Behind
The UN Debate On North Korea: Growing Great Power Rivalry
By Peter Symonds
12 October 2006
World
Socialist Web
Despite
intense pressure from the Bush administration for tough sanctions against
North Korea over Monday’s nuclear test, the five permanent members
of the UN Security Council have not yet reached any agreement.
The US, backed by Britain
and France, is pushing for a resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter,
making any action binding on all UN member states. China and Russia
have supported “punitive” measures against Pyongyang, but
opposed a Chapter 7 resolution, concerned that it would be used as the
pretext for military aggression as was the case in the US-led invasion
of Iraq.
China’s UN ambassador
Wang Guangya has called for “a firm, constructive, appropriate
but prudent response”. Beijing has opposed a provocative American
proposal to allow the interception and searching of all North Korean
vessels on the high seas. The US has been pressing for such actions,
which are in breach of international law, since 2003 as part of its
Proliferation Security Initiative with allies such as Japan and Australia.
China is deeply concerned
that North Korea’s nuclear test will trigger an arms race in North
East Asia. Japan’s newly installed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe yesterday
formally restated the country’s longstanding policy that acquiring
nuclear arms was “not an option at all”. However, as Beijing
is well aware, Abe backed the aggressive stance in the region adopted
by his predecessor Junichiro Koizumi, with the support of the Bush administration.
In 2002, he cautiously suggested it was “not necessarily unconstitutional”
for Japan to use small, tactical nuclear weapons.
Japan has supported a tough
UN resolution against North Korea. Without even waiting for a decision
in the Security Council, Tokyo announced a new battery of sanctions
against Pyongyang, including barring all North Korean ships from Japanese
ports and a ban on all North Korean imports. The latest measures come
on top of Japanese bans imposed following North Korea’s missile
tests in July.
The US and Japan are pushing
both China and South Korea—North Korea’s two largest trading
partners—to restrict their economic relations with Pyongyang.
Such demands cut directly across South Korean and Chinese efforts to
defuse tensions on the Korean peninsula, by opening up North Korea as
a cheap labour platform and regional transit route. China and South
Korea fear that crippling sanctions will trigger an economic and political
crisis in North Korea that will have immediate ramifications for bordering
countries.
The fault lines in the UN
are another sign of sharpening Great Power rivalry. The Bush administration’s
belligerent stance is not about North Korea’s tiny nuclear armoury,
which poses no significant military threat to the US now or in the near
future. If the White House were seriously concerned about ending North
Korea’s nuclear arms, an obvious solution is available—a
deal with Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear facilities and weapons
in return for economic assistance and the normalisation of relations
with the US.
North Korea’s reckless
“anti-imperialist” grandstanding has nothing to do with
a genuine struggle against imperialism and only plays into the hands
of the most right-wing, militarist layers of the ruling elite in Washington.
Pyongyang is seeking to use its nuclear test to pressure the US for
better relations, including a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War,
diplomatic recognition and an end to the decades-long US economic blockade
of the country. Over the past two days, North Korean officials have
reiterated their willingness to discuss a deal over de-nuclearisation
in bilateral talks with the US—something that the Bush administration
has repeatedly ruled out. At the same time, Pyongyang has warned it
will respond to threats, stating that sanctions would amount to a declaration
of war.
President Bush told a news
conference yesterday the US had no plans to invade or attack North Korea,
but he has repeatedly declared that all options are on the table. Moreover,
by branding North Korea in 2002 as part of an “axis of evil”
along with Iraq and Iran, he made plain that the US objective was “regime
change” in Pyongyang, as in Baghdad and Tehran.
In his comments yesterday,
Bush hypocritically declared that a broad framework for resolving nuclear
standoff had been reached in September last year at the last round of
six-party talks—involving the US, the two Koreas, China, Japan
and Russia. The US only agreed reluctantly to the joint statement setting
out in general terms an offer of normalised relations and economic cooperation
in return for North Korea’s abandonment of all nuclear weapons
programs. The US Treasury began immediately pressuring the Macau-based
Banco Delta Asia (BDA) to freeze North Korean assets. Not surprisingly,
North Korea denounced the step as a sign of bad faith and refused to
return to six-party talks without its reversal.
In a scathing criticism of
Bush’s policy, US commentator Joseph Cirincione from the Center
for American Progress pointed to the sharp divisions in the White House
over North Korea. From the outset, Vice President Richard Cheney and
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have been deeply hostile to any negotiations
with North Korea. In response to the joint agreement at the six party
talks, Cirincione explained: “[T]he neoconservatives struck back.
