Incline
  • Home
  • Submissions
  • About

North Korea - US Tensions Challenge New Zealand's Hopes

9/8/2017

 
Picture
Author    Robert Ayson

It’s no surprise that New Zealand strongly endorsed the UN Security Council’s latest sanctions against North Korea. One stone accounted for three birds. The first is Wellington’s concern that Kim Jong-Un’s nuclear program threatens regional stability and the prospects for nuclear disarmament. The second is that a response authorized by the Council is a big tick in the international legitimacy and rules-based system boxes. The third is that this response reflected US-China cooperation. That’s not only good for Wellington’s view of regional order, but also for hopes that President Trump may be thinking twice about setting off a trade war with China.
 
But as New Zealand’s diplomats will know, we have been here before. North Korea has already rejected the new measures and is unlikely to show much sign of slowing its missile and nuclear programs. China may have approved the additional sanctions. And its Foreign Minister criticized North Korea on the sidelines of a recent ASEAN Regional Forum meeting in Manila. But few expect Beijing to place maximum pressure on its wayward ally: for all its faults, North Korea remains a buffer state for China. And even if Beijing did maximize the economic pressure, few would expect Pyongyang to suddenly stop in its proliferation tracks. Barring regime collapse, the world will be dealing with North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs for some time to come.
UNSC sanctions do not solve the North Korea problem. They kick it down the road. Yet there are few better options. Solutions, especially military ones, don’t really exist. However the march of time has become an enemy of this approach. In the first instance, North Korea’s progress towards an ICBM armed with a miniaturized nuclear warhead has been bringing things to a head. Any American President elected in November would before long have received an intelligence assessment that North Korea had developed a nuclear-armed missile able to reach the continental United States. In the second instance, Donald Trump isn’t any American President.
 
Trump’s choice of words from New Jersey has hardly been a calming influence. He might have repeated the standard mantra that all options are on the table. He might have said that in the event of a North Korean attack on a US ally or on US forces or territory, Pyongyang would face a withering American response. But instead he promised that if Pyongyang made “any more threats to the United States…they will be met with fire, fury, and, frankly, power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.”
 
Threatening the United States (and South Korea, and Japan, and even China) is something North Korea does on a regular basis. A new, rhetorical, threat to the United States has arguably already been delivered: Pyongyang says it is "carefully considering" a plan for missile attacks on Guam, the U.S. territory closest to the peninsula. In other words, Kim Jong-Un is already calling President Trump’s bluff. And if Pyongyang doesn’t want Mr Trump to believe his New Jersey bombast has deterred further missile or nuclear testing, just one such test could raise the bar on this crisis. What happens if the President then worries that his reputation rests on the United States responding forcefully to such an obvious provocation?
 
Wellington will hope that while the rhetoric has been escalating, the conflict does not. An optimist might think that Mr Trump is playing bad cop to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who as good cop has indicated negotiations are not out of the question. If the long-stalled Six Party Talks resumed, for example, New Zealand would be happy with another step in China-US collaboration on North Korea under Trump and Xi.
 
But that is probably some time off, if it happens at all. For now North Korea and the United States are involved in an exchange of risky promises. When regional tensions are brewing, a tried and true formulation often appeals to New Zealand governments. This is to call for all sides to take steps to reduce tensions. That formula might come in handy right now, and Bill English’s government should make it clear the region doesn’t just require calm behaviour from Kim Jong-Un but from America’s new leader as well.
 


Comments are closed.

    About

    Incline is a New Zealand-based project that publishes original analysis and commentary on issues and trends that impact New Zealand's international relations. 

    To get new posts delivered by email directly to your inbox, sign up below.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    May 2022
    March 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.