Is it reasonable to assume that NK leadership is concerned with self-preservation? Are there any open hostilities scenarios that would not lead to a regime change in NK?
I think it’s very reasonable to assume their leadership wants to keep on leading (and living). I’ve always felt the best way to wind down that regime might be to offer its top cadres dachas or the equivalent in China somewhere nice, and gradually convert the damn place into a modern nation under Chinese and South Korean tutelage.
If half the things about NK life is true, the NK leadership would not accept an abdication of power, as they would spend the rest of their lives wherever they are fearing retribution.
Well, that’s the beauty of a Chinese exit plan–Beijing would keep 'em safe from the millions who might, as they open their eyes, be inclined to skin 'em alive…
China has little interest in regime change, they don’t want an American ally on their border.
Yep. In fact a highly-placed Chinese journalist just got canned for even suggesting that it wasn’t in China’s interests to keep backing North Korea.
I wonder if we could cut China a deal- Finlandize Korea in exchange for getting rid of the NoKos. No US troops in Korea period after say 2-3 years.
I know that NK has like zero credibility but it still seems like a pretty significant escalation to me. They are basically threatening to nuke the US, that’s how I read it anyway. If you are the President, how do you deal with that? They have nukes, even if they dont have the ability (that you know of) to deliver them. Can you just write this threat off as their typical bluster? And if I am South Korea…they have attacked in the recent past and now they are talking more shit than normal? Fuck that, I would be paranoid.
I think we really need to be hammering China to lean on them hard before shit gets worse.
There’s really nothing that can be done, though, short of starting a war. China has apparently already mobilized troops on the Korean border, but they say over and over that they are allied with NK, so it’s not exactly a threat – unless you count it as a threat to SK, which I don’t; it’s just a gesture designed to placate their crazy rebel puppets.
How do you propose pressuring China? Threaten to stop buying their stuff? That’s a laugher, and would be politically impossible for either party in any event due to corporate political funding, not to mention that it would probably trigger a worldwide currency crash. If we could pressure China to do anything at all that we wanted, probably a dozen treaties of various sorts would have been signed in the region and around the world that they are blocking, they wouldn’t be molesting Japan, the yuan would float more, and they’d cut their emissions. But none of those things are happening because they have been more or less completely immune to our feeble attempts at diplomacy since the end of World War II.
As for cutting China a deal over the entire Korean peninsula, Alstein, I’d say SK is far too economically important to the world in general and in particular to the US to let them fall into the Chinese sphere of influence, which is what would happen if the US washed its hands of the whole area. Not to mention Japan would go crazy and the Indians and Vietnamese among various others would also scream very loudly indeed at the prospect of Chinese hegemony over most of Asia.
The current crisis is a distraction and Beijing isn’t particularly happy with Pyongyang. They’ve stopped much of the border traffic that drives the North Korean economy and they’ve issued marching orders to Kim. The North Koreans for their part have largely ignored the Chinese protests; they also have their own interests and they understand that China will do what it takes to preserve the regime. In that respect Beijing is in a tough spot, the DPRK is a useful security buffer and the Chinese have little interest in absorbing millions of North Koreans if the regime collapses. The DPRK also consumes limited American resources which helps to strengthen China’s position in the region. China has little taste for the North Korean’s sense of independence, and their penchant for creating ill-timed crises but it’s a price they have to pay.
We can lean on China but I don’t think we’ll get much for it. They want to focus on core issues, like the South China Sea not another Korean War so they’ll do what they can to bring the Koreans to heal. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly we really don’t have any influence. This is a critical security relationship for China and as a rational power they will pursue self interest above all else. No amount of pressure or lecturing will shift their position.
Finlandize means it would not be allowed to go into either’s sphere of influence. China and Korea sign a non-agression pact, We agree not to station forces in Korea. We’d still be in Japan.
I would trade S.korea in China’s semi-sphere of influence for not having to have troops in S.Korea, that would save money. I think the Chinese would keep their word on this, if they didn’t- we still will have Japan and the Phillipines are bases. We’d probably have to agree to keep quiet about China shooting N.Koreans trying to cross over, and reunification would smash the value of S.Korean economy, they’d probably need Chinese help as well as ours.
Assuming that we could break our treaty obligations without serious expense, and that the Chinese would agree… I don’t think it’s a good idea.
North Korea no longer poses a significant threat to American interests, but they do provide an excuse to maintain an American presence in the region. It’s a useful check on Chinese ambitions.
we still will have Japan and the Phillipines
Our presence in Japan is a on a clock, the government find us useful but the public is tired of dealing with us. The Philippines are warming to us again but we actually have a very limited presence in country. They closed Clark Airfield in 91 and kicked us out of Subic in 92.
China certainly doesn’t want a US ally on their border, but they also can’t be happy with the constant tension and disruptions Pyongyang is causing. A “Finland” situation wouldn’t be a bad deal, really, and is at least conceivable, in the long run. I’m pretty confident the Chinese would not back any adventurism on the part of the North Koreans; this isn’t 1950, at any rate. But it sure does put strong limits on what anyone can really do to stop Pyongyang, unless the North does something really stupid on its own.
I would say it’s an untenable and unsustainable tension, but as we’ve sustained it for sixty years, yeah, I guess it sorta works.
