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LOS ANGELES -- Baghdad and Pyongyang offer a new domino theory for
world politics. Their connectedness affects the fate of the U.S.
intervention in Iraq, the future of the Koreas and overall stability
in East Asia.
The premise here is that the Bush administration will require high
levels of multinational help to ride out the rocky Iraq imbroglio.
The cost in U.S. treasure -- not to mention the impact on next year’s
U.S. presidential election -- will be enormous if Iraqi stability
is to be strictly made-in-the-U.S.A.
On this assumption, the Bush administration must do everything possible
to enlist its two great Asian allies in the effort: Japan, which
President George W. Bush may visit soon, and South Korea, where
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld checked in this past weekend.
Initially, both Tokyo and Seoul supported the U.S. decision to strike
at Saddam Hussein, despite the absence of incontrovertibly explicit
U.N. authorization. Neither decision was popular at home, to understate
the matter.
The public-opinion problem has gotten worse for the governments
of Japan’s Junichiro Koizumi and South Korea’s Roh Moo-hyun.
The cranky Stalinist regime now threatens to nuclearize not just
the Korean peninsula but potentially the whole region. It has reverted
to its Cro-Magnon rhetoric, calling one top U.S. State Department
official ‘‘human scum’’ and Rumsfeld a ‘‘psychopath.’’
(Not everyone in South Korea entirely disagrees with the latter
epithet, as evidenced by the anti-Bush street demonstration that
accompanied the secretary’s recent visit to Seoul.)
Similarly, the pacifist Japanese are increasingly unnerved, and
its anti-nuclear tradition could become untenable if the North Korean
issue festers further. This is why Baghdad and Pyongyang are domino
twins. The Japanese public will be more opposed than ever to sending
troops to Iraq if North Korea is still saber-rattling. We must not
forget that several years ago North Korea popped up an ‘‘experimental’’
missile in a trajectory over Japan, with which World War II scars
have not healed and Pyongyang still publicly quarrels.
Reflecting the urgent need for a political settlement on the peninsula,
South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Yoon Young-kwan,
speaking to the U.N. General Assembly Sept. 25, warned North Korea
‘‘it simply cannot achieve economic prosperity without
fully abandoning its intentions to develop nuclear weapons.’’
With helpful vision, Yoon proposed a comprehensive economic and
political settlement -- a loose version of a Korean European Union.
‘‘The positive impact of such cooperation and
assistance,’’ he said, ‘‘will resound not
only on the peninsula but throughout the region and beyond ... (creating)
an unprecedented opportunity to dramatically enhance international
relations in East Asia.’’
For starters, Beijing’s six-party talks on the Korean peninsula,
begun in August, must resume, despite the predictable North Korean
table-thumping and name-calling. The talks, after all, are being
hosted by the Chinese government of Hu Jintao. It has demonstrated
a limited tolerance for Pyongyang, as it has its hands full housing,
feeding and employing its own 1.3 billion people. A tsunami of North
Korean refugees is the last thing on its wish list. Pointedly, in
clear daylight, it recently dispatched an eye-opening contingent
of some 150,000 troops to guard the North Korean border. That was
some message.
The tough-minded but apparently pragmatic Hu Jintao government has
an unusual opportunity to help orchestrate a comprehensive settlement.
That would include verifiable Pyongyang denuclearization, together
with vital economic aid from its neighbors to keep the northern
country patched together pending a more permanent political peninsula
arrangement. If the vexing on-site nuclear inspection issue proves
the stopper, Beijing should guarantee Pyongyang’s denuclearization
with its own inspection program; North Korea must accept intrusive
Chinese inspections if it is not going to permit International Atomic
Energy Agency inspectors; and Washington should accept Beijing’s
assurances in the absence of any better idea -- besides peninsular
war. Such a contribution by China could prove a defining moment
in U.S.-Chinese relations.
The point is this: If Iraq is important to Bush -- and indeed it
could well prove the administration’s Achilles’ heel
-- then the administration needs to settle with the North Koreans.
This may mean allowing Beijing, and to a lesser extent Tokyo, to
take command. So be it. If North Korea remains a boiling pot of
trouble, Japanese and Korean troops will presumably remain home
for the time being. Washington must work cooperatively with Beijing,
Tokyo and Seoul. This means: Let’s have less second-guessing
from those nattering nabobs of neo-conservative negativism in Washington.
Baghdad and Pyongyang -- two of the three charter members of Bush’s
‘‘axis of evil’’ -- are now domino twins
towering over Washington. In Bali next week [Oct. 7-8], China’s
No. 2, Wen Jiabao, Koizumi and Roh will articulate an economic and
trade outline for North Korea that could have the effect of keeping
one of those dominoes from falling over on the second one -- and,
therefore, perhaps on a third: the Bush presidency itself.
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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. |
