East Asia

By Daniel Blumenthal

The symmetry is almost perfect. The week that President Obama breaks with 18 years of precedence and snubs the Dalai Lama (the man Jon Stewart called the international prince of peace) while he is in Washington, D.C., Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Perhaps an even greater coincidence is that the Dalai Lama was the prize's recipient 20 years ago, in 1989. The Norwegian Nobel Committee's presentation of that year's prize is worth quoting:

This year's Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to H.H. The Dalai Lama, first and foremost for his consistent resistance to the use of violence in his people's struggle to regain their liberty....

This policy of nonviolence is all the more remarkable when it is considered in relation to the sufferings inflicted on the Tibetan people during the occupation of their country. The Dalai Lama's response has been to propose a peaceful solution which would go a long way to satisfying Chinese interests. It would be difficult to cite any historical example of a minority's struggle to secure its rights, in which a more conciliatory attitude to the adversary has been adopted than in the case of the Dalai Lama.

The Nobel Committee's presentation speech went on to describe the Dalai Lama's continued policy of nonviolent resistance even in the face of violent suppression by the Chinese of a peaceful protest by Tibetans.

The committee noted that the Dalai Lama had been a generous and patient negotiator. He abandoned claims of Tibetan independence and conceded China's authority over defense and foreign policy in the region as well. He asked only for "elementary human rights" and "a halt to Chinese immigration to Tibet."

"This [Chinese immigration] has proceeded," said the committee, "on such a scale that there is a risk of the Tibetans becoming a minority in their own country."

As part of its reassurance policy (defended here by New Yorker writer Evan Osnos) the Obama administration seems to want to eliminate any Chinese-defined obstacles to a good Sino-American relationship. Personally, I am skeptical that this approach will maintain peace, prosperity, and the growing freedom in Asia over the long term. If I am correct, the current snubbing of a former Nobel Peace Prize winner by the current one will have sacrificed our principles without securing our interests.

By Michael J. Green

The greatest of the many ironies of President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize is that it was announced on the day he blew off one of the most deserving winners of the prize in its history: His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet.

The Dalai Lama has met the president of the United States on every one of his visits to Washington since 1991 -- until now. The White House decided it would be smarter to postpone the visit until after President Obama's visit to China, after initially indicating to the Tibetans that there would be a meeting with the president per usual. It appears that the Chinese side implored the administration not to meet the Dalai Lama this time because of the particular sensitivity of the Tibet issue at this juncture for President Hu Jintao.

Of course, the Chinese demarched the Bush and Clinton White Houses and argued that it was a "particularly bad time to see the Dalai Lama" every other time he came to Washington as well. Unfortunately, the Chinese may now concluded that the Tibet issue has fallen permanently on the back burner for the United States. This is the Tibetans' understandable fear. President Obama can correct that impression by pressing Beijing for concrete action on issues of importance to Tibet -- like excessive Han migration into the region -- when he is in Beijing. The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was given in anticipation of great things, and the president's November trip to China will be a good time to start repaying the vote of confidence from Norway.

By Michael J. Green

While conducting research for a book I am currently writing on the history of American strategic thought on Asia, I came across a memorandum prepared by the State Department in the early 1840s to guide the United States' first treaty negotiations with China. The memo stressed that the paramount goal of the U.S. commissioner to China was to secure trade access, and that under no conditions was the U.S. delegation to let on that the United States was a republic, since this might frighten the Qing. Instead, the delegation was instructed to highlight that unlike Britain, the United States would maintain a strict policy of noninterference in the affairs of other states and to express respect for the benign rule of the Celestial Emperor toward his people.

In its day, this was probably considered "smart power" and its advocates have made something of a comeback in recent months.

There has been a great deal of speculation about why the Obama administration has changed the tone and substance of U.S. policy on democracy and human rights. It is partly related to the tension between anti-imperialism and human rights in the liberal foreign-policy playbook. Iraq has also contributed to a backlash against values-based foreign policy strategies in a repeat of what happened to democracy-promotion after the Philippines intervention, World War I, and Vietnam. Politics are at play too, since Democrats now seem to believe that they can seize the political high ground on national security by embracing realism as their own (and perhaps peeling off some moderate Republicans in the process).