“Saving money” is a fairly limited and literal view of the consequences though. Sure, the US DoD would not have to maintain the bases, pay the overseas/semi-combat salaries of the soldiers and not have to ship tanks back and forth across the Pacific and that would certainly allow the Pentagon or the country as a whole to spend that money on different things (or not collect it at all). But the whole ROI on having our troops there is a much larger and more “meta” conversation - the near-constant contact between the US troops and support personnel and their ROK counterparts opens doors for both sides that would otherwise be harder to identify or crack. The US presence does actually signal a commitment that encourages business with the US rather than with China.
So the question becomes (as such things tend to) one of how much the capital-G Government should spend to help the US market. It’s an equation:
X is the cost of the US military presence in Korea.
Y is the (difficult to quantify) amount of benefit to the US economy that keeping close ties to Korea (and other nearby Asian markets) engenders.
Z is the (even more difficult to quantify) benefit to US security that the Korean troop presence engenders.
So if X < Y + Z, it’s not actually “saving money” at all.
And the cost that the constant steam of “escapees” coming across the border. And the cost of the direct payments that they have to make in order to keep the DPRK government afloat. And the cost of the troops they have stationed there.
The Chinese have an equation similar to the one above, but I don’t think their GTLT symbol is pointed the way they want it to.
The really sad thing is that there is no government who benefits in the short term from the DPRK collapsing, no matter which way it swung. The DPRK of course loses as they stop doing that whole “existing” thing. The ROK loses as they would either inherit a hideously broken populace in a near-medieval state OR they would have the juggernaut of China on their border instead of a toothless tiger. The Chinese would lose for much the same reasons: inherit a broken populace OR see a unified Korea in the US sphere of influence. The US would find itself in a position where it would have to justify keeping troops in a country to guard against… China?
Really, the only people who would absolutely “win” no matter what would be the poor DPRK peasants; anything would be better than the shit salad that they have to eat now.
Now, long-term is a much more interesting question. I don’t know much about the resources that may or may not be waiting to be tapped in mountainous North Korea, but hundreds of miles of undeveloped coastline on two of the busiest and most valuable shipping lanes in the world have to look pretty good to everyone.
The most frustrating thing about this whole deal is, well, that it’s so frustrating :). There simply is no good solution, not one that is at all probable at least. The stuff that’s “easy” to do has terrible consequences, and the stuff that doesn’t have terrible consequences is either non-existent or supremely unlikely to happen. It’s an object lesson that some crap just has to be endured I guess.
It’s the result of having proxies in bad neighborhoods. Everybody likes to poke the bear as long as he’s on a chain, and all the better if you can poke him from Israel or the Korean peninsula with little fear of retribution. You get to feel important, piss off your hated neighbors, and make political hay all at the same time.
It would be impossible to prevent China from dominating the region if we withdrew, IMO. Not because there would be a military confrontation, but because of the moral effect.
I sometimes wonder, though, whether it would be a bad thing to let China dominate the region? Do we (the USA) have to dominate everywhere? Admittedly, the Chinese have some policies that don’t sit well with me, but I’m not that sure a Chinese hegemony in Asia would radically change the internal workings of the more advanced states there. Beijing is a pretty status quo oriented place, with a penchant for stability and order over adventurism. I’m not advocating withdrawal, but I’m not sure it would be a catastrophe, either.
Back in grad school the first time, back in, um, like 1982 or 1983, I wrote something for a class on Asian security issues advocating that the USA withdraw its troops from South Korea at that time. That was in the context of the Cold War, of course; I’m not sure it would be a great idea today, but I’m also not sure we should necessarily take it off the table a priori.
Though we do need, probably, a strong Pacific presence, and the ROK sure offers a great base…
In principle, sure. One big problem with the idea is too much of our economy is already bound up there.
At this time, Korea is the biggest supplier to the US and the world of a variety of consumer products and is number two or three in various others. It’s definitely not in our interest for this economy to merge with China’s, who are already in danger of dominating many markets we find important. Huawei is a very effective company in a wide variety of sectors, after all, and many phases of its operations are overseen by Chinese government managers. I think we’d prefer that not happen to Samsung and friends.
Moreover, despite their historical hostility, active competition, and continuing bickering, Japan and Korea are aligned in their societies and economies in many ways. If Korea becomes a Chinese client, Japan becomes even more isolated. If Korea could honestly become an independent Finland-like state, that would be fine with me; but I just don’t think it’s possible when geographically Korea is to China as Florida is to North America. Finland at least was wedged between the USSR and the rest of Scandinavia…
The Soviets actually did a fairly bloody invasion of Finland and ruled FInland before that- so Russia’s dominance of Finland is more than China’s of Korea.
We would maintain our treaty obligation to defend Korea in case of invasion, we would just be limited in what we could have there, and maybe give China rights to bases in old North Korea to compensate, equally limited. We could have joint US-CHina-Korea missions, which might ease tensions.
The only downside is we’d have to keep our mouths shut about Chinese shooting NOrth Koreans crossing the border, but I don’t think that would be too bad after the short term, because North Korea standards would improve rapidly, though South Korea would need massive help fixing North Korea. (could even be stimulus for us)