President Xi wants to recalibrate China’s relationship with America. One of the best place to do so is North Korea.
The U.S.-China partnership’s top geopolitical priority should be to de-nuke North Korea. Forget about the U.N. and its’ widely mocked and unenforceable sanctions. Forget about the failed six-party talks or the five working groups aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear program.
The universal opposition and condemnation of North Korea’s nuclear tests – the first in October 2006, culminating with the firing of three ballistic missiles on December 31, 2022 – demands an urgent alternative solution to the rehashed and recycled proposals that have been tossed around since the 1953 Korean armistice took effect.
China and Russia, which like America opposed the North Korean tests, have been humiliated and desperately want a solution they can jointly embrace with America, South Korea and Japan. Kim Jong-Il’s nuclear bluff must be called.
The Korean armistice signed on July 27, 1953, between North Korea and the U.N. forces in Korea led by the U.S. remains in force. No formal peace treaty was ever concluded. People have forgotten that more than 84,000 soldiers from 16 countries serving under the U.N. flag died during the conflict. More than a million Korean civilians also died, as well as an estimated 900,000 Chinese troops fighting with the North Koreans. A peace treaty is long overdue, before more people needlessly die. Countless North Koreans are dying every day from malnutrition and Covid-19.
America, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea must initiate five-party talks without pre-conditions.
The five-party talks should explore how best to find an honorable face-saving exit for Kim and Co. This is a negotiating tactic America has perfected with several Haitian dictators over the years – as well as President Marcos of the Philippines, and others – allowing them to live comfortably in exile with their country’s plundered funds. With China on board, Kim has no other choice other than firing his nukes and getting annihilated.
North Korea borders economic powers China, Russia and South Korea, Japan is nearby, across the Sea of Japan. These four economic superpowers can set up cooperative cross-border economic zones on their mutual borders, the kind Kim has visited and admired in China and is hopelessly and helplessly trying to emulate.
It is in the world’s long-term interest to neutralize North Korea’s nuclear capability, create a North-South confederation and eventually a unified Korea that enjoys prosperous cooperative economic zones with its neighbors.
Economic prosperity would also prevent a massive North Korea refugee exodus and ensuing crisis that China and Russia are concerned about. This would allow North Korea to finally sign a peace agreement that would clear the way for gradual reunification with the South. The cost of reunification, unlike the case in postwar Germany, would be shared by the five in the interest of humanity.
A joint military Peace Force between the U.S., China, Russia, and South Korea can ensure stability in the re-united country.
The five-party effort could transform the secretive and isolated Hermit Kingdom and its crippled economy into an open, vital, sunlit renaissance model for basket cases like Zimbabwe and other failed states.
Xi and Biden can de-nuke North Korea and bring about peace, not only on the Korean Peninsula, but East Asia. A good place to start resolving and neutralizing the thorny Sino-U.S. military powder-kegs in Asia.