However, it would be far too simplistic too argue that the administration has "abandoned" human rights and democracy -- at least in Asia. In fact, the administration has actually made the case for real pressure on regimes like Burma, North Korea, and even China. The problem is that these statements of policy have been overshadowed by conflicting signals sent in speeches by the president or decisions like not inviting the Dalai Lama to the White House during his visit to Washington this week. Ironically, by being both tough and soft at the same time, the administration risks losing both American prestige and progress on the democratic causes America has always championed.

The consequences of this confused message were obvious in a meeting I had earlier this week with a senior delegation from Vietnam. The delegation raised a trip I had taken to Hanoi in early 2005 to hammer out a religious freedom agreement in advance of the Vietnamese prime minister's first visit to the White House (I was then NSC senior director for Asia). In that agreement, Vietnam agreed to open hundreds of house churches in the Central Highlands, paving the way for a successful summit and a strategic advance in U.S. relations with Vietnam. My interlocutors this week raised the trip because they wanted to confirm that U.S. strategy had now changed. They noted that President Obama's U.N. speech identified four pillars, none of which touched on human rights and democracy. Authoritarian states take what leaders say far more seriously than what bureaucrats say. So they asked my advice on how to approach intransigent U.S. bureaucrats now that the president had "moved beyond" the difficult issues of human rights and democracy.

The administration's confused signals have also hurt on Burma. After weeks of speculation that U.S. sanctions would be lifted -- speculation fueled by self-proclaimed advisors to candidate Obama now seeking to ingratiate themselves with the SPDC and by the administration's own proengagement rhetoric -- the administration's policy review on Burma turned out to be fairly modest in terms of course correction. In fact -- and this was largely missed by the press -- Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell testified that if there was not progress on securing the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and integrating the NLD and the ethnic minorities into the new constitution, the U.S. would actually seek to increase sanctions on the regime. But by then the regime had already internalized the wrong message and thought that reducing Aung San Suu Kyi's sentence from three years to 18 months would be enough to get sanctions lifted (even as the regime launched violent new military offensives against ethnic minorities along the Chinese and Thai border). Just as bad, states in ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, are moving away from their own very healthy debate about how to implement the human rights standards in the association's new charter and focusing on getting the United States to change its policy instead (Singaporeans could not be more gleeful at the opportunity to escape an internal ASEAN debate on values by shifting the burden back on Washington to change its approach). Now the prospects for progress in this new engagement of the regime are diminished because U.S. signals have softened everyone else's resolve.

Ditto for North Korea. Secretary of State Clinton's July 23 statement on North Korea, emphasized that the United States will "continue to work closely with other governments, international organizations, and NGOs to address human rights violations and abuses perpetuated by the regime, and would soon announce an envoy for North Korean human rights." But the senior envoy dispatched to the region has made barely a mention of the situation in the North.

On China, Secretary Clinton fumbled early with statements that she would not let issues like human rights and Tibet interfere with more important strategic issues. But senior administration officials have steadily adjusted since. President Obama raised human rights in welcoming remarks for the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue and in a Sept. 24 speech to the Center for a New American Security, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg said that he "could not disagree more" with Chinese officials who say that there is no place for human rights in the U.S.-China dialogue.

The problem is that nobody seems to believe any of this anymore. Than Shwe and the thugs running Burma guessed wrong on the administration's expectations. The Vietnamese clearly think the heat is off on religious freedom in their country. Japan's new foreign minister, Katsuya Okada, gloated in a joint press conference with the Cambodian foreign minister this week that the U.S. was "moving closer to Japan and Cambodia's position" -- even though Campbell had clearly testified on the content of the policy the week before.

Now with the administration's decision not to invite the Dalai Lama to the Oval Office during his visit to Washington this week (the first noninvite by a president during the visit of the Dalai Lama since 1991), the White House is compounding the mistakes in its messaging on human rights and democracy in the region.

