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Shangri-La Dialogue and the Sino-U.S. divide on North Korea

Preeti Nalwa - 6/28/2010

The South Korean President Myung-bak Lee delivered the keynote address at the recently concluded 9th Shangri-La Dialogue held at Singapore from 4-6 June, 2010. The keynote address marked the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1950-53 Korean War. Since its inception in 2002, the Shangrila Dialogue has emerged as an important platform of communication for the major powers with significant stakes in Asia-Pacific security where chiefs of defense staff and permanent heads of defense ministries as well as legislators with strong defense credentials, annually meet to address emerging as well as established regional security concerns, and to advance cooperation on vital security issues.
The central focus of President Lee’s keynote address was North Korea's alleged torpedoing of the South Korean naval patrol warship “Cheonan”. The various acts of aggression carried out by North Korea in the past were also recounted by both President Lee and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in detail. Specifying that North Korea has denied its involvement in the sinking, President Lee characterized the North Korean assertion that “the United States military mistakenly fired at the ship and caused it to sink” as “outlandish” and “laughable”.
China Says: Not to follow power politics in Asia

On the contrary, at the Second Plenary session General Ma Xiaotian, Deputy Chief of General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army, China put his own perspective on the Korean situation indirectly and said that “relevant issues should neither be politicized nor used as excuses to put pressure on other countries in pursuit of one's own interest”. He referred to the existence of cold-war mentality in Asia “often shown by efforts to strengthen military alliances via new technologies, the threat to use force in international relations” and criticized seeking security through the formation of alliances since they severely undermine the security of other countries and are perilous for being an obstacle to building trust. General Ma assured that since hegemonism, expansionism and power politics have inflicted too much suffering on people around the world, China is not set to follow this course like some western countries did.

General Ma’s statements reflect his estimation that there are two qualitatively different modes of international relations being practiced in East Asia, one by the U.S. and another by China, i.e. conflictuous and cooperative respectively. He also alluded to differences at the civilizational level but nonetheless stressed that learning from each other is possible through interaction, and that lasting peace could be achieved through “harmonious coexistence” in the Asia-Pacific. At the Shangri-La conference, the U.S. and China openly blamed each other for the freeze in military ties generated by the U.S. arm sales worth $6 billion to Taiwan which highlights a divide that would hinder efforts to resolve tension on the Korean peninsula.

Equating of “Cheonan” with “Freedom Flotilla”

This sets the background to the controversial discussion about the Choenan incident at the conference. General Zhu Chenghu, PLA delegate and a hawkish strategist at the National Defence University in Beijing, asked why America was not seeking a full international investigation into Israel’s 31 May attack on the Turkish aid Freedom Flotilla to Gaza that left nine dead and many wounded. Mr. Gates had replied that the stealth torpedo attack was different from enforcing a coastal blockade in which peace activists on a humanitarian mission were attacked in international waters.

However, legal analysts say that the blocade itself is illegal and amounts to a breach of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits collective punishment and is in violation of international humanitarian law. Being an authorized action by the Israeli military, the attack is being interpreted as an act of war on Turkey. On May 31, 2010 the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) issued a Presidential Statement which condemned “acts” resulting in the deaths of nine civilians in Israel’s assault demanding an impartial investigation into the confrontation.
Taking cue from the wordings which refrains from exclusively blaming Israel in the UNSC condemnation, since the Obama administration refused to endorse a statement that singled out Israel, “China is showing an attitude that it wants the UNSC to deal with the Cheonan case at a similar level to the one at which it condemned Israel for the use of force on the ships carrying aid to Palestinians on May 31,” as it is still to locate a diplomatic way which censures its ally, North Korea for its alleged torpedoing of the Cheonan. South Korea says that any UNSC statement without specifically naming North Korea for the alleged act would be preposterous.

Emerging doubts on the JIG Report

Moreover, doubts are being raised over the multinational investigation team’s conclusions into the sinking of the Cheonan warship. A South Korean civic group, People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) had submitted a letter on June 10, 2010 raising suspicions about the cause of the Cheonan sinking to the UN Security
Council. It called on the council to make an “objective and rational decision” since the response of the Lee Myung-bak administration could trigger “serious political and diplomatic conflict” and the group demanded its report be considered along with the South Korean government's investigations. The move is unprecedented in the history of the UNSC, but the UNSC president decided not to accept the PSPD's request since the council has never reviewed materials submitted by a civic group. On June 4, 2010 the South Korean government referred the March sinking to the UNSC, which will decide on measures against North Korea.

