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Attempt to avert the descent of Northeast Asia into war

Preeti Nalwa - 7/25/2010

The much awaited release of the UNSC presidential statement on July 9, 2010 condemning the Cheonan sinking was expected to finally put to rest the tensions which had arisen in the wake of the corvette’s sinking. But it seems that this incident has taken a life form of its own which refuses to abate the growing apprehensions in Northeast Asia. The relatively moderate statement had temporarily dispelled the fear about any North Korean retaliation as it had emphatically announced that it would strike if a penalizing and vindictive posture was adopted by the council. Abstaining from declaring North Korea as a culprit, the statement said that “The Security Council deplores the attack on 26 March 2010 which led to the sinking of the ROK naval ship, the Cheonan, resulting in the tragic loss of 46 lives” and called for “appropriate and peaceful measures to be taken against those responsible for the incident.” It indorsed the conclusions of the South Korean-led Joint Civilian-Military Investigation (JIG) which concluded that North Korea was responsible for sinking the Cheonan but its riposte to it was expressed by limiting it to stating council’s “deep concern” regarding it. The special element of the statement was the inclusion of the remark that the Security Council took “note of the responses from other relevant parties, including from the DPRK, which has stated that it had nothing to do with the incident”. The statement also underscored the “importance of preventing further attacks or hostilities” against the South or the region.

Reactions of stakeholders and analysts

The statement has elicited varied interpretations from the stakeholders and analysts. South Korean Ambassador Park In-kook welcomed the statement and expressed his appreciation to the international community for its support. He said that “I am sure that today's strong and unanimous statement will serve to make North Korea refrain from further attack or provocation”. A senior Seoul diplomat said that “It was a satisfying result,” as the statement from the powerful UN body sent a “stern message” that would prevent more attacks by Pyongyang. The official said that “What’s important is that we conveyed a clear message that one should not make additional attacks or hostile actions against South Korea”. But according to Hwang Jin-ha, a Grand National Party lawmaker specialized in international and inter-Korean affairs and Hong Hyeon-ik, senior researcher at the Sejong Institute, a political think tank, it was only a “half-success”, especially when it was the prime priority of South Korea in making the international community recognize that it was North Korea that attacked the Cheonan. Hwang Jin-ha said that “It is regretful that the U.N. failed to clarify who's responsible for the sinking of the Cheonan. However, it is a big first step toward a firm global action against any North Korean provocation in the future”. Hong Hyeon-ik is of the opinion that the “statement is too equivocal to be a warning message to the North.” However, another senior Foreign Ministry official expressed the opinion that China, the North’s key ally, made a “very significant, painful but right decision” to allow such pointed wording to appear in the latest statement.

David C. Kang, the director of the Korean Studies Institute at the University of Southern California, said before the final statement was issued that ‘‘It condemns the attack without stating exactly who they think the attackers were.'' Kang said that “it seems unlikely to satisfy anybody” but “given that China was not going to go forward with an outright condemnation, ''it strikes me as the best that South Korea could have hoped for”. More importantly, Kang said that because of the indirect condemnation, Pyongyang would most likely see the outcome as a victory and do nothing. And rightly so, North Korea has refrained from any bellicose statement after the latest UNSC statement, and is in fact, looking forward to the resumption of the Six-Party talks (SPT).

