A convenient North Korean distraction

United States President Barack Obama's Asian team is embarking on an effort to realign political forces in North Asia, draw Japan and South Korea closer to the United States, and undercut Chinese and Russian influence by exploiting North Korea's posturing. Washington's primary regional asset is also its weakest link: Japan. The North Korean crisis represents a collision of two anachronisms: the world's last Stalinist state versus a fading Cold War alliance ill-equipped to face the challenge of China, a burgeoning regional power determined to expand its influence through investment, trade and diplomacy and avoid confrontation.
on the United States' primary terms of advantage: military power. The outlines of the dilemma are becoming clearer as the White House belatedly cobbles together its East Asian policy team. On June 10, Kurt Campbell appeared before the East Asian sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations for confirmation hearings to take over Christopher Hill's old job: assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Campbell frankly described the US military presence in Asia as America's "ticket to the big game" and gave the highest priority to relations with Japan and South Korea as a counterweight to China. The main venue for demonstrating enhanced US-Japanese cooperation as a viable alternative to Chinese diplomatic suzerainty over North Asia is North Korea. The North Korea crisis has provided the Obama administration a useful opportunity to correct some problems of the George W Bush years and reaffirm the alliance with Asian democracies. In this process, Kim Jong-il has played the role of useful idiot: provoking a security crisis and providing a readymade justification for the United States to play to its primary geopolitical strength, as the world's pre-eminent military power, and discount the value of China's growing economic weight. At the end of 2008, North Korea concluded a cycle of deal-breaking and finger-pointing on all sides by repudiating the six-party talks that involve it, the US, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia. Since then it has embarked on a series of provocations - nuclear tests, missile launches, apocalyptic rhetoric and the arrest of two American journalists - intended to draw the US into direct negotiations. The Obama administration has refused to take the bait. Instead, it is exploiting North Korea's belligerence to leverage its primary remaining advantage in Asian power politics - America's overwhelming military superiority - and assert America's continued relevance in North Asia. The Obama administration's approach is welcome news to Japan and South Korea, which are relieved at the US desire to make common cause with the region's democracies and not sacrifice their interests for the sake of security and economic cooperation with China. This approach, though placing the US in more comfortable alignment with its allies in the near term, does little to address the long-term challenge to American influence in Asia: the rise of China. And it does nothing to relieve the plight of the immiserated people of North Korea. The Obama administration has made the determination that Pyongyang would never abandon its nukes, virtually the sole internationally recognized achievement and asset of the regime. It also realized that the ascendancy of conservative governments in Seoul and Tokyo made possible a cohesive anti-North Korean bloc. Therefore, Washington declared itself unwilling to engage in another round of ritualized atomic extortion with Kim Jong-il's regime. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it, "I'm tired of buying the same horse twice." Instead, the Obama administration meticulously cultivated the powers that the Bush administration or North Korea had either insulted or disregarded at various junctures, taking special care to reach out to China. The result was the relatively amicable passage of a new United Nations Security Council resolution repurposing two instruments of the Bush administration that China detested - the Proliferation Security Initiative and financial sanctions - in order to construct a sanctions regime that everybody could agree with: non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) material. Regime change is apparently off the table and denuclearization (at least of North Korea's weapons program; it would appear that any deal with North Korea would remove nuclear weapons from the peninsula but allow the north to achieve parity in civilian nuclear power privileges with the South) has receded to a distant if ultimate goal. The near-term purpose of the resolution seemed to be to put Pyongyang on notice that the US would not fall for North Korea's exercises in nuclear blackmail or attempts at divide and conquer. For the time being, Pyongyang could engage in inflammatory rhetoric and engage in nuclear brinksmanship without serious consequences; but once it crossed the red line of WMD proliferation, it would face genuinely united opposition, including that of China and Russia. Having undone some of the diplomatic damage of the George W Bush years and restored a measure of stability and civility to its relations with South Korea, Japan and China, the Obama administration appears to be cautiously exploiting the North Korean crisis and the renewed unity among Asian democracies to gain some incremental advantage over China. Campbell, the nominee for assistant secretary of state for East Asia, is the founder of one of the premier Washington Democratic-tilting policy shops, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Presumably in coordination with his confirmation testimony, on June 11, CNAS released a study by Abraham Denmark and Nirav Patel entitled "No Illusions: Regaining the Strategic Initiative with North Korea". [1] As for achieving something tangible in negotiations with North Korea, the paper holds out hope for little more than interminable discussions backed by incremental sanctions, a perpetually modulated if pessimistic pounding of North Korea like a hopelessly tough and inedible steak. Its prescriptions for the realignment of forces in North Asia are more significant. The CNAS report unequivocally states that strengthening the US commitment to its North Asian allies should be Washington's primary short- to medium-term priority:
It is crucial to US interests and regional stability that Japan and South Korea feel secure in the reliability and efficacy of the US extended deterrent. Japan and South Korea not only form the core of the US alliance system in Asia - they are also the two countries most directly threatened by North Korean aggression. Thus, the United States must assure its allies of its continued commitment to their security, allaying concerns that have been spurred by the rise of China and intensified recently by American efforts to negotiate further nuclear reduction agreements with Russia.Indeed, the United States reaffirmed that its extended deterrent covered Japan when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Tokyo in January, and covered South Korea during President Lee Myung-bak's recent visit to Washington, eliciting indignant yelping from North Korea. As for what negotiations will look like once the United States, South Korea and Japan are comfortably on the same page, the report offers an interesting proposal.
