Beijing can’t make North Korea ‘denuclearise’, Mr Blinken
- China is as likely to stop Pyongyang’s nuclear arms programme as the US is to halt its sale of weapons to Taiwan
Muammar Gaddafi died with a bayonet stuck out of his rear end. Saddam Hussein was almost completely decapitated when he was hanged because his executioners didn’t do, or didn’t know how to do, the basic but essential maths that works out the ratio between the length of the rope and the weight of the condemned. It’s true what your old teacher told you about maths being useful in all kinds of situations and professions.
Besides the commonality of their gruesome deaths, they also had something else in common: both gave up their nuclear weapons programme.
People always say no one knows what Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un is thinking. But there should be no doubt that his top and greatest priority, for himself and his nation, is not to end up like Gaddafi and Saddam. I should think he probably loves nuclear warheads more than anything else in life, and would have cuddled up to one in bed if he could - they are what help him sleep soundly at night.
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This image of Kim may be worth keeping in mind for everyone - a little comic relief may help lighten up the deadly dangers of the actual situation - as Thursday will mark the 70th anniversary of the Korean war armistice. Note the term armistice, which means technically, the war has never ended.
Denuclearisation, anyone? No thank you, especially if you are a dictator. The idea that the Kim regime would give up nuclear weapons for anyone or anything is therefore absurd in the extreme. It’s in this context that I would like to discuss the latest broadside from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said China must help to get North Korea to denuclearise, or else. That’s probably harder for China to achieve even if it wanted to than his demand that Beijing compel Vladimir Putin to end his war in Ukraine and commit political hara-kiri.
I sometimes wonder if Blinken ever listens to what he is saying. “We believe that you have unique influence and we hope that you’ll use it to get better cooperation from North Korea,” he said about China during a discussion at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado last week.
“But if you can’t or if you won’t, then we’re going to have to continue to take steps that aren’t directed at China but that China probably won’t like because it goes to strengthening and shoring up not only our own defences but also those of South Korea and Japan and a deepening of the work that all three of us are doing together.”
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In Washington, if you can’t think of anything better to say, you can always sound tough to make yourself look competent and important. In reality, you are neither.
Pyongyang test-fired about 100 missiles last year. A Rand Corporation study published in 2021, “Countering the risks of North Korean nuclear weapons”, estimated that the communist hermit kingdom’s nuclear arsenal could reach that of a mid-level nuclear power before the end of this decade. That means it will fall within the range of China’s 400-plus warheads, France’s 290, Britain’s 225 and Pakistan’s 165.
The North probably already has capabilities to launch intercontinental missiles and will likely develop the ability for them to carry multiple warheads soon.
What would make Kim give them up? In a word, nothing. Perhaps the only comforting thought is that Kim keeps his nuclear toys for personal survival, not for offensive purposes, which would of course be suicidal.
But to be fair to dictators, nuclear-armed nations also have had a very poor record of giving up their own nuclear arsenal either.
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People always point to South Africa in the late 1980s. The claim is that as the country made the transition from apartheid to multi-racial democracy, nuclear arms had no place there. Really? The reality was that the dying white regime and the West simply didn’t think it was a good idea to let the future black-dominated government have its own nuclear weapons.
Arguably, Ukraine also gave up its nuclear weapons after independence in 1991. But those weapons had always been Soviet-owned and controlled; neither post-Soviet Russia nor the West would let Kyiv, then called Kiev, keep them. In retrospect, maybe Ukraine should have kept them!
Beijing is no doubt unnerved by Kim’s increasingly aggressive nuclear programme. Accidents and escalation can never be ruled out when all sides are armed to the teeth. But it is as much invested in the survival of his regime as Washington is in the de facto independent status of Taiwan.
‘North Korea still Seoul’s top security threat’ – even in a Taiwan Strait conflict
While unspoken, both superpowers are wholly committed to preventing the respective unification on the Korean peninsula and across the Taiwan Strait.
Just as Beijing routinely blasts Washington for selling weapons to the island, so the US complains about China letting its ally build more nuclear bombs. Both sides are blowing hot air.
Of course, Blinken may actually be too clever by half. The Joe Biden administration is building an enhanced military alliance with Japan and South Korea - against China; North Korea’s expanding nuclear arsenal offers a good diplomatic cover.
