Diplomatic somersaults in North-east Asia

The flurry of counter-intuitive diplomatic overtures involving China and South Korea on one hand, and Japan and North Korea on the other, illustrates British politician Benjamin Disraeli’s maxim that states have no permanent friends or enemies, but permanent interests.

Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a high-profile visit to Seoul last week and stood beside South Korean President Park Geun-hye as she declared that both of them wanted denuclearisation of North Korea to be “realised by all means”. Simultaneously, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe eased unilateral sanctions against North Korea and promised it was “only a start”, with further improvement of ties with Pyongyang on the cards if there is progress on finding Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korean intelligence agents.

Both these developments invert conventional assumptions that bracket China and North Korea as one dyad, and Japan and South Korea as the other couple.

CHINA’S OUTFLANKING MOVE

Foreign policy twists in a region such as East Asia, where alliance formations were set in stone long ago, reflect emerging fluidity in the geopolitical ambience. The bosom friendship between China and North Korea (officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK) has been a defining fixture in the security architecture of East Asia since the 1950s.

This seemingly eternal alliance was initially cemented by shared communist ideology and hatred for Western imperialism manifested in the form of the United States’ military stranglehold over Japan, South Korea (officially the Republic of Korea or ROK) and Taiwan. The very existence and independence of North Korea as a separate entity was considered strategically vital for China to avoid facing American troops right on the Chinese border (a clear and present danger if the two Koreas reunify under the aegis of the South).

During the Cold War and for a while even after it ended, the usual line-up of camps would be China-DPRK on one side and the three American allies, Japan-ROK-Taiwan, opposing them. But this division of lines has blurred in the past decade amid a principal-agent dilemma plaguing China’s relationship with the mercurial North Korea.

As Pyongyang’s sole international benefactor, donor and supporter, Beijing has been disappointed by the former’s relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons. China is not only under international pressure to chide North Korea for its nuclear folly, but also peeved by the rebellious streak in Pyongyang that plainly refuses to heed Beijing’s counsel.

The Communist Party line in China is still to defend North Korea in global forums, but the former is growing alienated by the whimsical and obstinate policies pursued by DPRK’s supreme leader Kim Jong-un. For a Chinese President to even indirectly castigate North Korea while he is in Seoul would generate outrage in Pyongyang, but China has few levers left to quietly coax and drive sense into the inscrutable Kim dynasty.

The DPRK’s calculation of cold-shouldering Chinese advice is based on moral hazard. That is, by virtue of being a geostrategic buffer for China against the Americans, Beijing has no option but to keep tolerating its shenanigans. China is now expanding its relations with Seoul beyond economics and into the security sphere precisely to teach the recalcitrant Mr Kim a lesson. Beijing’s cosying up to the regime in Seoul that Pyongyang decries as a “puppet” of the West is an outflanking tactic. But instead of chastising Mr Kim, China’s closer security coordination with South Korea may drive him into Japan’s arms. The surprise thaw between North Korea and Japan is a bargaining ploy for Mr Kim to show the limits of Chinese tricks.

FINDING NEW STRATEGIC PARTNERS

From the Japanese point of view, North Korea should no longer be a distraction that causes Tokyo to deviate from countering its main threat, China. Until recently, Japan’s security planning and strategic posturing used to be motivated by the threat posed by North Korean missiles and nukes. But this doctrine of Japanese foreign policy is being rethought in Tokyo in light of the bigger challenge posed by the massive rise of China as a superpower.

Mr Abe’s vision of taking on a region-wide proactive role to roll back China is so unambiguous that nations such as the Philippines, which experienced wartime atrocities under Japanese occupation, are now cheering for a remilitarisation of Japan.

North Korea will not go as far as the Philippines because the whole Korean peninsula suffered immensely under Japanese colonial rule. But as China and South Korea are inching closer by restating their historical victimhood against Japan, Pyongyang might see less value in ranting against imperial Japanese war crimes in the present dynamic geopolitical environment.

Foreign policy somersaults occur due to uncertainty in a multipolar world where no one is sure who might become useful at what juncture. The big picture causal factor propelling East Asian countries to reassess each other in new light is the US’ relative decline and fear that it may not be as committed to its allies as before. For Japan and South Korea, finding new strategic partners within the Asia-Pacific region is imperative as they cannot forever rely on American security guarantees.

Although China and Japan are attempting rapprochements with friends of enemies, it would be stretching the argument to claim they are abandoning their traditional allies. What is happening is not a core realignment but a “mixer dance” where partners can be exchanged on the floor and briefly felt. The pattern is that pairs are not rigidly bound, but flexibly arrayed, with eyes meeting and leading to moments of convergence.

It is hard to determine winners and losers in this churning. Such is the sign of our times where power is internationally more diffused and diplomacy is imbued in shades of grey rather than watertight black and white.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sreeram Chaulia is a professor and dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs in Sonipat, India