The elements of a strong policy on human rights and democracy are a matter of record in the statements of senior Obama administration officials (for which they deserve full credit), but those points have been muddled or drowned out by conflicting narratives about engagement, access, "smart power" and the president's own apparent ambivalence about championing universal values. I suspect this will change as feigned neorealism comes up short in terms of results. Indeed, one can already see some evolution in the administration's approach to these issues. However, until the president clearly reaffirms America's commitment to human rights, democracy, and governance, there will be five consequences in Asia that even hard-core realists will lament (not to mention the idealists who would normally be comfortably at the core of a Democratic foreign policy):

1. Change agents within repressive states who matter most will be demoralized, disempowered and possibly endangered;
2. Repressive regimes will continue to think that they can get away with much lower standards than the administration could sell to the Congress or the American people if they want to lift sanctions or advance engagement (as happened in Burma with respect to Aung San Suu Kyi's sentence);
3. Repressive regimes will continue citing evidence of a higher U.S. tolerance for human rights abuses (something that now worries the Tibetans in the wake of the postponement of the Dalai Lama's visit to Washington);
4. The emerging debate in ASEAN, Japan, and Korea on the importance of addressing human rights and democracy will subside;
5. America's greatest source of soft power -- our values -- will suffer.

By Dan Twining

For six decades, two things have been more or less certain in Japanese politics -- that the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) would run the show, and that it would put the U.S.-Japan alliance at the center of its foreign policy. Indeed, Japan has only had one non-LDP prime minister in the last 53 years, and he served for only 11 months. All of this is about to change, however, with the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) poised to take power in next month's elections. Senior Japanese politicos describe what's coming as a "blowout." But for Japan -- and the United States -- it could be more like a tsunami. And it's not clear that the Obama administration knows what's about to hit them.

Despite its hold on power, the LDP has been on life-support for some time: Prime Minister Koizumi, who governed from 2001-06, took power with the anti-establishment pledge to "smash" his own party. Unfortunately for the LDP, that never really happened, and Koizumi has been followed by a series of weak prime ministers. All have been good men, and several, including Shinzo Abe and Taro Aso, have possessed a clear vision for Japan in the world. But each has been unable to reverse the LDP's declining political fortunes.

Now the tide has started to turn. In a historic defeat for the LDP, the DPJ won control of Japan's upper house in 2007. Since then, the approval ratings of first Prime Minister Fukuda and now Prime Minister Aso have only declined as support for the DPJ has surged. Tokyo municipal election results over the weekend, a bellwether for the national vote to follow, resulted in a decisive DPJ victory. This reinforced the party's strong lead in the polls and added a feeling of inevitability to what is to come in the August elections.

There are compelling arguments in favor of the political change Japanese voters seek. The country has been in an intractable economic slump for nearly two decades, following the bursting of its "miracle economy" bubble in the late 1980s. Japan has experienced a crisis of identity as a result of four factors. First, its economic malaise has yielded slow to no growth, persistent deflation, and the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the developed world. Second, the growing influence and stature of China has it poised to eclipse Japan as soon as this year as the world's second-largest economy. Third, Japan's rapidly aging society, with an already-shrinking population, is creating further pressures on an overstretched national budget. Finally, Japan remains plagued by serious questions about its role and status in a world that's being transformed by the rise of new powers, whose dynamism has eclipsed Japan's enduring strengths.

It is questionable, however, whether the DPJ can resolve these structural conundrums. The Liberal Democrats have been so dominant for so long that the DPJ has defined itself to be what the LDP is not. Under the LDP, Japanese foreign and domestic policies have been guided by a strong bureaucracy -- so the DPJ pledges to weaken bureaucratic control. Under the LDP, economic policy has been friendly to business -- so the DPJ promises a populist economic manifesto with little explanation of how to pay for it. Under the LDP, foreign policy has been grounded in the U.S.-Japan alliance -- so the DPJ wants to renegotiate its terms.

The future of the alliance, and Japan's overall foreign policy orientation should the DPJ assume office, are further muddled by the range of views within a party whose membership spans a wide spectrum -- from former left-wing socialists, who are philosophically opposed to the U.S.-Japan alliance, to disgruntled former right-wing LDP members, who support a more hawkish Japanese security policy. Some DPJ members support a trans-Pacific foreign policy in keeping with American priorities, but want Japan to assume a more equal and capable role within the alliance. Other DPJ leaders define a future in which Japan orients itself toward China and pursues Asian economic integration as its external priority, thereby diminishing the alliance with the United States. The DPJ's political alliance with the Socialist Party in Japan's upper house will pull its foreign and security policy further to the left -- and further away from the broad consensus that has defined the U.S.-Japan alliance for three generations.