The deal was undercut in the same month by the offices of the vice-president
and secretary of defence, which together orchestrated financial restrictions
that angered the North Koreans enough to kill the deal but not kill
the [nuclear] program.”
Cirincione is one of a growing
number of commentators and political figures inside and outside the
US calling on the Bush administration to agree to direct talks with
North Korea. “The US should tell North Korea that we will give
them the deal we gave Libya: complete dismantlement of the nuclear program
in exchange for diplomatic recognition, security assurances, and economic
incentives. The Libyan model is far superior to the Iraqi one: its costs
were minimal, no one died, and it was one hundred percent effective,”
Cirincione wrote.
Yet the Bush administration
has consistently ruled out such an approach. The obvious question is:
why? The answer lies in the deepening struggle among the major powers
for domination in a key strategic region that is responsible for a large
portion of the world’s industrial output. As in the Middle East
and Central Asia, the Bush administration is seeking to use American
military might as a lever to maintain US economic and strategic hegemony
in North East Asia.
The end of the Sunshine Policy
The situation today is in
marked contrast to 2000. The Clinton administration backed the Sunshine
Policy of South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who laid out a broad
long term plan for economic cooperation between the two Koreas, leading
to a reduction of tensions on the peninsula and its eventual political
reunification. For the first time, the top leaders of North and South
Korea met in June 2000, setting off euphoria in official circles and
the media about peace in North East Asia.
Kim Dae-jung had the support
of powerful sections of South Korean business, which saw the opportunity
for shifting manufacturing operations to North Korea to take advantage
of cheap labour, disciplined by a police state and at a fraction of
the cost at home. Plans were made for re-opening rail and road lines
blocked since the Korean War, establishing a special economic zone at
Kaesong just over the border and expanding a tourist complex at Mount
Kumgang. The reunion of families divided for decades and the joint entry
of the Korean teams at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000 were presented
as signs of a general rapprochement.
Kim Dae-jung was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his efforts: a sure sign that bigger
interests were at stake than just those of North and South Korea. European
corporations saw the opportunity for a far closer integration with the
dynamic economic countries of North East Asia—China, South Korea
and Japan. The opening up of the Korean peninsula provided a key link
in grand plans for land routes stretching from Europe to Russia and
Central Asia through to China, South Korea, and across the narrow strait
to Japan.
Kim Dae-jung referred to
the vision, describing the accord with the North as positioning Korea
at the centre of a new “Silk Road” between Europe and Asia.
The plan also offered South Korea and Japan the prospect of access to
Central Asia and Russia oil and gas along pipelines through North Asia.
European companies visited North Korea to discuss the business prospects
that were opening up. In December 2000, US secretary of state Madeleine
Albright visited Pyongyang and met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il,
as a step toward the full normalisation of relations with the US.
All of these prospects collapsed
virtually overnight when President Bush took office in early 2001. The
right-wing ideologues, who had repeatedly denounced Clinton’s
policy on North Korea as “appeasement” and condemned Albright’s
trip as tantamount to treachery, filled many of the top posts. Secretary
of state Colin Powell announced in March 2001 that the new administration
intended to “pick up where President Clinton left off”,
but he was quickly countermanded. Washington froze all contacts with
North Korea and, after a lengthy “policy view”, announced
a new set of ultimatums that effectively ended any meaningful negotiations.
At the same time, Kim Jong-il
was increasingly vilified as an erratic, evil dictator who “starved
his own people” and threatened the world. Behind this ideological
barrage and the conscious sabotage of the Sunshine Policy was a definite
political logic. The broad plan for reduced tensions on the Korean peninsula
and the economic integration of the Eurasian landmass left the US on
the sidelines, undermined the rationale for existing American military
bases in South Korea and Japan and cut across US strategies to intervene
in Central Asia. By menacing North Korea and raising tensions throughout
the region, Washington retained the whip hand in dictating terms to
its rivals for influence in North East Asia.
The same basic pattern has
marked the past four years. In agreeing to six-party talks sponsored
by China in 2003, the Bush administration had no intention of seriously
negotiating with North Korea. Rather the talks provided a convenient
forum to pressure the other four parties to take tougher action against
North Korea. South Korea and China, in the face of fierce US opposition,
attempted to continue their policy of economic cooperation with North
Korea. Hostile to the Sunshine Policy, the Bush administration has never
elaborated a positive alternative, even from its own standpoint. The
aim of its constant provocations and threats against North Korea has
been purely negative—designed to maintain US dominance in the
region at the expense of its rivals.
The result of the Bush administration’s
reckless policies is now evident: by provoking North Korea to carry
out a nuclear test, the US is encouraging a regional arms race that
threatens to take the intensifying rivalry in North East Asia to a new
and more dangerous level.
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