January 27, 2003

BEIJING WORRIES ABOUT U.S. DESIGNS ON THE KOREAN PENINSULA

By Tom Plate

And now President Bush finds himself squeezed in a vise of hiw own making

LOS ANGELES -- It's frightening how many Chinese in Beijing's government elite suspect the Bush administration of harboring a secret plan to keep the Korean peninsula divided. But such Chinese suspicions about U.S. strategic aims -- that Washington hopes the North/South face-off continues -- could solidify a wall of mistrust that would cast a huge and dark shadow over Asia.

The Chinese figure it this way: Tease the tensions out of North-South relations and arrange to keep the nukes out forever, and who'd still want those 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea? Beijing's answer: Washington.

That's because many Chinese believe the Bush administration has in mind a grand strategic design to dominate both the Middle East (starting with an Iraq offensive) and East Asia (to counter China's growing profile).

Such an ambition -- a new geopolitical platform, really -- would be harder to achieve without U.S. troops there. Forward deployment capabilities are not the same as real bases with 100,000 troops on the ground in Korea and Japan. That's why peninsula peace, in the Chinese view, would work against the new Pax Americana.

This broadly held, disturbing and presumably far-fetched view has some logic to it. It could explain the Bush administration's brutal chilling of Kim Dae-jung's "sunshine policy" back in March of 2001. It could illuminate the motive behind Washington's blustery threats after North Korea suddenly pleaded guilty last fall to a secret nuclear program. "You caught us," said the North Koreans in effect: Right, you caught us -- said the North Koreans: So you want to make something of it? Throw the first punch and see how we react!

Many Chinese, for the record, are convinced that the beleaguered North Koreans have no serious program and possess no nuclear weapons -- but that's another story. What's truly worrisome is that so many Koreans in the South quietly share the Chinese perspective on U.S. intentions. That's scary: The impact of such a rising cycle of suspicion in East Asia -- if unabated -- could push South Korea much closer to China, hand Beijing a staggering diplomatic coup and set in motion a gradual strategic realignment in East Asia.

The Chinese retain, to be sure, a certain fraternal and ideological loyalty to North Korea, with which it fought the capitalists 50 years ago at the cost of 800,000 men. But today, prosperous, pragmatic South Korea is the attractive side of Korea that Beijing wants to take to the dance -- and many southerners are ready for the hop.

How times change: China is now the South's largest trading partner, grabbing the honor from the United States. They also share with the Chinese a visceral dislike of a hubris-ridden America that proposes a new world order dominated by America. Not even its dynamic new president, Roh Moo-hyun, will be able to tamp down the anti-Americanism if U.S. big-footedness proceeds.

To make matters worse, President George Bush is under growing pressure at home -- from left and right -- to "do something" about the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Right-wing GOPers don't buy the notion that China is an innocent bystander as flustered as everyone over the North's pranks and unpredictability. Some conservatives, believing Beijing is, in fact, goading Pyongyang on, want Bush to punish the North militarily, or at least to hit it with a severe economic quarantine.

For their part, many Democrats are eager to embarrass Bush. So they chide him for beating the drums of military action against Iraq while waving the peace pipe in front of North Korea. If the president must have war, they suggest, the more deserving target is the latter -- with its possible nuclear weapons and far larger military.

With all this ground shaking under him, Bush, for the time being, seems to be looking for a temporary out, putting his "no compromise with evil" policy on hold while offering North Korea food aid, energy and perhaps even diplomatic inducements to drop its nuclear ambitions. But that squeezes him in a vise partly of his own making. By questioning the only approach that ever made sense -- an endlessly patient engagement policy, even as the North kept childishly throwing its rattle out of its crib -- he opened up options that appealed to his staunch anti-communism. But they also appealed to the anti-Americanism in South Korea, the paranoia in China, the anti-communism in the Republican right and the ever-present opportunism on the Democratic left.

That's a different kind of Axis of Evil than Bush anticipated. And this axis has limitless potential to hurt him.

The above weekly column has just appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser, The South China Morning Post and The Straits Times of Singapore. The author, Tom Plate, is a regular columnist at these three papers. The column also appears in other world newspapers, including The San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The Japan Times and The Korea Times. Email him at: tplate@ucla.edu.

For publication and reprint rights, contact the author directly or John Simpson (john.simpson@latsi.com) of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate International.

Previous Columns:

The World Could Lose A Vital International Voice (January 21, 2003)

Japan '42 Redux -- Or Is It Vietnam All Over Again? (January 20, 2003)

Making The Best Of A Bad Situation (January 13, 2003)

Can Chinese Diplomacy Turn Over A New Card? (January 6, 2003)

Stunning Victory For Korean Reform Candidate (December 31, 2002)