![]() ![]() In February, while Trump hosted the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, Pyongyang launched a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan. Trump should also shift the narrative so that the focus stays on China’s relationship with North Korea, and not the United States’.Īs strange as this may seem, Trump has led from behind before with North Korea. The president should publicly admit that the strategy for containing and constraining North Korea are Xi’s ideas and initiatives instead of Trump’s – regardless of how the ideas arose. He must understand that, besides the extremely unlikely event of a war, Beijing has more to lose if North Korea collapses: starving refugees fleeing into the country, a peninsula unified under a pro-American government and the specter of American troops on China’s border, among other consequences. Let Beijing accept praise if North Korea denuclearizes, and censure if it continues to conduct nuclear and missile tests. Trump – to borrow parlance used to mock Barack Obama’s foreign policy – needs to lead from behind. “Bringing Kim to his knees on behalf of the international community does nothing to advance Xi’s vision of a China-centered order in East Asia.” “North Korea is an important piece on Beijing’s diplomatic board,” the historian Sergey Radchenko wrote in the online magazine Chinafile. Beijing resents Trump’s hectoring tone on how to deal with a country that has long been part of its sphere of influence. The second issue is more delicate for Trump, but arguably more important. Instead of focusing on sanctions in his discussions with Beijing, Trump should frame the North Korea issue around denuclearization – which is the eventual goal of sanctions for both Washington and Beijing. Indeed, after Beijing agreed to sanctions in early August, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said their purpose was to bring the “peninsula nuclear issue back to the negotiating table, and to seek a final solution to realize the peninsula denuclearization”. The United States doesn’t want Pyongyang to have nuclear weapons, and Beijing dislikes both Pyongyang’s arsenal and the fact that South Korea falls under the United States’ nuclear umbrella. ![]() There is, however, a small area where Washington and Beijing’s strategic goals overlap: the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Trump seems to think sanctions will so weaken Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, that he will be forced to negotiate, while China’s president, Xi Jinping seems to believe the opposite: that only by opening up its economy will North Korea evolve into a responsible (or at least, not sullen and truculent) country. How? By cracking down on North Korea in the ways that benefit both Beijing’s interests and the United States’, and by conducting diplomacy in a way that respects Beijing’s sovereignty. Luckily, Beijing could still be a good partner for the United States in countering Pyongyang’s brinksmanship and aggression. By doing so, Trump ignores Beijing’s needs, and increases the likelihood his North Korea strategy will fail. Trump seems to have equated Beijing’s refusal to economically strangle North Korea with a refusal to work with the United States on restraining North Korea. And yet North Korea continues its provocative weapons tests. In mid-August, he pressed China to “do a lot more” to rein in North Korea. In early August, he convinced Beijing to sign on to a tougher set of sanctions against Pyongyang. “So much for China working with us – but we had to give it a try.” In early July, Trump seemed to finally realize this: “Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter,” he tweeted. The Trump administration must know by now that Beijing will not crush North Korea by halting trade. ![]()
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