In the event of an LDP loss next month, the Obama administration will be forced to grapple in the near term with the DPJ's pledge to renegotiate the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that has governed the terms of the U.S. troop presence in Japan since 1960. As part of these discussions, Japan will insist on renegotiating the way the two countries share the cost of the U.S. military presence in Japan. DPJ leaders argue that the current formula, in which Japan funds the garrisoning of U.S. forces because they are there to protect Japan, must be rebalanced. This is not the message American taxpayers will want to hear.

The DPJ also wants to further reduce the footprint of U.S. troops in Okinawa, particularly with regard to military and training operations from Futenma air base. Putting the closure or relocation of Futenma at the top of the U.S.-Japan security agenda -- after years of painful negotiations toward an acceptable compromise between American and Japanese counterparts -- risks reopening a raw wound in the alliance. At a time of grave security challenges to Japan stemming from ongoing North Korean missile launches and China's aggressive military buildup next door, a public spat over U.S. basing arrangements in Okinawa risks sending the wrong message to Japan's adversaries.

The SOFA, Japanese support for American forces, and the Okinawa bases are the most intractable issues in alliance politics, and DPJ leaders make clear that nothing is sacred in their determination to rebalance alliance relations upon taking power. This position stands in stark contrast to the deference with which generations of LDP leaders treated Washington and the alliance framework that has made possible Japan's postwar prosperity and security.

Is the Obama administration prepared for this sea change in relations with America's closest Asian ally? The good news is that Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Kurt Campbell is one of Japan's most trusted friends in Washington. He played an instrumental role in revitalizing the alliance relationship in the 1990s when he was the Pentagon's top Asia official. The bad news is that President Obama has pursued an Asia policy that in many ways seems divorced from the strategy pursued by the Clinton administration in which Dr. Campbell previously served -- a strategy he has described as an "allies-first" Asia policy, which assumes that the best way to manage the region's geopolitical challenges, especially the rise of China, is to have the strongest possible relations with core allies, starting with Japan.

The Bush administration pursued a geopolitical project in Asia that, while building a stable and productive relationship with China, worked to shape Asia's strategic evolution by strengthening the alliance with Japan; expanding Japan's alliance roles and responsibilities to make that country a global security leader; facilitating India's economic and military rise through a full-spectrum partnership with Washington; expanding the strategic vision and reach of the U.S.-Korea alliance; tying allies like Japan, South Korea, and Australia more closely to NATO and deploying jointly to out-of-area conflict zones like Afghanistan and Iraq; connecting friendly Asian maritime partners in new networks of cooperation; and expanding military relations with key Southeast Asian powers Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam.

Secretary Clinton deserves credit for visiting Japan and Indonesia on her inaugural overseas trip. But Asian great powers, Japan and India, have been treated as adjuncts of U.S. policy towards China and Pakistan, respectively -- rather than as first-tier partners of the United States, whose importance is intrinsic rather than instrumental. A DPJ government in Tokyo that treats the U.S.-Japan alliance as only instrumentally rather than intrinsically important may give us an unwanted dose of our own medicine.

Katsushika Hokusai

By Phil Levy

This week, President Obama hosted South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak at the White House. The meeting was cordial, of course, and the countries vowed their mutual allegiance, of course. But everyone had to tiptoe around the elephant in the room: the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.

Back in 2005, the United States and Korea had a series of discussions on how to improve trade relations between the two countries. Then, in February 2006, the two sides launched negotiations for a free trade agreement. The KORUS FTA was signed on June 30, 2007. This was right in the wake of a May 2007 agreement on trade between the Bush administration and Congressional leaders which the Bush administration had thought would pave the way for Congressional votes on all four pending trade agreements (Peru, Colombia, Panama, and South Korea).

Under the KORUS FTA, the United States would gain new access to the Korean market in consumer and industrial goods, agriculture, and services. The agreement is predicted to raise U.S. output by $10 billion to $12 billion annually, and increase U.S. exports to Korea by about $10 billion.

The Koreans did their part: The government opened its market to some U.S. beef exports, a politically difficult and highly divisive move that brought over a million protesters into the streets of Seoul and threatened to bring down the Korean cabinet. The United States did... nothing. We left the Koreans standing at the altar. Democrats in Congress, including then-Senator Obama, opposed the agreement. Perhaps the most significant reason given for opposition was that the Korean government meddled too much in its auto sector.

Seriously.

Actually, Korea had agreed to cut its tariffs on autos and to take some measures to address its non-tariff auto trade barriers; however, opponents contended that those measures would not go far enough. This criticism, of course, predated the Obama administration's decision to take over much of the U.S. auto sector and erect its own non-tariff trade barriers.

