Special to WorldTribune.com

By Brian M Downing

The present Korean crisis is fusing a callow dynast with entrenched generals, putting on a show of strength and purpose for the people who must endure dreadful hardships, and setting the stage for demanding greater aid and reduced sanctions from outside powers. The crisis may also prove important in the geopolitics of East Asia where the U.S., China, and Russia are vying for influence, and in Beijing where powerful factions are competing to shape the country’s future.

China sees North Korea as a small, often irksome, but important strategic ally. The North Korean military ties down the bulk of the sizable South Korean military, a considerable portion of Japan’s, and a significant number of the U.S.’s East Asian assets as well. These forces would otherwise be available for countering China, especially in its sovereignty disputes with Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

The ongoing crisis poses dilemmas for Beijing. First, too much support for Pyongyang, or too little caution leveled toward it, could bring unwanted conflict, forcing Beijing to support its ally, irresponsible though it is, and dragging it into a damaging if not ruinous dispute with key trading partners – and perhaps even into a war with them.

Second, too little support could lead, if only in the long-term, to closer ties between North Korea and Russia. Moscow is deeply concerned with the rise of Chinese power and aspirations. Much of the Russian Far East was acquired centuries ago at China’s expense. There is a worrisome influx into the region of Chinese workers whose national loyalties cannot be in doubt. And in the event of war, the Russian Far East might well be proven indefensible.

Increasing Russian influence in North Korea at the expense of China’s would be a boon to Russia’s security in the Far East, and Moscow must be rife with strategies to turn the situation to its advantage someday. A diplomatic coup could be effected by a falling out between North Korea and China and by cheap energy subsidized by Russia – a petro-lever used adroitly by Mr. Putin in the Ukraine and elsewhere.

Russia, at present, is seeking to counter Chinese ambitions by triangulating with the U.S. and China – a strategy of measured amounts of cordiality and conflict with each. This prevents either power from ascendance and maximizes Russian influence in East Asia and wherever the other two other powers compete, such as Central Asia.

For all the advantages to Russia, and despite Putin’s decided preference for authoritarian rule and military might, Russia is unlikely willing to assume the role of guarantor of North Korea without assurances that the North Korean leadership will behave more as a responsible ally than as a grasping despot.

Third, too little support, in the present crisis and in the future, could lead to a weakening or even collapse of this irresponsible ally, leaving China to face a united Korea and the rest of the Asian periphery, all of whom are ill-disposed to Beijing’s ambitions. And of course China would have to endure an influx of millions of Korean refugees.

The U.S. would dearly like to see the fall of North Korea but it sees no promising means to this end. Decapitation strikes, fomenting insurgency, and further sanctions are unlikely to yield anything but a further entrenched military caste, unpredictable but fearsome countermeasures, and more suffering for the hapless North Korean people.

North Korea, then, despite its relative weakness in economic and military terms, has paradoxical leverage over China here. If North Korea were to weaken, collapse, or throw in with Russia, China’s security would be the worse for it. And as unlikely as any of these scenarios are in the near-term, Beijing cannot ignore their possibility and will play the present crisis with an eye toward longer-term implications.

The ongoing crisis on the Korean peninsula will also have an effect on China’s internal politics. Two of the larger factions in the Chinese leadership are likely to have diverging views on the matter. One faction comprises staid, business-oriented figures, who see North Korea as damaging China’s brand name in markets around the world and endangering future manufacturing contracts, especially those from East Asian countries.

A second faction comprises the military and more ideologically-driven figures who see their country becoming bourgeois and decadent and see North Korea as a burdensome but vital strategic ally in the quest to establish hegemony in East Asia and restore China’s preeminence in the world.

China’s response to the Korean situation, which is thus far rather guarded, will be watched closely for its import on events of the day and for any insight it affords on the country’s politics for the next decade or more.

Brian M Downing is a political/military analyst and author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.

  China’s internal politics, N. Koreans held hostage by a totalitarian monarch and a three-way global chess match, Russian Far East, Vladimir Putin