North Korea's departure from the six-party talks should not be allowed to derail the positive benefits of engaging in regional security discussions in Northeast Asia. The US government should therefore continue to engage with its regional partners through the development of a five-party dialogue. In order to clearly differentiate the five-party process from the existing six-party framework, the group should consider meeting in a new location outside of the immediate region, such as in Europe or Southeast Asia.The missing party in this shift from "six-party talks" to "five-party dialogue" is North Korea, which would serve as subject of the talks and object of the five parties' demands, instead of a participant. Presumably, actual negotiation with North Korea would occur somewhere in the remote, infinitely receding long term. But perhaps beyond dealing with the ostensible North Korean threat, the CNAS paper has other objectives - objectives that are furthered, not hindered, by the irritating presence of Kim Jong-il's regime. One intention of this proposal appears to be to strip China of the prestige and function of serving as a mediator between the US-led democracies and North Korea.
American strategy should not wait on Beijing or make itself dependent on China's decision-making. The strategic management approach outlined above will be strengthened by Beijing's cooperation, but it will also place the US in an improved strategic position, even if Beijing is unable, or unwilling, to hold North Korea accountable for its actions.By moving the talks "outside of the immediate region", the phrase "under China's aegis", which is so aggravating to the US and worrying to its allies, could be banished from the lexicon of North Korean diplomacy: instead, the five-party talks could turn into a forum for pressuring China into conforming to the US bloc's definition of "responsible stakeholder" as a precondition for doing anything on North Korea. The main argument to persuade China to accept the diminution of its role in the North Korean situation is the threat that conservative forces in South Korea and Japan are prepared to trigger a conventional and nuclear arms race, thereby destabilizing the region and challenging China's influence, if Beijing doesn't join a united front to make the North Korean threat go away. However, this argument is unlikely to intimidate or convince China, since a militarily resurgent Japan is anathema to Washington as well as to Beijing. Japan, as the world's second-largest economy, a democracy and host to America's primary military presence in Asia, is central to any US strategy. In his US Senate testimony, Campbell described America's strong partnership with Japan as "non-negotiable". The first head of state to meet with Obama was Prime Minister Taro Aso. The first overseas visit for Clinton was Japan. Japan's current Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government is equally eager to present itself as America's enthusiastic ally. In the all-import economic field, Japan's finance minister differentiated himself from the no-goodniks in Beijing who were questioning the viability of the US economy and dollar and who were reconsidering purchases of US bonds - and signaled his support for the Obama administration's number one priority of finding a welcome home for hundreds of billions of dollars of US government debt - by declaring
"... our trust in US Treasuries is absolutely unshakable. We have complete faith in US economic and fiscal policy," said Yosano, who is also the minister in charge of Japan's banking sector and economic policy. "The US dollar's position as the world's reserve currency isn't under threat." [2] In security affairs, the Japanese government resumed its quasi-military operations (which had been discontinued at the end of the Bush administration) supporting the US effort in Afghanistan. The antics of Kim Jong-il have offered a welcome opportunity for Tokyo and Washington to demonstrate their unity of purpose and strategic convergence on the issue of North Korea's denuclearization. However, the North Asian security crisis is only temporarily obscuring a profound problem at the heart of the US-Japanese alliance: how to maintain the relevance of a military security alliance when Asia's socialist and capitalist industrializing economies have opted for economic integration instead. The US-Japan security relationship - forged in the fires of the Korean War and founded on the Cold War strategy of containment of hostile communist powers - is experiencing its last Indian summer as the two allies confront the anachronistic challenge of the world's last Stalinist state, North Korea. Japan's conservatives appear determined to draw the wrong lesson from the North Korean crisis: that projection of military power in coordination with the US is a necessary and viable means of competing with China for regional influence. After taking office, Taro Aso, a long-time proponent of an expanded international role for the Japanese military, made an abortive attempt to assert Japan's right to "collective self-defense", that is, military intervention on behalf of allies outside of Japan and outside the framework of the United Nations. This doctrine was packaged in part as a reasonable effort to remove the apparent legal obstacles to Japan shooting down North Korean (or Chinese) missiles transiting its airspace to US or other targets. The effort collapsed disastrously when General Toshio Tamogami, the Air Self-Defense Force (SDF) chief of staff, single-handedly justified China and the region's oft-derided fears that Japanese militarism was merely hibernating during the last 50 years.