One experienced Washington trade lawyer this week noted the enormous missed opportunity for a silver lining with the recent auto bailout. As the Obama administration poured tens of billions of dollars into the auto industry and handed large ownership chunks of Chrysler and GM to the United Auto Workers, it could have asked the auto industry and the UAW to drop their opposition to the KORUS FTA in exchange. It didn't.

The U.S. bungling of the KORUS FTA matters not just because of the foregone economic benefits mentioned above. U.S. behavior sends signals about our reliability as an ally, both in economic matters and beyond. The U.S. Congress had authorized the Bush administration to negotiate the agreement. The Koreans had made politically painful public concessions on the understanding that they had reached the moment of truth and that the concessions would lead to a vote on the agreement. Instead, the vote was scuttled and the Koreans faced Congressional demands to negotiate some more.

What should trade negotiators around the world conclude? All negotiators like to postpone the most difficult concessions until the last moment, but how can they know when that moment has arrived with the United States? Does the U.S. Trade Representative really represent the United States, or should partners be talking with the chairman of the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee instead?

And what of the U.S. role in Asia? The United States has long sought to portray itself as dependable and indispensable in the region. The U.S. image has mattered even more of late as regional political structures have become rather fluid. China has promoted an East Asian Summit that excludes the United States as an alternative to groupings like APEC. The United States hardly looks dependable when it snubs one of its closest allies in the region. What's more, how confident can we now be that Asian countries will draw a sharp distinction between our unreliability on trade and our reliability in providing a security umbrella? This is all the more important considering that the latest South Korean visit to Washington came against the backdrop of further threatening behavior by the North.

So this week, when the Koreans came to town, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and his Korean counterpart agreed to hold discussions on how to improve trade relations between the two countries, as if it were 2005 all over again. President Obama said the United States was committed to a "sustained strategic partnership" with the Republic of Korea. Apparently this all holds just so long as that commitment doesn't require any awkward free-trade votes in the House of Representatives. The President isn't willing to cross the KORUS line. And that's the elephant in the room.

By Dan Twining

North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests, new threats of war against its declared enemies, and the predictable results of these developments -– expressions of concern at the UN Security Council, U.S. offers of more unconditional talks, China’s ambivalent response –- suggest that we remain in the “Groundhog Day” cycle of crisis and response that has characterized U.S. policy towards Pyongyang since 1994. In fact, new dynamics on the peninsula and in the region, and the fresh opportunity provided by what can now clearly be judged to be years of failed policy on denuclearization and disarmament, present an opportunity for a creative rethink about U.S. policy options. To clarify a way forward, it’s worth considering how the playing field has shifted (I see five ways that it has), and how this may create a different set of possibilities for the United States and our allies vis-à-vis the North Korean regime -– one that breaks decisively from the past and offers real hope for change.

1. Regime transition in North Korea

The current crisis cycle with North Korea dates to the leadership transition from Kim Il-sung to Kim Jong-il in 1993-4, when the U.S. embraced a set of policies centered around bilateral negotiations and fuel supply to induce North Korean cooperation on our disarmament objectives. With the exception of the “axis of evil” period from 2001-03, the Bush administration largely continued these policies within the framework of the Six-Party Talks. Following Kim Jong-il’s apparent stroke last year, we are now in the midst of the second leadership transition in North Korean history, that from the Dear Leader to his youngest son, Kim Jong-un (demonstrating that dynastic politics trumps communist ideology). 

This transition creates serious risks, including the empowerment of the North Korean military as a political constituency that the leadership in Pyongyang must appease (for instance, by testing nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles). But it also raises the possibility of a new cycle in Washington’s relations with North Korea, one that could include exploiting newly apparent fissures in its regime and creating a different incentive structure for the emerging leadership’s decision-making on ongoing nuclear and missile programs.  

2. Political realignment in South Korea

Since the election of Kim Dae-jung in 1997 and the administration of his successor Roh Moo-hyun, the Achilles’ heel of U.S. efforts to wield sticks as well as carrots towards North Korea has been South Korea’s opposition to tough measures in favor of a “sunshine policy” of unconditional engagement. For a decade, Seoul effectively elevated inter-Korean comity over its U.S. alliance relationship, reducing any leverage the United States and partners like Japan sought to bring to bear on the North. In turn, fundamental differences in style and strategy between Washington and Seoul enabled Pyongyang to drive a wedge between the allies and isolate Japan. The United States turned to China as its key partner on North Korea, with questionable results.