According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, as reported by the Chosen Ilbo, a major newspaper in South Korea, Russian Navy experts who assessed the South Korean investigation of the sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan, concluded North Korea cannot with absolute certainity be held responsible for the shipwreck. The four Russian submarine and torpedo experts had arrived in Seoul on May 31 and left on June7, 2010. The Russian head of the Federation Council's committee on defense and security, Viktor Ozerov made the statement after a meeting with Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov that the Russian Defense Ministry will release a report on the sinking of a South Korean vessel in July. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is reported to have said that "Although only one version has been broadly circulated, we should not take it immediately for granted. A thorough investigation is needed.” He further said that “As soon as the results are obvious and become public knowledge, we can talk about punishing the guilty... I mean a certain state or some other forces”.

John McGlynn, in his article for the Asia-Pacific Journal, has written that the 400 page Joint Civilian-Military Group (JIG) international investigative report remains unreleased by the South Korea government till date and thus unavailable for closer scrutinisation. The 5-page document released as a “statement” for the media actually contains two statements. While the first statement which reviews engineering and other physical evidence that allegedly determines the reasons for the sinking of the Cheonan is authored by five nations the U.S., South Korea, the U.K., Australia and Sweden, the authorship of second statement which presents a conclusion that North Korea sank the Cheonan by torpedo, does not include Sweden which can be described as the only politically unbiased nation. This statement itself says that the U.S, South Korea, the U.K, Canada and Australia, but not Sweden, contributed to the second-statement findings. Therefore, according to McGlynn, the 5-page document “incorporates intelligence gathered by five of the countries that fought against North Korea during the Korean War (1950-1953): the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and South Korea. As such, it is patently a weapon in the ongoing US-Korean War for which there has been an armistice but no peace treaty”.

Renewed U.S. sanctions against North Korea sans state sponsor of terrorism relisting

In view of the happenings at the recently concluded Shangrila Dialogue and the increasing divide amongst the Security Council members over the Cheonan sinking, a statement by the UNSC condemning North Korea will be delayed. In the meanwhile, the U.S. has slapped North Korea with its own renewed sanctions.
The South Korean 10-member team led by Yoon Duk-yong, professor emeritus at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and Lt. Gen. Park Jung-yi of the Joint Chiefs of Staff explained their findings in the sinking of the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan, to the 15 members of the UN Security Council on June 14, 2010. It was followed by a separate North Korean briefing to the UN led by its ambassador Sin Son-ho who claimed that far from sinking the ship, the North is the victim of South Korean “fabrications.” He also warned that his government's military could respond if the UN Security Council takes action against Pyongyang for the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan.
Seemingly prompted by this North Korean assertion, on June 15, 2010 President Barack Obama extended U.S. sanctions on North Korea under two domestic laws of International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act, for another year which were set to expire on June 25, 2010. The national emergency against North Korea was first declared on June 26, 2008. Obama cited North Korea’s weapons-usable fissile material as constituting the risk of proliferation which presents “a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” for which “it is necessary to continue the national emergency and maintain certain restrictions with respect to North Korea and North Korean nationals.”
The U.S. had first imposed comprehensive sanctions under the World War I era Trading With the Enemy Act on North Korea following the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 which were partially eased in 1995 as part of the 1994 “Agreed Framework” agreement and for the purpose of meeting “basic human needs.” Subsequently all but a few of the remaining trade restrictions were removed in June 2000 due to a 1999 bilateral agreement on the voluntary halt of long-range missile testing by North Korea but North Korea had suspended this moratorium following its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in January 2003. As a result of the “Initial Actions” agreement signed during the Six Party Talks on February 13, 2007, the U.S. had decided to advance the process of terminating the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act with respect to North Korea and finally the Bush administration took North Korea off this list along with State Sponsors of Terrorism list in 2008.

