US-North Korea ties and shifting global power relations

July 3, 2019, 9:31 pm 

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump cross south of the Military Demarcation Line that divides North and South Korea, after Trump briefly stepped over to the northern side, in the Joint Security Area (JSA) of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized zone (DMZ) on June 30, 2019.Brendan Smialowski / AFP

By stepping onto North Korean soil recently US President Donald Trump has achieved the almost impossible from the viewpoint of a US President. In Cold War times this act by a US President, would, perhaps, have been considered an outrageous offence because North Korea was a staunch ally of the Soviet Union and the Korean peninsula was a turbulent proxy war zone of the super powers.

As is known, the two Koreas entered into an armistice in the early fifties following a couple of years of war, against the backdrop of the Cold War coming to a close, but they failed to enter into a peace pact. North and South Korea have failed to clinch such an agreement since then which renders them to be still at war, in a technical sense, although full blown hostilities have not been seen since then.

However, President Trump has shown scant regard for hitherto US policy by entering the ‘forbidden territory’ which is North Korea and by shaking hands once again with who could have been seen as a sworn enemy of the US in the Cold War years, the President of North Korea. At present, the latter takes the form, of course, of Kim Jong UN. While we have had a couple of rounds of warm hand-shaking over the past one and a half years between these leaders, the action by the US President of entering North Korean territory is unprecedented. In a way, the event is historic.

This amounts to the US bringing North Korea ‘out of the Cold’ a great deal more than before. The curtain thus comes down on the last Cold War frontier. But the two sides are not completely out of the woods as yet. They are yet to agree, for instance, on any specifics on North Korea’s purported denuclearization efforts. What has been agreed on in this regard over the months is vague and general. In fact, clear-cut formal agreements are yet to see the light of day on any of the vital issues separating the sides.

However, it is indisputable that the leaders of the US and North Korea are talking and quite warmly although sporadically. There is the potential in these developments for future progress and it could be said that the recent Trump-Jong Un meet on North Korean soil has set the stage for a defrosting process of considerable proportions, provided a meeting of minds between the sides is fully effected.

The question that is likely to set the observer thinking is whether North Korea is going the way of Cuba. The latter effected an almost paradigm shift in its relations with the US in the Obama years by setting its ties with the perceived enemy which was the US on a normalization course. The backdrop to these developments were economic forces and compulsions. Cuba has not gone back on its socialist credentials but it realizes that a measure of economic liberalization is necessary to energise its economy. Hence, its decision to open-up to the US.

The most important historical precedent in this regard thus far has been set by China, when, way back in the early seventies it ushered an epochal thaw in its ties with the US, in complete disregard of its Cold War rivalry with the super power of the West. Then as well as now, economic considerations drove socialist states’ efforts to re-orient bilateral relations with the foremost capitalist country. They discover that integrating their economies with the ‘capitalist West’ is bound to bring them some material dividends, while preserving their cardinal socialist principles.

The same considerations could be said to be driving North Korea today. The ‘ASEAN economic miracle’ at the veritable doorstep of North Korea is too glaring to be ignored. It is essentially the capitalist model that has triggered the flood of prosperity in the Asia-Pacific and North Korea would be foolish in the extreme to allow ideology to get in the way of what seems to be a quick-fix method of climbing out of relative economic deprivation. This accounts for its early faltering steps at normalizing its relations with the US. Gradual economic integration with the West is, apparently, the course to take.

Besides these economic drivers there are the realities of international politics to take into account.It is quite some time since China began to wield soft power, besides hard power, to spread its influence and power world wide. Several decades, perhaps, from now it is China that will be the world’s foremost power. But it realizes that hard power alone would not enable it to consolidate this position. China is at present ensuring that it is not at cross purposes with the US on a multiplicity of fronts that have a close bearing on international stability. This includes nuclear non-proliferation.

Working consensually with the US and other predominant powers towards constructive aims on the nuclear front, for example, is one way in which China exercises its soft power. Exercising this option enables China to be a constructive rather than a destructive international presence. This approach enables it to win allies in increasing numbers and, in the process, expand its influence. It is teaching us, ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ by using the ‘soft touch’ rather than the mailed fist.

Over the decades China has been a strong ally of North Korea in North-east Asia but it is now tending to part company with North Korea on the nuclear non-proliferation front. The US is in an effort to wean North Korea away from the manufacture and use of nuclear weapons and on this score China is tending to work consensually with the US, given China’s calculation that the exercise of soft power on this question will enable it to come through, more as a benign world power although a dominant one.

Meanwhile, North Korea sees in these developments opportunities to be exploited to further its self-interest. It will continue to go along with China since it has gained on a multiplicity of fronts through this alliance over the decades while also gaining as much as possible by accepting the hand of friendship of the US. To the extent possible, North Korea will be an ally of both these powers and also, perhaps, play one against the other to survive unscathed.