The election in South Korea of conservative president Lee Myung-bak in 2008 changed the equation. Lee has spoken out forcefully about the abuses of Korean people’s rights under Pyongyang’s totalitarian rule and ended the provision of unconditional food aid, which independent monitors judge to have mainly benefited the North’s ruling elite. Washington now has a like-minded partner in Seoul committed to greater realism and toughness in containing the insecurity emanating from Pyongyang, again creating new possibilities for North Korea policy going forward.

3. A new security environment in Northeast Asia

Pyongyang has now declared that it will no longer observe the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War and has threatened South Korea with military attack. Though Pyongyang has a history of shrill and alarmist declarations, it would be a mistake to assume that an unstable regime in the midst of a leadership transition and now possessing nuclear weapons will never act on its own discourse. These moves create a new security environment on the Korean peninsula –- one that requires the United States to demonstrate its commitment to the defense of core allies Japan and South Korea, including through heightened readiness and deployment of offensive weaponry as well as enhanced missile defenses. 

Pyongyang is testing our new president, and he would do well to surprise it on the upside -– just as President Clinton surprised Beijing during the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis by deploying multiple aircraft carrier battle groups to the region, leading China to stand down after bracketing Taiwan with missiles. Indeed, President Obama could consider the advice of Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry and senior Pentagon official Ash Carter to signal a willingness to “strike and destroy” North Korean missile launch sites to deter -- or preempt -- further North Korean mischief. As Philip Zelikow points out, such a move could also strengthen the president’s diplomatic hand on Iran.

Signaling to allies is as important as signaling to adversaries, and Japan and South Korea will be watching the U.S. response carefully. Japan is also debating a more robust military role in light of the North Korean tests: the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is debating the adoption of what former Defense Minister Nakatani calls “active missile defense,” or preemptive strikes against North Korean missile launch sites. A Japanese doctrinal and political decision to deploy offensive ballistic missiles against North Korea would transform the East Asian strategic environment and enhance American deterrence and compellence capabilities vis-à-vis Pyongyang.

4. New possibilities for quarantining North Korea

This week, South Korea joined the Proliferation Security Initiative -– a decisive move that will make it a key partner rather than the missing link in a strategy to quarantine North Korean proliferation. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council is considering the imposition of additional multilateral sanctions, including targeted sanctions against North Korean leaders and companies that have proven effective in the past. Indeed, U.S. sanctions against Banco Delta Asia proved so effective in squeezing the regime’s supply of hard currency that Pyongyang made the release of a mere $25 million a condition for the resumption of Six-Party negotiations during the Bush administration.

In reality, the U.S. debate over what mix of carrots and sticks to employ against North Korea misses a key point: America and its allies have never pursued a genuine quarantine strategy against North Korea. Such a strategy would interdict North Korean air and maritime traffic to disrupt its global trade in missile and nuclear components (a trade which continued lucratively throughout the Six-Party negotiations); end provision of food and fuel assistance to the North; and limit Pyongyang’s access to international finance through multilateral banking, corporate, and leadership sanctions. Its purpose would be to squeeze the regime in ways that would create fissures within it, coercing a change in external behavior and perhaps the rise of new leadership less committed to confrontation.

5. China’s diminishing influence –- or interest –- in North Korean compliance

In building the Six-Party Talks around a Sino-American axis, the Bush administration made a bet that China was more likely to be part of any solution on North Korean denuclearization than part of the problem. Two nuclear weapons tests, multiple ballistic missile tests, and a shredded war armistice later, it appears that Beijing is either unable or unwilling to coerce better behavior from what Chinese analysts admit is an uncontrollable client state. At the same time, the Sino-American axis within the Six-Party talks may no longer be dominant: South Korea has again become a like-minded partner, Bush administration officials’ disregard for the legitimate concerns of our Japanese ally is a historical relic, and Russia, eager to preserve the sanctity of the UN Security Council as a vehicle for its own international leadership as a declining power, has called for a robust international response to North Korea’s latest weapons tests. 

