The Adventures of Chester: A Nuclear Leviathan in the Pacific

Westhawk argues that the biggest loser of North Korea's nuclear test is China.

China remains by far the biggest loser from North Korea’s actions. America’s security alliances with Japan and South Korea will become more important and these bonds will be strengthened. Japan, now led by the unapologetic nationalist Shinzo Abe, will scrap any remaining restraints on its military doctrine and will invest in an offensive military strike capability. Japan could also very quickly become a nuclear weapons state itself, something that could occur after further provocations.

Joe Katzman argues at WindsofChange that the focus should not be on North Korea, but on China:

The truth is that North Korea is an irrelevant bit player in this whole drama. The real player here is China. They have helped North Korea at every step, and North Korea's regime cannot survive at all without their ongoing food and fuel aid. Kim Jong-Il's nuclear plans may be slightly inconvenient to the Chinese - just not not inconvenient enough to derail a strategy that still promises net plusses to those pursuing it within China's dictatorship.

Both of them think that the best way to influence China, and thereby to influence North Korea, is to make it clear that Japan, South Korea, and possibly even Taiwan, will be encouraged or given tacit approval by the US to strengthen their militaries.

Westhawk:

The U.S. and its allies in the region will be forced to bypass an ineffectual China when formulating their security arrangements in the Asia-Pacific theater. And this will result in a strengthening American-led, anti-Chinese alliance in the region. This is exactly opposite the outcome China wished to see occur.

And Katzman:

In other words, China won't move unless its current strategy is seen to cost them, big-time.

The biggest cost, and the only one that will be real to them in any sense, is to have Kim Jong-Il's nuclear detonation result in parallel nuclear proliferation among the nearby states China wishes to dominate/ bully. That would be a foreign policy disaster for the Chinese, and would cause the current architects of China's North Korea policy to be buried along with their policy. Which, as we noted earlier, is the only kind of policy education that works in a system like theirs.

David Frum, former Bush speechwriter, takes a similar tack, in an article in the New York Times (here via AEI):

A new approach is needed. America has three key strategic goals in the wake of the North Korean nuclear test. The first is to enhance the security of those American allies most directly threatened by North Korean nuclear weapons: Japan and South Korea.

The second is to exact a price from North Korea for its nuclear program severe enough to frighten Iran and any other rogue regimes considering following the North Korean path.

The last is to punish China. North Korea could not have completed its bomb if China, which provides the country an immense amount of food and energy aid, had strongly opposed it. Apparently, Beijing sees some potential gain in the uncertainty that North Korea's status brings. If China can engage in such conduct cost-free, what will deter Russia from aiding the Iranian nuclear program, or Pakistan someday aiding a Saudi or Egyptian one?

Frum offers a four part plan for dealing with the crisis and accomplishing his three steps [emphasis added]:

Step up the development and deployment of existing missile defense systems.

[ . . . ]

End humanitarian aid to North Korea and pressure South Korea to do the same.

[ . . . ]

Invite Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore to join NATO--and even invite Taiwan to send observers to NATO meetings.

[ . . . ]

Encourage Japan to renounce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and create its own nuclear deterrent.

Commentary

What Frum proposes would most certainly punish China, but how much punishment is too much? Consider the panoply of security architectures that have comprised the US alliance system in the Pacific. The US has a security treaty with Japan. It has similar agreements with South Korea. It has guarantees, explicit and otherwise, with Taiwan. The US used to have an alliance with Australia and New Zealand called ANZUS; but New Zealand protested the stationing of nuclear weapons or nuclear ships in its ports in the 1980s, forcing the US to come to refer to New Zealand as a "friend, not an ally." The alliance with Australia on the other hand, is one of the strongest that the US maintains.

At the same time, each of these countries has dramatically differing relations with each other. Australia maintains an alliance with New Zealand. Japan has no security relationship with South Korea, though it has offered to help defend Taiwan from China. A diagram of the existing security relationships might look like the following. I've included all alliances as arrows, whereas other lesser defense partnerships are lines without arrows. All of the US relationships are included; not all of those between the other countries are:

One can quickly see that this situation lends itself to balance-of-power politics: since the relationships between each state are not symmetrical, a third-party, one that is not included on the chart, is free to attempt to co-opt any of the members in various ways, thereby inserting itself into the entire balance of power. That third party is, of course, China.

But what Frum proposes, the idea that all of these countries would be allowed to join NATO, would revolutionize the security system in Asia in two ways:

a) every state's relationship with the US would be upgraded to the highest status: that of an alliance, wherein the US gives security guarantees; and,

b) every state's relationship with all the others would be upgraded in the same way.

Provided that the US was the only nuclear power of all of these member states, the resulting security landscape would look something like this:

Such a defense arc would truly be a diplomatic coup and a boon for the US; the creation of such a regime might even constitute the life's work of a statesman.

But the fly in the soup is encouraging Japan to obtain nuclear weapons. This is for several reasons:

a) The most difficult aspect of the above alliance would be the South Korean-Japanese relationship. A nuclear Japan would be inordinately more powerful than South Korea, possibly leading South Korea to decline joining the alliance.

b) A nuclear Japan might just be "punishing China too much," as alluded to above. If a nuclear Japan fostered a crisis with China, it would do so knowing that the US would have no choice but to respond with its nuclear forces should China attack Japan. China might therefore seek to massively expand its own nuclear arsenal, currently estimated at a mere 150 or so weapons. The prospect of a third superpower nuclear arsenal introduces too much complexity into the system of nuclear deterrence (see this previous post, and this article on Nuclear Primacy in Foreign Affairs).

c) Finally, as the nuclear guarantor of the world's security, the United States has an obligation to oppose proliferation everywhere -- friendly nation or not, democracy or not. Just as a third nuclear superpower introduces complexity, so does a number of competing regional nuclear powers. Complexity creates risk, misunderstanding, and increases the likelihood of a nuclear exchange, an event in the best interests of no one.

Creating a security alliance such as Frum describes though would severely hamper China's ambitions in the 21st century. If that is the price that they must pay for their continued support of Kim Jong Il, then so be it.

Posted by Chester on October 11, 2006 4:07 AM to The Adventures of Chester