A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

[I posted this as a comment on another site this morning, and I hope you won't mind if I also post it here. Also, sorry about the previous version. Could you delete it? -- Steven Den Beste]

Too many people are assuming that this is somehow a US/NK problem and that everyone else are just spectators.

The reality of this situation for the last four years has been that the Chinese could force the NKs to accede to pretty much any deal at any time, but have been unwilling to do so.

The focus of American diplomacy for the last four years has been to convince the Chinese to do just that. The actual diplomatic triumph of the Bush administration was to convince the governments of South Korea and Japan to go along with that. As a result, no one actually has cared what NK itself says, threatens, demands, blusters about, etc. The real focus for the last four years for the US, SK and Japan has been Beijing.

The Chinese have been trying to use the situation to extort concessions relating to Taiwan, and the Bush administration (and SK and Japan) have refused to play that game.

So what just changed? Several things. In general, negotiations can't proceed any time power is shifting or negotiating partners face uncertain fates. One thing that just changed was the American election. The NKs (and Chinese) hoped that uncertainty regarding NK would hurt Bush in the 2004 election.

Another thing has been the amount of trade with China and investment in China by all of SK, Japan and the US have been rising rapidly in recent years. China needs friendly relations with US/SK/JP a lot more than we need China; if there was a significant cooling in relations (and cooling of the trade relationships), it could destroy the budding Chinese economic boom and lead to a revolution there -- or at least to the overthrow of the current rulers, which from their point of view is the same thing.

The other thing that just changed was the Japanese election. Koizumi's party massively increased its majority in the lower house. Koizumi has made no secret that he wants to increase military spending and to reverse the constitutional "pacifism" provision.

The idea of a remilitarized Japan willing to project military power outside of Japanese territory gives everyone else in the region the willies, and it would be a lot easier for Koizumi to pull that off if Japan were seen by Japanese voters as seriously imperiled by an nearby insane regime (i.e. NK).

Worse, if NK actually develops nukes and sets one off, SK would unquestionably do the same. So would Taiwan. And there's a damned good chance that it could convince Japanese voters that Japan needed to become a nuclear power, too, even despite the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Or even because of it, because of the unacceptable chance that Japan might become the target of an NK nuke.

If a remilitarized Japan terrifies everyone in that region, the idea of a remilitarized Japan with nuclear weapons gives them the hives. And the idea of Taiwan developing nuclear weapons definitely is not one the leadership of China would find pleasing.

Taiwan, SK, and Japan are all technically capable of developing working nukes in a very short amount of time. All three nations are rich and technically sophisticated, and fission weapons aren't actually all that hard to create if you've got a lot of money and knowledge. I think that any of them could do it in three years. (That's how long it took the US, remember.)

So I think that what has happened is that the leadership in China has finally decided that there's no hope of wringing concessions from the US regarding Taiwan, and has realized that if the NK situation isn't resolved soon that things will actually get a whole lot worse for China. For the moment China remains the only nuclear power in the region, and they'd just as soon keep it that way. Thus they finally decided to force NK to deal.

What, then, of NK's almost immediate renege of the deal? That, too, is far from inexplicable. The leadership in Pyong-Yang is terrified about their future prospects, and in fact they have every right to be terrified. As best I can determine, the only goal of the Kim government is to remain in power. Nothing else whatever matters to them.

They are profoundly vulnerable right now to foreign coercion, since their energy supply is entirely under control of others who seem willing to cut off that supply in order to force the NK government to act in ways it doesn't really want to. NK has been engaged in drug dealing (especially heroin), counterfeiting, and sales of weapons because they have no other ways to earn foreign currency, and even with that they cannot possibly pay market prices for the amount of petroleum or coal they really need, so they're pretty much stuck depending on the kindness of others. After the US and Japan stopped shipping in petroleum, that left China as NK's sole source of supply of energy, via a pipeline which, apparently, China has shut down several times in order to bring pressure to bear on Pyong-Yang.

Part of the new deal offered to NK was that SK would build a big electricity transmission line across the DMZ and provide a lot of electric power up north. That doesn't really help, since it would be just as easy for SK to cut the power as it is for China to cut the flow on that pipeline.

NK's leaders desperately want a significant energy generation facility of some kind which they themselves control, so that others can't shut it off at a moment's notice. It can't be based on fossil fuels because NK has no native source of supply for the fuel and can't afford to buy it at world market prices. So it's got to be a nuclear power plant, and the reason they're asking for a light-water-reactor is that those kinds of reactors are not well suited for production of weapon's-grade fissionables, and thus would -- they hope -- be acceptable to their enemies.

The NK leadership is flailing about right now because they think that China has sold them down the river, and they might well be right. Fact is, from their point of view they definitely do need at least one LWR, and they don't really have a lot of poker chips to use in the negotiations.

If they give away their big one, their nuclear weapons program, without getting a commitment for an LWR in exchange, they're afraid they won't have the diplomatic leverage to get one later. Given, however, that the Chinese have finally decided that it's time to end the game, I don't think that's going to work. If the NKs really try to renege on the deal signed just days ago, the Chinese will apply pressure again. As to whether NK will actually get an LWR, only time will tell, but I doubt it. All of NK's neighbors have had enough of NK's periodic blustering and threats, and want to control NK's sources of power for exactly the reason the NK leadership fears that outcome. NK will be leashed, tied up by China's control of the petroleum pipeline and SK's control of the power transmission line. The big losers in this deal are the people of NK, who will have to continue to suffer under the Kim government. That was pretty much inevitable; any solution short of outright warfare was going to leave Kim in charge, and the people there under his incompetent thumb. It's sad, but in this life some problems don't have ideal solutions. The people of NK were screwed decades ago and they're not going to get unscrewed for the forseeable future.