Beyond securing our people and our allies against blackmail or attack, America’s long term goal must be positioning our country to be a decisive player in a unified Korea governed from Seoul and aligned with Japan and the United States in East Asia. Both North Korean leaders -- who have in the past sought a special relationship with the United States to balance Chinese influence -- and South Korean leaders identify a Chinese design to enjoy privileged influence on the Korean peninsula, in part for defensive reasons related to competition with Japan and the United States. If our Korean friends, whose sense of danger derives from centuries of living in a neighborhood of giant, predatory powers, believe that China and the United States are engaged in a fundamentally competitive rather than cooperative relationship on the peninsula, Washington may wish to move beyond reliance on Beijing to deliver Pyongyang on denuclearization in favor of an allies-first strategy to induce strategic change on the Korean peninsula.

By Philip Zelikow

An appropriate policy toward North Korea should quarantine and limit the threat the state can pose to the United States and its allies. U.S. diplomacy, properly conceived, should always have had two goals. First, to offer -- in good faith -- a genuine opportunity for the North to make a constructive strategic choice for the future.  Second, to strengthen U.S. and allied ability (political as well as military) to defend themselves if the North made a different choice.

Some people tend to emphasize only the diplomatic track; others only emphasize the defensive measures. The key point, which former Secretary Rice and former Deputy Secretary Zoellick understood very well, was that the first track is a necessary enabler for the second one. So in 2005, the United States reinvigorated the Six Party process to make the first track real. And in 2005, the United States took steps that effectively destroyed a Chinese bank in Macau, the Banco Delta Asia, illustrating America's readiness to pursue the other track as well.

This dual strategy heightened tension, culminating in North Korea's nuclear test of 2006. Yet the international response in 2006 displayed unanimity and firmness that had not been seen since 1953, evident in UN Security Council resolution 1718. The result was a fresh diplomatic opening, a promising agreement in February 2007, and a further test of North Korean intentions, one so specific and unequivocal that the results were bound to be revealing.

North Korean behavior in 2007 was indeed revealing. Despite some great pictures for CNN, North Korea failed adequately to account for its past nuclear trade, including possible transfers of enriched uranium to Libya and possible transfers of nuclear fuel (as well as much other help) to Syria. Although the known plutonium production facility was temporarily disabled, possible uranium enrichment facilities remained. Of course, the possible Libyan and definite Syrian choices were made in the past. But it was (and is) essential for the United States and its allies to develop some reasonable understanding of how that proliferation path worked -- and was funded -- to have adequate confidence that the path is gone.

Thus, during 2007, the United States and its allies could conclude that they would not be able to achieve a critical, realistic objective: a verifiable cap on North Korea's capacity to build nuclear weapons and produce weapons-usable nuclear material. Such a concrete objective would have been worth the candle -- a good prelude to a further, comprehensive phase of Korean diplomacy that would include the attainment of complete denuclearization, as required by UNSC 1718 and as pledged by North Korea in 1992, 2005, and 2007. Attainment of even that preliminary objective was in even greater doubt, though, given the evidence of 2007.

Nonetheless, the United States helped construct a further agreement (Beijing, October 2007) to keep the diplomatic process afloat rather than move it to a new phase. Why? I don't know. Today's Wall Street Journal editorial listed me as first, ahead even of Chris Hill and Condi Rice, in persuading President Bush to make the October 2007 decision to keep that diplomatic track alive and take North Korea off the terror list. That rank ordering in supposed infamy is especially bizarre, since I had left the administration at the end of 2006. (Perhaps someone wanted to sling something at me because of my stance on terrorism issues, and this was the only available clod of mud.)

The pros and cons of the October 2007 decision are hard for me to judge. I'm certainly inclined to give President Bush and Secretary Rice the benefit of doubt. Perhaps the moves to destroy the plutonium facility seemed so encouraging; the uranium enrichment concerns seemed wispy; and forcing the North to admit a past it could not acknowledge would seem merely backward-looking and punitive, rather than future-oriented and constructive.

Yet there were large downsides of keeping the process afloat with the October 2007 Beijing agreement, and they grew, especially as the Beijing agreement proved hollow. The uranium enrichment issues had been spotlighted by the new evidence on Libya and Syria ties and did not seem to be getting addressed. The coalition-building benefits with South Korea were diminishing, especially as the South Korean people repudiated the policy direction of the late president Roh Moo-hyun. The already-strained relations with Japan had to carry a heavier burden of mistrust. The bonds with China remained strong, but there was a danger of short-sightedness. As China effectively took on more responsibility as North Korea's protector and guarantor in the diplomacy, Chinese action or inaction on this topic could become another potential issue in an utterly vital connection: Chinese relations with Japan.