North Korea’s UN representative Sin Son Ho reportedly hailed the statement as a "diplomatic victory" for Pyongyang, reasserting that from the beginning the North has been very clear that the sinking had nothing to do with them. The North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that the statement “amounted to a failure of a despicable conspiratorial diplomacy of hostile forces”. A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said on July 10, 2010 that though the South Korean authorities referred the Cheonan sinking to the UNSC, it failed to adopt any resolution and “wound up its discussion by issuing a presidential statement that has neither clear judgment nor conclusion”. He claimed the North will “make consistent efforts to conclude a peace agreement and achieve denuclearization through the six-party talks on an equal footing”. The specific mention by the Security Council in the statement that it “encourages the settlement of outstanding issues on the Korean Peninsula by peaceful means to resume direct dialogue and negotiation through appropriate channels” is the cue picked up by North Korea for its “premeditated process” of charm offensive for the resumption of the SPT. International security ambassador Nam Joo-hong said these charm offensives after heightening tension "are a long-established practice” pursued by North Korea.
US Permanent Representative to UN, Ambassador Susan Rice said the message to North Korea is “crystal clear”: “The Security Council condemns the attack; it warns against any further attacks against the Republic of Korea; and it calls for full adherence to the Korean Armistice Agreement”. Replying to a reporter who asked that it’s a little unclear why that’s a forceful message since the statement doesn’t seem to condemn North Korea directly, Ambassador Rice said that the statement “uses the term attack repeatedly, which I, you don’t have to be a scholar of the English language to understand is not a neutral term”. Bruce Klingner, a Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, was critical of Rice’s response and wrote that “Rather than claiming victory, as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice did, the Obama Administration should instead declare that China’s willingness to overlook clear, comprehensive, and compelling evidence of Pyongyang’s pugnacity shows that Beijing is not the “responsible stakeholder” that some had hoped it would be. Washington should have made it clear to Beijing that on this issue, it was with either the angels or the demons and there would be repercussions to its decision.”
Russian Foreign Ministry official spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said that the UNSC decision on the sinking of ROKS Cheonan is “well-balanced” and hopes that this will help resume the inter-Korean dialogue, as well as the six-way talks on nuclear disarmament. On a more serious note, in view of the US plans for joint naval exercises with South Korea which were delayed until the UNSC statement was secured, Lee Su-seok, a senior analyst at the Institute for National Security Strategy, advises that South Korea needs to work harder to avoid political disputes with China, which views the involvement of a US aircraft carrier USS George Washington in the Yellow Sea for joint US-South Korea naval exercises as having a possible link to plans by it to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack on the island. The “war games” are to be conducted on both sides of the Korean Peninsula, not only in the Yellow Sea as previously planned but also in the Sea of Japan. The four day schedule from July 25 to July 28, 2010 for the naval drill was formally announced on July 20, 2010 in a joint statement released following a meeting between U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his South Korean counterpart, Kim Tae-young. A different opinion has been put forward by Zhang Baohui, a professor of political science at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University, according to whom the close Sino-U.S. cooperation on how to deal with North Korea, as reflected by the UN statement “might deflect attention on the U.S.-South Korean naval exercise.” However, only the unfolding of events can determine the outcome of such exercise.
China: Prime Concern is Avoidance of War
The wording of the statement reflects, on the one hand, the firmness of China’s resolve to arrest the fall of events into the abyss of the plausible oncoming war and, on the other hand, the extent to which the US can machinate global opinion by diplomacy alone. Nations can digress from the status quo to the state of war. In case a skirmish ensues between North Korea and the U.S., China is more likely to be dragged in and it will be difficult for Russia to remain as a silent spectator. Hence, the dressed down UNSC presidential statement, lacking legal force, is more in the nature of a reprimand and more so of cautioning North Korea. China’s main purpose in preventing the adoption of harsh language in the UNSC statement was the fear lest it would trigger a response by North Korea, which in turn would justify US retaliation as well as a process of military escalation which might lead to unintended consequences of war. The 2010 Task Force Report of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) states that “the United States and South Korea implicated North Korea and have taken a tough approach designed to punish the North Korean regime, while China—worried about further escalation—has downplayed the incident”.
The guarded language finally adopted by the UNSC was not due to hindrance posed by China to critically censure North Korea or to defend its ally but it was more out of its suspicions about the real intentions of the U.S. in East Asia regarding its broader military and pre-emptive war agenda incorporated in its OPLAN 8010-Strategic Deterrence and Global Strike.
OPLAN 8010- “Ossified Strategy” dangerously magnified

Hans M. Kristensen explains the OPLAN 8010 as envisioned by US National Defense Strategy i.e. the merger of highly offensive Global Strike with strategic “deterrence”which reflects an effort to create a seamless web of strategic effects with global reach and “tailor deterrence to fit particular actors, situations, and forms of warfare”. On 11 April 2010, United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates indicated that the United States already has a Prompt Global Strike capability. He said that “we have prompt global strike affording us some conventional alternatives on long-range missiles that we didn't have before. So, believe me, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and I would not have wholeheartedly embraced not only the nuclear posture review but also the START agreement if we didn't think, at the end of the day, it made the United States stronger, not weaker. The “Prompt Global Strike” (PGS) is the conventional subset of OPLAN 8010 touted by President Obama to have reduced the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks on account of the unrivalled growth of US conventional military capabilities.

Though Obama committed in the Nuclear Posture Review to developing no new nuclear weapons, his reliance on new, non-nuclear PGS weapons could achieve the effects of a nuclear weapon, without turning a conventional war into a nuclear one. As a result, the administration believes it could create a new form of deterrence - a way to contain countries that possess or hope to develop nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, without resorting to a nuclear option. Pentagon's Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine General James Cartwright has affirmed that “Deterrence can no longer just be nuclear weapons. It has to be broader.” The non-nuclear missiles are host of precision weapons designed to strike any spot on earth within sixty minutes, but as the main proponent of PGS, strikes could be delivered in 300 milliseconds. The former Joint Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, General Leonid Ivashov wrote an article titled, “Obama's Nuclear Surprise” in which he explained the consequences of CPGS: "The Prompt Global Strike concept is meant to sustain the US monopoly in the military sphere and to widen the gap between it and the rest of the world. Combined with the deployment of missile defence supposed to keep the US immune to retaliatory strikes from Russia and China, the Prompt Global Strike initiative is going to turn Washington into a modern era global dictator”.

