North Korea is big nowadays: President Donald Trump has made it clear that he plans to finally solve the "North Korean problem"--that is, he'll get North Korea to denuclearize itself.
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.
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.
Once it becomes clear--again--that neither sanctions nor negotiations are effective and North Korea gets close to becoming the world's third country theoretically capable of obliterating San Francisco, how will the president react? A military strike might be considered an option--at least, this is what some key people in the administration have indicated many times.
However, 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 another land war in Asia.
So perhaps one should be thankful that the Chinese are now considering cooperation on sanctions, buying time while extracting concessions from the United States on other issues. A war would be much worse.
------------v------------
Andrei Lankov is a professor of Korean history at Kookmin University in Seoul.
Editorial on 06/24/2017