Needless crisis in NE Asia

Let's first note that what is being said on both sides is a great improvement over the deep freeze that had enveloped North Korea's few ties with the US and the rhetoric from either side was tough and unyielding. During the last few years, the Chinese were able not only to hold several six power -- the China, the US, Russia, Japan, and the two Koreas -- conferences in Beijing, but have also succeeded in helping narrow the gap between the two adversaries, the US and North Korea. Now, there is an in-principle agreement between them -- provided the two sets of terms can be harmonised. Indeed face-to-face bilateral contacts have begun between the two less than friendly powers.

Compare this with early 2002, when US President George Bush put down North Korea as a member of the Axis of Evil and tore up the earlier agreement with Pyongyang under which the US and its friends, in addition to what Russia and China were doing, were giving it aid against its promise of not going ahead with its nuclear programme -- which promise was well kept while the aid supplies kept coming in. But when the Bush administration walked out of the agreement and stopped aid to North Korea, the latter adopted an audacious policy of walking out of Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, expelled the IAEA inspectors and told Americans that Pyongyang was building the bomb. That inaugurated a first-rate crisis that is only slowly being defused now.

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A question arises: while the IAEA had not reported any wrongdoing by North Korea to the UN Security Council, how and why did the Bush government declare North Korea to be an evil power that was a threat to what Bush sometimes calls freedom and sometimes civilisation? Until late into 2002, the world was under the impression that North Korea was a loyal member of the international community which was abiding by the NPT terms to the general satisfaction of IAEA. American action was either a result of exaggerated or alarmistic reports by American spies or it was a part of a huge policy of bluff that was aimed at browbeating North Korea into becoming less truculent towards the US and doing regionally what the US wanted. It is still inconceivable that the US actually wanted to go to war against North Korea again.

Going by the experience of Afghanistan and Iraq, the US would avoid war with the North like plague. For Iraq and Afghanistan are child's play compared to what resistance is to be encountered in North Korea. Few could have forgotten the 1950s war's experience or lessons.

North Korea's military capabilities -- not counting the nuclear dimension -- are in a vastly different class, but by no means superior to the US. Doubtless, in the 1940s and 1950s the Soviets were a big factor in international affairs that acted as an effective deterrent to the US from dominating the whole world. This deterrence has now gone and Russia is now a more or less second-class power, though still quite considerable in its potential. But China's power -- that was so considerable in 1949-50 even in its most strained circumstances -- is now a rising star in the Asian firmament. Who can doubt that the geo-strategic considerations that compelled Mao to send his millions of half-hungry troops to Korea to battle the Americans to a standstill that has been respected for 54 years will also force his successors to try and keep the US from making the Korean Peninsula its own backyard. Even the Russians may feel constrained to try to dissuade the US from active hostilities.

Geo-strategic compulsions are not being talked about. But all this has to be kept at the back of one's mind. All governments that feel concerned about North Korea, i.e. the six powers that sat on the recent Beijing Conferences, have all this in their minds. Indeed this is how China has become the lead factor in this affair and the US has willingly conceded a place of honour at the high table to it where Korean affairs are concerned. This peep into recent history should correct many a perspective. The fact of the US being a hyper-power, able to act unilaterally and preemptively if necessary, is true enough in a general sort of way. But the fact of the matter is that American's hyper-power has actually met with its first checkmate -- and in Asia where much the action is to be in the current and next decade.

The question recurs: why did the Bush government go back on the agreement that his predecessor, Bill Clinton's administration, had signed? In terms of the current near-denouement, an expected agreement between the US and North Korea on much the same basic terms, under whatever format or language, it is likely to emerge finally, is being worked out. It looks in fact quite likely after another conference or may be two in Beijing. The original American decision could only have been the result of hubris and sheer arrogance. Bush government's conduct vis-à-vis North Korean crisis will be faulted by many sober Americans in days to come. True, North Korea will promise to verifiably not engage in bomb-making. But that is a position that goes back to the Clinton agreement with roughly the same liabilities for the US.

Many Americans are sure to ask tricky questions, if the new agreement comes before November this year. It is not merely "as you were" for the US to again accept broadly the same terms on which Clinton had made an agreement with Pyongyang. It will be after the US having threatened North Korea and the latter's audacious and spectacular defiance -- the first serious setback in Asia after so many initial successes in Central Asia. US successes in Central Asia are by no means definitive. The Shanghai Six are still active, if also rather unobtrusively and in a somewhat discreet manner. But the ultimate purpose of Shanghai Six is to reduce the US role -- and expected advantages -- in and from Asia by promoting local Asian cooperation. This discreet rivalry is a fascinating and subtle rearguard action by the Chinese and Russians. The Chinese and Russians lack the abundance of capital and military technology with which the US operates. Instead these two Asian giants have to rely on the mantra of self-reliance, hard work and Asian cooperation.

The Korean crisis will have a far-reaching impact on what happens in Central Asia in years to come. The rough outlines of an agreement that seem to be emerging for resolving this crisis will immensely strengthen and brighten the prestige of China, in the first place, while the US will have suffered a serious setback. That will also indirectly strengthen the prestige of the Shanghai Six no end. But, alas, none of this is likely to happen in a linear and neat fashion in Central Asia, though the trend of diplomacy points to eventual success in resolving the Korean crisis is clear enough. Only time and some more effort is required for the successful denouement to unfold itself.

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.