OPLAN 8010, Nuclear Posture Review and China’s Fear
China’s main purpose in preventing the adoption of harsh language in the UNSC statement was the fear lest it would trigger a response by North Korea, which in turn would justify U.S. retaliation as well as a process of military escalation. The logic of US-ROK bilateral alliance based on coordination and decision-making between the two governments in the areas of foreign policy, intelligence and military planning has been on-going for more than 50 years. In combination with the OPLAN 8010, this “ossified strategy” has been dangerously magnified in the eyes of China who feels encircled by the US which has been stepping up its provocations to probably engineer a casus belli for effective action against North Korea. The United States is considering dispatching its high-tech F-22 Raptor stealth fighter to the Korean Peninsula for the upcoming joint military exercises with South Korea which is stated to involve core forces of the US Second Fleet and American troops stationed in Japan. From the base in Okinawa, the F-22, dubbed the "strongest fighter jet in existence," is reportedly capable of striking North Korea's main nuclear facilities in Yongbyon within half an hour after take-off. Li Jie, emphatically says that it is quite worrisome that the “US has seemingly become less restrained in its move to push forward an Asian version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with its allies in the region. “In so doing, Washington has harbored the obvious strategic intention of containing China – whose economic and strategic influence has kept increasing in the international arena...” It is against the backdrop in which China is being challenged in the Yellow Sea where “One false move, one wrong interpretation, is all it would take for the best-planned exercises to go awry....The impact of a crisis on that scale would be tremendous, making any dispute over trade or the yuan’s value between the two in recent years pale in comparison....Tension is mounting over the US-South Korean joint exercise. Beijing and Washington still have time, and leeway, to desist from moving toward a possible conflict on the Yellow Sea.”
Almost overlooked amid China’s assertions regarding the turnout of a US nuclear aircraft carrier, which has a combat radius of 600 kilometers, to be joined by other superior US and South Korean warplanes off the coast of China in the Yellow Sea, is China’s fear that this would mean its major cities like Dalian, Qingdao, Tianjin and even Beijing would be within US attack range. Yellow Sea is a vital passage to the heartland of Beijing and Tianjin and in history; foreign invaders repeatedly took the Yellow Sea as an entrance to enter the heartland of China. The area designated for joint US-South Korea drill lies only 500 kilometers away from Beijing. An aircraft carrier with reconnaissance and early warning capacities would be able to monitor and detect the hydro-geological conditions of China's submarines' channels out to sea. Therefore, according to China the purpose of the joint military exercise is aimed at strategic reconnaissance and testing initial combat plans which makes its security vulnerable.
The fact that the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), released on April 6th, 2010 by the Obama administration, declares that the U.S. will maintain the option of nuclear preemptive attack on North Korea, magnifies China’s fears even more. The NPR claims that North Korea is excluded from the 'Negative Security Assurance' extended to Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) compliant nations. The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates has emphatically conveyed the U.S. stand on nuclear preemptive attacks on North Korea, stating that all options are there on the table against it.
The moot question is whether the U.S. would permit China to stage military exercises near its western and eastern coasts without hesitation or whether the U.S. will tolerate a scenario in which North Korea and China expands their 1961 Sino-North Korean Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, and wherein China with North Korea’s consent dispatches a large contingent of troops to North Korea to maintain stability.
If North Korea seeks China’s cooperation in its battles against the U.S., then it will have to repay China’s support in equal measure. The least it can do is not to raise war cries especially when the U.S., at present, is sending a powerful message to North Korea and China that the diplomatic victories could prove to be ephemeral in front of its overwhelming nuclear and conventional military superiority. Gen. Han Min-koo, chairman of South Korea’s Joint Military of Staff, in a statement released by the South Korean military. “Based on our defense readiness, we will instantly retaliate against any provocation from now on and wrap up our operation at the scene of the provocation.” However, Adm. Robert F. Willard, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, has aired his opinion that there was no guarantee that the show of force would stop North Korea from repeating the alleged sinking of the South Korean warship, “Cheonan”. Though the explicit and overstated resolve in “Invincible Spirit” to deter North Korea displays the unparalleled military strength of the U.S., it will remain in a quandary, if need be, as to what sort of military action to take which would enhance the credibility of its deterrent strategies. Nevertheless, the preference of the U.S. for coercive diplomacy over preventive diplomacy could not have been more obvious so is its drive to keep tightening the eagle’s clutch on strategic control.