and a concerted media campaign to package the failure at Copenhagen as Chinese sabotage instead of US duplicity, it was very difficult to get this story out.  Before Japan Focus kindly agreed to wander off-topic and post my piece, I had been unable to place it elsewhere.

But over the next two years it became clear to environmentalists that what had really happened at Copenhagen was not a "r*atfucking" by the PRC, as Kevin Rudd put it, but the first stage of a persistent US campaign to gut the Kyoto Treaty.

The sheen was already off the U.S. climate change policy a scant 10 months later, when increasingly concerned and unhappy enviros assembled in Tianjin.  I blogged it at the time.

Things got uglier and uglier at Cancun and Doha.  Readers who want to delve deeper into the post-Copenhagen misery & the Kyoto-killing antics of Clinton's bespoke climate goon Todd Stern can go here.

Now it looks like awareness is seeping into the mainstream.

But I have a feeling that the takeaway from the debate will not be "Hillary Clinton delivered a load of hypocritical BS about climate change" but "Hillary hunts Chinese!"

And I expect she'll be quite satisfied.