In any case, the United States definitely went the extra mile in its diplomacy. Now Washington can credibly offer coalition leadership in developing appropriate defensive measures of all kinds.

1. Sanctions?  It would be nice to enforce fully the ones already on the books in UNSC 1718.

2. Instead what is needed is international action by interested parties to redress the violation of UNSC 1718 with suitable defensive measures under Chapter VII. Either the UN should expressly authorize that, or note that this will happen, or the Security Council should remain silent. It set the international norm in 2006 and did so under Chapter VII.  The norm has been violated. Unless a further resolution is suitably empowering, silence might be best. The Security Council should not limit what can be done by specifying it.

3. The United States must now treat the North Koreans as having crossed the "red line" of proliferating nuclear material and, based on our analysis of how they did this, do everything possible to disable this capability.

4. Also, as I wrote in this space a few months ago, the United States should take necessary preparations with its allies to limit North Korean development of the ballistic missiles they could marry with their nuclear (or biological or chemical) payloads.

5. Keep in mind that all of this is a curtain-raiser for the Obama administration's still too-be-determined policy on Iran.

Certainly any measure that confronts North Korea carries risks of escalation. The North Korean government made the decision to act beyond its borders.  The United States should prepare with its allies to address these risks. Evidence of that preparation is the best way to reduce the risk. And our Chinese and Russian friends can judge for themselves how best to manage the risks they see arising from this cancer across the Yalu.

By Aaron Friedberg

This week's run-in between the U.S. Navy ocean survey ship Impeccable and a small armada of Chinese coastal patrol boats, as well as the subsequent decision reported today to dispatch a U.S. destroyer to protect the Impeccable, are significant on a variety of levels.

Unlike the collision of the U.S. EP-3 surveillance aircraft and the Chinese fighter plane that took place almost exactly 8 years ago, this was no an accident.  Instead of a single hotshot pilot, flying beyond the limits of his skill, in this case five small Chinese craft acted in concert to intercept and harass a U.S. vessel.  This was a deliberate provocation, almost certainly authorized at the highest levels, intended to probe the reflexes and responses of the new U.S. administration. It was also the latest in a series of attempts by Beijing to assert its claim to restrict what it regards as hostile activity up to 200 miles from its coasts (the extent of its so-called "Exclusive Economic Zone") rather than only out to the edge of its internationally recognized 12-mile territorial waters.

The location of the incident, 70 miles south of Hainan Island (where the downed EP-3 made an emergency landing in 2001) is also important. It was revealed last year that the Chinese navy (the People's Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN) has built a large new submarine base on Hainan near the town of Yulin. From here, the PLAN will be able to conduct operations in the South China Sea, where Beijing has a number of outstanding claims over territory and undersea resources, as well patrolling the sea lanes that carry oil from the Persian Gulf to China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. The location of the base should also make it easier for China's new nuclear missile launching subs to slip undetected into deep ocean waters. According to press accounts, the Impeccable was conducting surveys off Hainan that are probably intended to assist U.S. Navy in detecting and tracking China's fast-growing submarine fleet. 

These events are the latest steps in a quiet drama that has been unfolding now for over a decade. Certainly since the end of the Cold War, if not before, the United States has been the dominant naval power in the Pacific, able to operate freely whenever and wherever it chose up to the shores of the Eurasian landmass. Now China is starting to project power into the air, sea, and space beyond its terrestrial boundaries. And it has begun to challenge U.S. preponderance on, over, and under the Western Pacific. Neither country has any interest in provoking a conflict, but neither is going to simply back down and give way before the other. Military-to-military discussions and the establishment of agreed procedures and operational parameters may help avoid some dangerous incidents, but they will not remove the fundamental sources of the blossoming strategic rivalry between the two Pacific powers.

One final point deserves mention: This week's events coincided with ongoing discussions about how the United States and China can best coordinate their policies so as to limit the damage from the ongoing global economic crisis and restore a favorable climate for investment and trade. This mix of cooperation and competition is likely to characterize Sino-American relations for the next several decades, and perhaps beyond. What we do not know yet is which of the two elements will be more prominent.