When North Korea test launched its missiles yesterday, it was another move in the dangerous chess game the Kim Jong Il regime is playing with the international community. The last of the personality-driven doctrinaire communist dictatorships can only survive by barricading itself politically and economically into a laager that it can only defend with threats of fanatical retaliation against attack.
North Korea is a militarized, highly regimented and controlled society whose people have been taught that the workers’ paradise in which they live is forever threatened by sinister, neoliberal and imperialistic outside powers. In as much as they are invited to think about it, most of its citizens will consider that the acquisition of nuclear weapons and the rocket systems to deliver them entirely reasonable, given that North Korea’s greatest foe is the United States, which is the most heavily armed nuclear power in the world.
Pyongyang has seen the Iranians being offered a wide range of concessions by Europe and Russia, with Washington’s apparently reluctant blessings. Meanwhile its own negotiations with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the Americans have been stalled since November as Washington refuses to relax financial controls on the Kim regime. In the wake of yesterday’s tests, there has been widespread condemnation, and Japan, which immediately imposed trade and communications sanctions, has requested a closed meeting of the UN Security Council. The quietest response came from Beijing, where the Foreign Ministry counseled calm.
There seems little doubt that the Chinese are extremely angry that North Korea went ahead with the missile tests, despite a clear request from the Chinese government not to move forward with this saber rattling. However Beijing is not about to go head-to-head with its long-time ally.
There are probably two good reasons for this. The first is that despite its unpredictability, the North Korean leadership is hugely dependent on China to keep its economy going, through credits, goods, and fuel and power deliveries. Beijing knows the regime and in the final analysis could exert a stranglehold on it. The second reason may prove far more important. Here is an international threat, which China is uniquely placed to solve. Just as Chinese politicians and businessmen are now revamping their plans to engage the Third World, particularly Africa, so too Chinese power and influence could be exerted to bring about a peaceful end to North Korea’s defensive belligerence. Beijing may have calculated that the problem needs to get worse before it can be made better. The Japanese, who are well within range of North Korea’s proven Taepodong-1 missile, would give a lot to see the threat lifted. So too would the South Koreans. Both these countries have strong military and political links to Washington. In a new Chinese-led world order, these would need to be reviewed. These are dangerous times but it should not be forgotten that Beijing too is already within range of Pyongyang’s missiles.
