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Iran in Latin America: Threat or Axis of Annoyance?
Senior Fellow Douglas Farah's analysis of the debate over the level of threat posed by Iran's expanding diplomatic, trade and military presence in Latin America, and its stated ambition to continue to broaden these ties.
Chinese Naval Modernization: Altering the Balance of Power
Richard Fisher details China's naval modernization program and the potential impacts on U.S. interests in the Western Pacific.
Briefly: China Unsettled By Shifts in Korean Peninsula
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The latest sign that things are not going Beijing’s way in the Korean peninsula came on Friday February 2 at the Winter Asian Games in Changchun, China. During the awards ceremony, five South Korean female skaters held up seven placards proclaiming" Mount Paektu Is Our Territory."
This was a shock, since China has long claimed the mountain, which it calls Changbai, as its own territory. And has assumed that its Korean vassals would go along.
Neither North nor South Korea has ever agreed with that—the mountain has traditionally had great nationalistic significance for Koreans, and the area near it in China is full of ethnic Koreans.The gesture was undoubtedly spontaneous but no Korean has disowned it.
This is a significant straw in the wind.
China seems to have assumed for some time that neither Korea posed a threat to her. Far from it. North Korea and its nuclear program were a "borrowed knife" with which to threaten Japan and the United States.
The danger, as Beijing saw it, was the collapse of North Korea—against which she made provision by claiming that the ancient kingdom of Goguryo, which scholars have traditionally thought of as proto-Korean, was in fact Chinese.
That claim was evidently designed to legitimize a Chinese operation to occupy the North when it did collapse.
But now things have taken a very different turn. Both North and South Koreans are becoming more nationalistic and less patient with China. South Korea is still deeply suspicious of the North, and vice versa, but both sides may be coming to understand that they had better hang together, or China may annex half their country.
China has always assumed she could simply turn off food aid and shut the oil tap if North Korea got too far out of line. My own suspicion is that under such circumstances South Korea would make up the shortfall. And such a hostile action by China would alienate both Koreas, without coercing either of them.
Furthermore, the United States may be moving toward simply recognizing North Korea. We still nourish the dream that somehow North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons in return for such recognition. That is impossible. But recognition is still a good idea.
It would let us talk directly to the North Koreans, without Chinese intermediation, instantly producing leverage in Beijing.
Now suppose that as a result of talks, U.S. tensions with Pyongyang fall. Suppose further that North and South Korea slowly draw closer together. A frightening but convenient flashpoint begins to cool.
Convenient because the danger of war in Korea distracts the United States and Japan from other dangers in Asia, and having the two Koreas opposing one another means neither can fully serve Korean national interests.
The United States and Japan would be able to relax a bit. Communications among them and the two Koreas would increase. The Chinese would no longer be the indispensable go between.
Forces now assigned to the defense of Korea could move elsewhere. What had been a buffer, North Korea, would become a pressure point.
Not only that, a new economic and military power a bit smaller in area than the British isles, would emerge. The two Koreas would, between them, possess nuclear weapons sufficient to place Beijing and much of north China at risk, a variety of missiles, modern fighters, naval vessels, and stealthy conventional submarines.
This new state would share a contested border with China, and to the north connect directly to Russia. To the south its coast would completely overshadow and dominate all maritime approach routes to Tianjin, the port of Beijing, and to Qingdao, a major Chinese naval base. Korea’s position is of extraordinary strategic significance. From it, all maritime access to north China can be cut off.
China is protesting, to be sure, but in their usual ham-handed way. Having said nothing about the North Korean bomb, they are now raising hell about some skaters—and renaming schools in China [!!] after Mount Paektu/Changbai—a clear attempt to stir up nationalist passions.
Koreans have nationalist passions too, however. Until now they have been directed against Japan, a cruel colonial master from 1910 to 1945, and against the United States (which saved freedom in South Korea at the cost of 50,000 American dead].
But Korean history has shown repeatedly that China has always been the real problem.
As this fact becomes more clearly recognized in both Koreas, then we may expect, for once, that what has been a problem for us may begin to turn into an (intractable) problem for China.