In an essay supporting "collective self-defense", Tamogami asserted that Japan should be allowed to exercise the right to collective self-defense and possess "offensive weaponry", and denied Japan's aggression against other Asian countries during World War II. Tamogami said that it was "false" to accuse Japan of having been an aggressor nation before and during World War II. Japan had been drawn into the Sino-Japanese war by then-Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, who headed the Chinese Nationalist Party, said the general, referring to Japan as "a victim" in the essay entitled "Was Japan an Aggressor Nation?"
It is safe to say that, with attitudes like this at the most senior level of the Japanese military, no Asian nation is going to be very comfortable with the idea of unleashing the SDF for security operations outside Japan. A more assertive SDF is not favored by the United States either. Beyond the obvious regional difficulties of an unpopular revival of Japanese militarism, America's franchise as the security arbiter of Asian affairs would be undermined if Japan - the only Asian democracy capable of projecting significant power in the region - emerged with its own offensive forces and a competing doctrine. The US presence derives its regional credibility and popularity from its perceived role as an external honest broker, an alternative.
to the rapacious Japanese and Chinese militaries, its effectiveness assured by America's near-monopoly on nuclear deterrence and its insistence on coordinated command of allied forces. These assurances are undercut by Japan's well-advertised interest in a more assertive military role. Beyond incensing Asian countries, there is absolutely no strategic fit between the US vision for the region and an independent Japanese military presence. CNAS's 2009 Asian policy review [3], which Campbell co-chaired, offered Japan a good deal of hortatory if markedly condescending rhetoric but absolutely no encouragement for its emergence in a regional military role or any freedom of action in the name of "collective self defense". Instead, there was a lot of talk involving boring second-tier humanitarian activities that will not make Tomogami's heart beat faster.
As has been repeated throughout this report, the US-Japan relationship remains the starting point for any assessment of US engagement with Asia. Despite repeated assurances that the US remains committed to the alliance and that Japanese fears of "passing" are unfounded, anxieties in Tokyo continue to rise. Enough! Our first recommendation for Japan is that it ends the hand wringing and introspection and instead focus on the assets it can and should contribute to the alliance. One way to do that is to develop a national security strategy. As Japan charts novel political terrain, it is more important than ever that Tokyo articulate a vision for the country that commands a national consensus. Japan can be more creative in identifying ways it can contribute to the alliance and ensure that those contributions are commensurate with its capabilities and responsibilities. There are many ways in which Japan can contribute to regional security outside a strictly military context, such as in promoting maritime safety and security, disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, development aid, or through national capacity-building in a broad array of fields ranging from export controls to product safety. Japan has particularly advanced capabilities in the fields of energy conservation and efficiency as well as "green" technologies and environmental protection. Japan should exploit its advantages in these areas to contribute to regional security as well as develop a higher regional profile. The CNAS paper is a strong indication that the US prefers a non-nuclear SDF whose operations are closely coordinated under American command and under the US nuclear umbrella. In other words, a militarily strong Japan is not only destabilizing for the region and a flashpoint for disagreements between China and the United States; it undercuts American power and prestige in the region. But the fundamental problem for the US is not keeping a lid on unhealthy Japanese proclivities toward regional militarism and preserving the American pre-eminence in Asian security. If, as expected, the LDP is crushed in the next Japanese general election and the left-leaning Democratic Party of Japan takes power, conservative dreams of a regionally resurgent Japanese military will fade even further. The problem is finding a useful and effective role for Japan in meeting the most significant challenge to US influence and Japanese ascendancy. That challenge is not military adventurism from North Korea; it's the growing economic integration between China and South Korea, which Japan apparently lacks the structural and geopolitical tools to reverse. In his June 10 testimony, Campbell acknowledged that China's rise had implications "difficult for our Japanese friends". Nevertheless, he averred that the trilateral relationship between Washington, Beijing and Tokyo should not be a "zero-sum game" and said hopefully that there are "signs that [China and Japan] need each other". Unfortunately, in reality, the signs all seem to be