The next war in East Asia will engulf the region, and it will not just be about Taiwan, argue Markus Garlaskas and Matthew Kroenig. A new article in Foreign Policy magazine.
Increased military activity by China and North Korea this month suggests that the two regimes are considering fighting. For example, two days before Foreign Policy published its story, Kim Jong-ungave a speechIt announced that it would deploy “250 new tactical ballistic missile launchers” at positions near the demilitarized zone.
Kim praised North Korea’s “defence industry workers” for developing the launcher “through their own efforts and technology,” but Richard Fisher, a China military analyst at the International Centre for Assessment and Strategy, told me it was far more likely that the launcher was Chinese-made, with Chinese parts and advice.
In any case, each launcher can carry four tactical nuclear weapons, which, as Kim Jong Un has boasted, are of “great military significance.”
Garlauskas and Kroenig Written Any conflict between the U.S. and China over Taiwan “would almost certainly lead to a region-wide war, involving the Korean Peninsula and drawing in both North and South Korea.” Such fighting would give China “a strong incentive to attack U.S. military bases in South Korea” and “prompt North Korea to provoke and stall U.S. forces in South Korea.”
TheyAddedNorth Korea could fight alongside China to “preempt a feared U.S. attack, use a distraction to settle old grudges with Seoul’s rivals, or influence the outcome of a war critical to its national security.”
In the late 1950s, China sent “volunteers” to help the beleaguered North Korean military in its battle against American, South Korean and other UN forces. Would North Korea now go to war with China?
Traditionally, China has exerted great influence over North Korea, mainly because the Kim family leaders needed China’s assistance and diplomatic protection after North Korea’s early economic success turned into decades of economic failure starting in the 1970s.
To be sure, centuries of hostility remain between China and South Korea, and the Kim regime is often openly contemptuous of Beijing. But the Chinese Communist Party is a patient overlord. It’s no big deal if North Korea occasionally defies China’s wishes. Chinese officials don’t always expect obedience, and China will stand by its North Korean allies whether they are obedient at any given moment.
When Jeong Jae-ho was still a professor at Seoul National University, he told me, “The Chinese know they have influence, but they don’t always like to exercise it. When China really wants something, they lower their power.”
But does Beijing have the power to provoke North Korea into war? Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual AssistanceThere is a mutual defense clause. Until President Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un met in June, the two countries were only military allies. signed a comprehensive agreement that included mutual defense provisions.
Fisher said China had the leverage to force North Korea to “conduct a single diversionary operation or a coordinated joint attack on a number of targets in South Korea, Japan or the United States.”
Not everyone agrees.
“Kim Jong Un is not acting as a Chinese agent or puppet,” David Maxwell of the Washington, DC-based Center for Asia-Pacific Strategy told me. “Absent a significant incentive, China is unlikely to pressure or influence Kim Jong Un to support Chinese actions in Taiwan. For Kim Jong Un, that would only guarantee that his actions would succeed.”
Of course, China would be unable to give such guarantees, especially if it were embroiled in a conflict with another country, which means that realistically, U.S. troops would need to be withdrawn from the Korean Peninsula before Kim Jong Un joins China’s side.
Maxwell, who served five tours of duty in South Korea as a special forces officer, said U.S., South Korean and United Nations forces could deter Kim from taking aggressive action by keeping troops ready to attack.
For more than half a century, the three Kim rulers have successfully used a strategy to avoid being dominated by their much more powerful neighbors. “Dating back to the Korean War, Kim family regimes have effectively pitted Russia and China against each other, and appear to be doing so today as well,” Maxwell told me.
But Kim Jong Un now has a problem: China and Russia are acting in close coordination for the first time in decades.
For example, last month, four Russian and Chinese nuclear-capable bombers (two Tu-95 Bears and two H-6Ks) Entered the US Air Defense Identification Zone Near Alaska. The Chinese and Russian navies and ground forces also regularly conduct joint military exercises. China has also provided significant support for President Vladimir Putin’s stalled war against Ukraine.
So it will be difficult for Kim Jong Un to take advantage of two “unrestricted” partners who have decided to fight a war together, and it will also be difficult to keep Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin apart: two leaders who see the world in the same light, perceive the same enemy, and conspire together.
And both of them have become arrogant despite having serious problems.
“We are on the brink of a change that has not been seen in 100 years.” President Xi made the remarks after his 40th face-to-face meeting with President Putin.It will be held in Moscow in March 2023. “And we will drive this change together.”
As the Chinese and Russian leaders perceive it, Kim Jong Un is a figure in the world that serves their interests.
Kim Jong Un can always say no to Xi Jinping and Putin, but the latter may not take that for an answer these days. So, as Galuskas and Kronig argue, Washington must prepare for a multilateral war in East Asia, with China, North Korea, and friendly Russia fighting together as comrades in arms.
Gordon G. Chan Author of “The Collapse of China” and “China Heading for War.”
