Masashi MURANO
@show_murano
アンドレイ・ランコフ。WPで見かけるのはかなり久々。Opinion | The inconvenient truth about North Korea and China
This is nothing very special — for the past 25 years, every new U.S. president has promised to do something about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Some have tried negotiations, others have emphasized pressure. Neither approach has worked so far.
The Trump administration, which seems to rank North Korea high among its foreign policy problems, is choosing the hard line, but with a twist: Trump hopes to cajole China into joining him in a really tough sanctions regime.
The administration’s assumption is that Chinese sanctions would push North Korea to the brink of an economic disaster and thus prompt the leaders in Pyongyang to reconsider their nuclear ambitions. Given that China controls about 90 percent of North Korea’s foreign trade and also provides the country with vital aid, including shipments of subsidized fuel, the expectations seem reasonable.
The problem is, however, that Beijing has valid reasons not to be too harsh on Pyongyang. While Chinese leaders do not like North Korea’s nuclear program, they are afraid that truly comprehensive sanctions might, indeed, push North Korea to the brink of economic collapse, which would be followed by political disintegration.
From their point of view, North Korea in a state of civil war would be a greater threat than the nuclear-armed but relatively stable North Korea that exists now. Even worse, a crisis in North Korea might result in a German-style reunification of the country under Seoul’s control — that is, the emergence of a united, democratic and nationalistic Korean state that would probably be an ally of the United States. This is not an outcome that would be welcomed in Beijing.
Apart from this, the Chinese experts know that North Korea sees nuclear weapons as the only guarantee of the regime’s survival and thus will not surrender its nukes even under the greatest pressure imaginable. Thus, a Chinese boycott of North Korea — something the Trump administration would like to see — would be highly unlikely to produce the desirable result of denuclearization but much more likely to provoke the kind of crisis that China fears.
So the expectations of the Trump administration are misplaced. Beijing would rather deal with consequences of a trade war with Washington than with those of a real war nearby — even though it is no hurry to advertise this position.
North Korea is capable of striking back if attacked and is likely to do so — perhaps by launching a massive artillery barrage against Seoul, the huge capital located very close to the North-South border. If that happens, the South Koreans will shoot back, and in no time, the United States will find itself fighting a land war in Asia.
外交もだめ、圧力もだめ、南北統一して、米国の同盟国が隣に居座ることになるのは中国にとって悪夢だから、中国は本気にはならない、そうなると、戦争以外に北朝鮮の核開発を諦めさせる道はないが、そうなると、アメリカはアジアで陸戦に突入、そうなると、戦争が拡大して、大変な眼にあうぞ、と。
never fight a land war in Asiaというよく知られたフレーズがあるらしいから、記事の含意としてはやめておけ、ということなんでしょうね。
