China props up the Kim regime, South Korea is feckless, and the U.S. is tied down militarily.

Nov 30, 2010
WSJ

By EDWARD N. LUTTWAK

If North Korea were an island, it would now be under a strict blockade—minimum punishment for sinking a South Korean warship and killing 46 sailors in March, for building an illegal nuclear enrichment plant, and for killing South Korean soldiers and civilians with last week’s sudden artillery barrage on Yeonpyeong island.

But North Korea isn’t an island. It shares a long border with China and a short one with Russia. The so-called China-North Korea Friendship Bridge connects, by road and rail, Dandong on the Chinese side and Sinŭiju on the North Korean side. Without the traffic it carries—everything from coal, petroleum products and fancy foods to the Chinese-built locomotives that pull North Korean trains—the dictatorship of the Kim dynasty could not long endure.

The fancy foods are anything but a frivolous import. The dictatorship is secured by a well-fed class of party officials, political policemen and elite soldiers. They are the ones without the starved look typical of North Koreans—thanks to shops, canteens and fancy eateries like the Pyongyang No. 1 Duck Barbeque, which are always well supplied even when famine rages outside the capital. The regime has long refused to waste scarce foreign currency to import rice or wheat to keep its population from starving whenever its mismanaged agriculture fails.

What makes the traffic of the Friendship Bridge essential—North Korea does have some cargo ships, after all—is that it is partly free of charge because China is the one country that considers the North Korean regime worthy of aid and support. No matter what the North Koreans do, China’s government continues to supply coal and oil at low prices, and its foreign ministry invariably refrains from any criticism. Instead, it piously calls on both sides to show restraint and resume the six party talks, which have never produced anything but hot air.

The only Chinese complaint issued after the Yeonpyeong artillery attack was directed at the United States—for sending the aircraft carrier USS George Washington into waters near South Korea. U.S. carriers stay a long way from the 12-mile limit of territorial waters, but China keeps illegally trying to claim control of much more—a 200 nautical mile “exclusive economic zone.” Restraining North Korea is simply not a priority for Beijing.

The government of South Korea would seem to have little choice but to press the Chinese to change course drastically and discipline the North Koreans. But the South Koreans have always been humbly deferential to the Chinese. One reason the recent G-20 summit failed to achieve any worthwhile result was that the South Korean hosts opposed any criticism of China. If South Korea rules out diplomatic pressure on China because it’s bad for business, then it shouldn’t expect the Obama administration to do much either.

Certainly nothing is achieved by issuing solemn warnings and indignant declarations. Mere words do not impress the hard-bitten North Koreans. They have seen Americans and South Koreans meekly accept what they had previously denounced as “unacceptable” and there is no credible threat of force since the Obama administration is already twice occupied on that front.

That leaves American diplomatic action. Former President Jimmy Carter, who considers himself an expert on North Korea, reacted to the nuclear revelations and the deadly Yeonpyeong bombardment by immediately calling for bilateral talks with North Korea, which demands “respect,” he said.

Read more at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704700204575642820185635664.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

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