Al-Jazeera: Wikileaks reveals US-China maneuvering on Korea issue

China ‘backs Korean reunification’

Chinese leaders privately support a unified Korea and would not stop the North’s collapse, according to leaked US cable

30 Nov 2010

Chinese officials increasingly doubt the usefulness of neighbouring North Korea as an ally and would support the reunification of the peninsula if the communist state were to collapse, according to leaked US diplomatic cables.

The latest documents released by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks on Tuesday detail conversations between US officials and Chinese diplomats, as well as a senior South Korean official’s discussion with his Chinese counterparts.

Cheng Guoping, the Chinese ambassador to Kazakhstan, was reported to have told Richard Hoagland, the US ambassador, that “China hopes for peaceful reunification in the long-term, but he expects the two countries to remain separate in the short-term”.

The remarks were made during a three-hour dinner in Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital, in June 2009, according to documents published on WikiLeaks website.

Guoping was quoted as telling Hoagland that China’s objectives in North Korea were to ensure they honour their commitments on non-proliferation, maintain stability, and “don’t drive [Kim Jong-il] mad”.

South Korea bolsters its border military forces, appeals to China for help

South Korean soldiers stand near howitzer in a 2009 military drill near the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in Paju, 45 km (28) miles from Seoul.

New York Times,  November 25, 2010

With Limited Options, South Korea Shifts Military Rules

SEOUL, South Korea — Responding to growing public criticism after Tuesday’s deadly attack, President Lee Myung-bak accepted the resignation Thursday of his defense minister and announced changes in the military’s rules of engagement to make it easier for the South Korean military to strike back with greater force, especially if civilians are threatened.

The government also announced plans to increase the number of troops and heavy weapons on Yeonpyeong Island, where two marines and two civilians died Tuesday in an artillery fusillade from the North.

But Mr. Lee, who came to office two years ago vowing to get tough with the North, has little maneuvering room in formulating a response. While the attack appears to have pushed anti-North Korean sentiment here to its highest level in years, there is little public support for taking military action against the North that might lead to an escalation of hostilities.  “North Korea has nothing to lose, while we have everything to lose,” said Kang Won-taek, a professor of politics at Seoul National University. “Lee Myung-bak has no choice but to soften his tone to keep this country peaceful. It is not an appealing choice, but it is the only realistic choice.”

The South’s powerful neighbor is also counseling restraint. The Chinese prime minister,Wen Jiabao, said on Thursday that Beijing opposed any provocative military behavior by either side on the Korean peninsula, Xinhua, the state news agency, reported.

US Navy steps up pressure on China to bring North Korea to the negotiating table

USS George Washington, a floating airbase aimed at North Korea and China

[Commander-in-Chief Obama’s decision to send the USS George Washington and  supporting warships to the North China Sea is a full-court military press aimed at intimidating North Korea and putting greater pressure on China to bring North Korea back to the 6 country talks that have been suspended for months.  North Korea’s willingness to strike back at military provocations by South Korea (such as South Korea’s continual military exercises along the border), and its willingness to expend enormous economic resources on its military and nuclear program are not simply “defensive.”  The North Korean government hopes to use the threat of its powerful military to South Korea to extract substantial economic aid and investments (such as the South Korean export zones that already exist in the North) from South Korea and the US in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons program. It remains to be seen how successful tthe US political/military strategy will be.–Frontlines ed.]

BEIJING – China expressed concern about South Korea’s planned joint military exercise with the United States and said it was maintaining contact with Washington over tensions on the Korean peninsula, China’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. “We have noted the relevant reports and express our concern about this,” a spokesman for the ministry, Hong Lei, told a regular news conference.

South Korea’s foreign ministry said on Thursday a joint military exercise with the United States due later this month will send a clear message to North Korea. The resumption of stalled six-party talks to persuade Pyongyang to abandon nuclear disarmament  [sic] was “urgently” needed, Hong said, adding that all parties in the dispute in the Korean peninsula should “do more to ease” the situation.