pointing in the other direction. Japan doesn't only see difficulties from a rising China. It's got problems with a rising South Korea as well. The unanswerable challenges it faces in the region are economic, not military. Taking advantage of the furor over North Korea to jump on the US military bandwagon - and hoping that Chinese overreach in its military posture will derail its economic juggernaut - is not the solution to Japan's long-term problems. Japan's failure to achieve a free-trade agreement with South Korea - and its inability to come to terms with South Korea's enthusiasm for a China-Japan-Korea free-trade grouping with regional heft equivalent to the Eurozone - is indicative of the zero-sum relationship between the Tokyo and both its industrializing competitors in North Asia. The mainland financial news website China Stakes provided the perspective from China:
South Korea President Lee Myung-bak said during a visit to Japan that he was in favor of the establishment of a China-Japan-Korea free-trade zone, as it would help all three countries maintain competitiveness in the global market. Kim says that Lee, a former Hyundai president, is very sensitive to the market economy. Lee has always emphasized that economic development is most important to the country. Some Japanese regard China, with its rapid economic growth, as Japan's most dangerous potential rival. There is worry that the establishment of free-trade zone may lead to industry transfer or even hollowing-out, and they have become increasingly reluctant on this issue. "Many common Japanese see China as a threat, and this will certainly affect Japan's foreign policies and its attitude towards a free trade zone," said Feng Zhaokui. Add to that a graying population, a debilitating recession and a prime minister with popularity in the single digits, Japan's pessimism about its ability to retain its place at the center of Asian affairs is understandable. Throwing its military weight around in coordination with the United States may provide psychological reassurance but do little to reverse long-term trends. And those economic trends include an unexpected but inevitable factor: North Korea's economic opening. Japan's - and America's - dilemma is neatly illustrated by its response to the North Korean situation. While the People's Republic of China unceasingly calls for non-military and diplomatic measures to defuse the crisis, Japan continually invokes the North Korean bogeyman to lift its military profile and solidify its security alliance with the US. This year, Prime Minister Aso exploited North Korea's antics to argue [4] for enshrining "pre-emptive capabilities", ie attacks on North Korean facilities threatening Japan in Japan's National Defense Program Guidelines, eliciting the objection of China's ambassador. In the wake of the new UN Security Council sanctions targeting North Korea's WMD-related exports, Japan went the extra step and banned all exports [5] to North Korea. This largely symbolic gesture (Japan's exports to North Korea in 2008 totaled little more than US$8 million) ended all direct economic relations between the two countries. Japan's willingness to completely sever economic relations with North Korea and offer itself as America's sheriff in North Asia is at the heart of Tokyo's - and Washington's - problems in the region. The United States may be perversely grateful that North Korean bellicosity provides a justification for America's continued relevance in the region. However, this convenient crisis isn't going to last forever. North Korea is going to open up someday. Probably not through reform, regime change or collapse, or through the application of American or Japanese military force. But it will open up. There is too much money and strategic advantage at stake for the interested nations of North Asia to stand idly by and simply watch North Korea disintegrate. Maybe change will come by means of a controlled implosion, jointly managed by China and South Korea, the two neighboring regimes that covet North Korea's cheap labor, resources and markets, and abhor the consequences of Pyongyang's chaotic disintegration in equal and extreme degree. If and when that happens, Chinese and South Korean businesses will flood into North Korea and the entire Korean Peninsula will become part of the zero-sum equation bedeviling Tokyo. Japan may find itself on the outside looking in at North Asia's burgeoning new economic frontier ... together with the United States. Unfortunately, Japan in 2009 doesn't look much like a resolute and powerful ally of the United States. It looks more like a client state at the end of its rope that sees no recourse other than to seek the protection of its patron - a burden and not an asset. Using the threat of North Korea to strengthen the alliance with Japan may do little more than tie the United States to a sunset nation unable to project meaningful economic and military influence in Asia on America's behalf. Note 1. To view the report, click here.2. Yosano Says Japan's Trust in Treasuries 'Unshakable'. Bloomberg, June 12, 2009. 3. To view the review, click here.4. See Pushback on preemption, June 8, 2009. 5. Japan to ban exports to North Korea after nuclear test, Reuters, June15, 2009.