In the U.S., there had been a renewed effort to relist North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism. On May 20, 2010 Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republican, introduced H.R. 5350, the North Korea Sanctions and Diplomatic Nonrecognition Act of 2010, which calls on the Secretary of State to re-designate North Korea as a state-sponsor of terrorism. But U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has decided not to relist the North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism because of lack of evidence that North Korea repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism and also “to avoid provoking Pyongyang to the extent it conducts a third nuclear test.”

Conclusion

The Cheonan incident seems to have redefined equations in Northeast Asia, further strengthening the very U.S. military alliance structure with South Korea and Japan, criticized by General Ma at the Shangri-La security conference. On June 23, 2010 Kathleen Stephens, the U.S. ambassador to Seoul, during her speech at a U.S military headquarters in Seoul said that “It is an alliance that is stronger than ever”, and the U.S. would “continue to hasten the day when all of the people in Korea would live together and at a Korea whole, free and at peace”. She reiterated the commitment of the U.S. to settle the “unfinished works” six decades after the occurrence of the Korean War. Such claims allude to the U.S. support to South Korea for the possible future reunification of the Korean Peninsula which is most likely to be strongly resisted both by North Korea to retain its sovereignty and by China to check the expansion of the U.S. influence touching its very borders. James R. Lilley has opined that “The international security framework that has evolved in Korea since 1953 is predicated on an expectation that the division of the peninsula will continue” as two separate and irreconcilable political entities despite the fact that the “Koreans are a single, distinct people, and lived under a single government for more than a thousand years before the Allies’ fateful August 1945 partition of their land”.

In fact, the divide between the U.S. and China over North Korea reflects, amongst other contentious issues, the more serious underlying Sino-U.S tensions over their mutual military build-up in the tense Northeast Asian region, and given the growing economic clout of China, it is unlikely that China will acquiesce to the prodding of the U.S. for unequivocally denouncing North Korea for the Cheonan sinking at the cost of preserving both its own strategic interests in the region and its image as an emerging global power capable of not only taking independent decisions but also defending them. In a post Cold War order charaterised by Russia’s relative economic weakness, the U.S. has identified China as the potential hegemon capable of challenging its unipolar power. China views its military buildup as a prerequisite to its ascension to great power status. If power is a requisite for action to safeguard its vital interests then military build-up in naval, missile and space programmes and its projection is that strategy for creating power which announces the arrival of a nation at the helm of international affairs. And that is exactly what China is trying to do.

China’s military modernisation is precisely aimed at overcoming its conventional lack in the ability to project power over distance. Lately, China is increasingly becoming conscious of the strength of its naval command in securing sea-lanes and to bolster its claims over disputed islands in South China Sea and its rights on the off-shore oil and gas deposits in East China Sea. China’s growing projection of its maritime capability is to be also assessed by the fact of China’s acquisition of a 10-year lease of Rajin port on North Korea's east coast, which potentially gives it strategic direct access to the Sea of Japan for the first time since the 19th century.

In view of China’s growing military strength, the Obama administration is still contemplating on the wisdom of dispatching the 97,000-ton aircraft carrier USS George Washington to participate in military exercises with South Korea in the Yellow Sea lest it provokes China or cause North Korea to react violently. Susan Shirk, a former State Department official and an expert on Asian security at the University of California at San Diego warned against the folly of being “too proactive” in sending a “clear message” to its allies, North and the China of its support to South Korea. A prominent Chinese newspaper has cautioned that the repercussions of such a significant show of force of “Having a U.S. aircraft carrier participating in joint military drills off of China's coast would certainly be a provocative action toward China”.

Though at the Shangri-La Dialogue General Ma claimed that it will refrain from playing the game of power politics in Asia but it seems that a great game of power is being played by the U.S. and China in Northeast Asia. The “chill” in Sino-U.S. relations evident at the conference due to the suspension of military-to-military contact makes the delicate balance of security on the Korean peninsula even more precarious. The vision of Shangri-La Dialogue has been to facilitate fruitful interaction between the stakeholders to reduce risks to regional stability but unfortunately this time the conference became the platform to sharply define the divide between the U.S. and China ejaculating it into the extremely complex situation prevailing in the Korean peninsula.

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