China has been urged by the United States and its regional allies, South Korea and Japan, to help rein in Pyongyang after North Korea shelled a South Korean island on Tuesday, killing four people and triggering a confrontation. Beijing was angered earlier this year by joint U.S.-South Korea naval exercises off the South Korean coast that those two nations said were meant to warn North Korea. Beijing said such exercises could threaten its security and regional stability.

South Korea (backed by the US) clashes with North Korea (backed by China)

[Based on our present knowledge, the latest armed clash between North and South Korea is based on this sequence of events: Tens of thousands of South Korean forces were conducting military exercises near the border with North Korea;  South Korean forces fired their artillery into waters near Yeonpyeong island that are claimed by both the North and the South;  North Korean artillery fire hit a South Korean marine installation on the island; and South Korea returned artillery fire. The US and Western imperialist press immediately charged that this was an “unprovoked attack” by North Korea.  Obama then ordered the USS George Washington aircraft carrier to South Korea to conduct “joint exercises” in a show of solidarity with the South Korean government.

As the article posted below points out, the dispatch of the USS George Washington to the Yellow Sea is also meant to send a message to the Chinese government to place more pressure on North Korea to back off militarily. The US imperialists are well aware that China is the only country with any leverage over North Korea, since it supplies most of North Korea’s energy and food.  China does this not out of “socialist solidarity” (neither of them are socialist), but to keep North Korea from collapsing, generating a flood of refugees into China. Even more importantly, a disintegrating North Korea could lead to a unified Korea, with a US military presence on China’s border.

The South Korean government claimed that it was the victim of North Korean “aggression,” and threatened to launch air strikes on North Korean artillery bases. It also received assistance from the bourgeois media in ensuring that its responsibility for the armed clash would not be subject to public scrutiny. This response points to the “carrot and stick” approach of the South Korean government and the US imperialists to the North Korean government. The “stick” has consisted of tight economic sanctions and constant military pressure (including initiating some of these armed clashes) that force the North Korean government to match South Korean military spending. The “carrot” is the offer of substantial economic aid and investments (in export processing zones) if North Korea agrees to discontinue its nuclear weapons program.

There are two reasons underlying North Korea’s policy of engaging South Korean forces in “lightning” military actions (see the history of armed actions from 1999 to the present below): First, these continual armed clashes maintain political legitimacy and stability for a weak North Korean regime by raising the level of nationalism and reinforcing the official line that North Korea is under perpetual siege from the US and South Korea. Second, the hereditary “communist” dynasty that has ruled North Korea for decades is in a desperate economic situation, and is having great difficulty maintaining its huge military forces. To handle this situation, the North Korean government has been expanding its nuclear weapons program and engaging the South Korean military in small actions as bargaining chips to extract the largest amount of economic aid as possible from South Korea and the US.  This is a high-stakes gamble. The recent actions of the North Korean government will more likely lead to tighter Western sanctions and increased US pressure on China to force North Korea to back off from its military/nuclear ambitions–and come to terms with South Korea and US imperialism.–Frontlines ed]

New York Times, November 23, 2010

U.S. to Send Carrier for Joint Exercises Off Korea

Smoke on Yeonpyeong island after the artillery attack

WASHINGTON — President Obama and South Korea’s president agreed Tuesday night to hold joint military exercises as a first response to North Korea’s deadly shelling of a South Korean military installation, as both countries struggled for the second time this year to keep a North Korean provocation from escalating into war.

What steps should the U.S. take after the artillery attack on a South Korean island?

The exercise will include sending the aircraft carrier George Washington and a number of accompanying ships into the region, both to deter further attacks by the North and to signal to China that unless it reins in its unruly ally it will see an even larger American presence in the vicinity.

The decision came after Mr. Obama attended the end of an emergency session in the White House Situation Room and then emerged to call President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea to express American solidarity and talk about a coordinated response. But as a former national security official who dealt frequently with North Korea in the Bush administration, Victor Cha, said just a few hours before the attack began, North Korea is “the land of lousy options.”

Mr. Obama is once again forced to choose among unpalatable choices: responding with verbal condemnations and a modest tightening of sanctions, which has done little to halt new attacks; starting military exercises that are largely symbolic; or reacting strongly, which could risk a broad war in which South Korea’s capital, Seoul, would be the first target.