China's Role in North Korea's Nuclear Strategy
Video Transcript:
Video Transcript
Despite international pressure, North Korea has carried out its third nuclear test, just two months after its attempted satellite launch. Pyongyang had clearly signaled its intent to carry out another test, so although the exact date and time wasn’t known, the test itself was not unexpected. Since its 2003 nuclear test, North Korea has carefully managed global expectations and responses to its nuclear program and its rocket and missile programs through calculated leaks, public announcements and structural shows for satellite observation. As North Korea continues to pursue these programs, it is carefully gauging both the limits of tolerance and the willingness of other countries to respond beyond rhetoric and sanctions. Pyongyang’s primary motivation is regime survival, and it is careful not to step past a line that would incur significant retaliation or pre-emptive action.
Key to Pyongyang’s strategy is its relationship with China. Since the end of the Cold War, China has been North Korea’s only patron state, offering economic assistance, trade and investment, and an umbrella of security. And China for the most part has benefited from this reliance. The international perception of North Korean belligerence has in the past offered China an opportunity to step in and offer its assistance in bringing North Korea to the negotiating table and easing regional tensions. Beijing has also found North Korea’s actions at times to distract regional attention from China’s own expanding ambitions and focus U.S, Japanese and South Korean resources on the small state of North Korea, rather than on China.
The mutual benefits from the China-North Korea relationship, however, raise questions of just how much leverage or control China has over North Korea, or is willing to exert. Prior to the latest nuclear test and rocket launch, for example, China publicly called on North Korea to refrain, yet the North went ahead with the tests anyway. This could mean that North Korea completely ignored China and was not worried about China’s response because Pyongyang saw China as being too worried about destabilizing North Korea to act. It could mean that China made public statements but didn’t really put any serious force behind the statements -- in other words, that China chose not to exert real pressure to stop North Korea’s actions because the actions were not really a threat to Chinese interests. Or it could mean that the Chinese and the North Koreans carefully planned out the charade of differences and worked together to shape the minicrisis.
Certainly, given China’s strong economic support of North Korea, if it was seriously concerned about North Korean behavior it could bring a lot more concrete pressure to bear on Pyongyang. And Pyongyang must be aware of this, even as the North Korean leadership sees itself increasingly overdependent upon China. Whether Pyongyang and Beijing are actively coordinating or tacitly cooperating on the North’s rocket, missile and nuclear tests may not be as significant as whether these actions are starting to shift the perceptions and responses by the United States, Japan and South Korea. If North Korean actions begin to lose their resonance given their repetition, then they no longer serve to significantly refocus attention away from China. And if China is no longer seen as a viable conduit to influence North Korean behavior, Beijing begins to lose some of its political bargaining power. It's not clear that we have reached this point yet, but if it does begin to happen, China and North Korea may also begin to rethink the implications of North Korea’s nuclear program on their own relations.
