Charles Krauthammer: China's Moment
In September 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered the Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire), which settled the Russo-Japanese War. Settling an extra-hemispheric dispute between foreign powers marked the emergence of the United States, an economic and demographic dynamo, as a world power and serious actor on the international stage.
Exactly 100 years later, a statement of principles has been issued from Beijing on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program. If it holds -- the "if" is very large -- it will mark China's emergence from an economic and demographic dynamo to a major actor on the world
Why is the Beijing agreement different from the worthless "Agreed Framework" Bill Clinton signed in 1994 and North Korea violated (we now know) from the very first day? That agreement was bilateral. This one is six-party, but the major player is China.
China conspicuously made itself the locus of the conference and its host. Its vice foreign minister declared that "North Korea committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning at an early date to a nuclear nonproliferation treaty." If China can succeed where the United States failed miserably in solving the knottiest problem in the Pacific, China will have emerged. That means a lot for China. It has a large stake in this agreement....
...Success is also contingent on the North Koreans agreeing to postpone, at U.S. insistence, talks about a new light-water nuclear reactor until after it has dismantled its nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons facilities. Yet, within a day after the declaration of principles, Pyongyang issued a statement directly contradicting this and saying that nothing will occur unless it gets the light-water reactors right away.
China is the only country that can force North Korea to give way. China will do so if it decides that this is its Portsmouth moment. That would be a blessing, but not unalloyed. It would solve the most acute and dangerous problem in the Pacific -- nuclear weapons in the hands of the half-mad Caligula that is Kim Jong Il -- at the warranted but still significant cost of seeing our principal rival in the Pacific rise from its slumber.
Read entire article at Washington Post
Exactly 100 years later, a statement of principles has been issued from Beijing on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program. If it holds -- the "if" is very large -- it will mark China's emergence from an economic and demographic dynamo to a major actor on the world
Why is the Beijing agreement different from the worthless "Agreed Framework" Bill Clinton signed in 1994 and North Korea violated (we now know) from the very first day? That agreement was bilateral. This one is six-party, but the major player is China.
China conspicuously made itself the locus of the conference and its host. Its vice foreign minister declared that "North Korea committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning at an early date to a nuclear nonproliferation treaty." If China can succeed where the United States failed miserably in solving the knottiest problem in the Pacific, China will have emerged. That means a lot for China. It has a large stake in this agreement....
...Success is also contingent on the North Koreans agreeing to postpone, at U.S. insistence, talks about a new light-water nuclear reactor until after it has dismantled its nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons facilities. Yet, within a day after the declaration of principles, Pyongyang issued a statement directly contradicting this and saying that nothing will occur unless it gets the light-water reactors right away.
China is the only country that can force North Korea to give way. China will do so if it decides that this is its Portsmouth moment. That would be a blessing, but not unalloyed. It would solve the most acute and dangerous problem in the Pacific -- nuclear weapons in the hands of the half-mad Caligula that is Kim Jong Il -- at the warranted but still significant cost of seeing our principal rival in the Pacific rise from its slumber.