South Korea's Ministry of National Defense has been saying for weeks that the U.S. would join in anti-submarine exercises in the West or Yellow Sea, and there have even been reports that the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George Washington will lead the flotilla. The commander of U.S. forces in Korea, Gen. Walter Sharp, has confirmed the exercises are going to happen, but now both South Korea and the U.S. are hesitating in the face of strong Chinese concerns about such a show of force in waters so close to the Chinese mainland.
Now the South Koreans are saying they might prefer to stage the exercises south of the Korean Peninsula, and the Americans are silent on whether the carrier George Washington will participate. It's also not at all clear how long the exercises will last or exactly what the Americans and South Koreans will be doing out there. Options range from largely computerized war games to all-out live-fire missions against dummy targets in a display for international media.
No matter where they stage the exercises, the Americans and South Koreans are not going to go near the waters where the Cheonan went down. That was close to the Northern Limit Line, the marker drawn on maps by the UN Command in Seoul after the Korean War (1950-1953), below which North Korean ships are banned. North Korea refuses to recognize the line — and has threatened more attacks in the area, the scene of bloody battles in June 1999 and again in June 2002.
North Korea now is blasting the prospect of U.S.-South Korea war games in vitriolic language similar to its threats before the UN Security Council came out with its statement. United States and South Korean officials are caught in a dilemma in which they do not want to appear to have been intimidated into backing down on holding exercises but also do not want to provoke another incident.
United States officials are convinced the UN statement was cleverly worded to suggest North Korea was responsible for the attack while avoiding language which would only inflame tensions. The statement noted that five nations participated in the investigation in which North Korea was held "responsible for sinking the Cheonan" that North Korea had stated "it had nothing to do with the incident" and that "therefore the Security Council condemns the attack which led to the sinking of the Cheonan".
The critical point, however, was that the statement fell far short of the "resolution" condemning North Korea that South Korea had wanted. With the danger of condemnation safely averted, North Korea is now moving quickly to follow up on this success on two other fronts.
First, North Korea is saying it would indeed welcome "six-party talks on an equal footing" in order to bring about denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and a peace treaty in place of the armistice ending the Korean War. The six-party talks include the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the U.S.
The statement indicates that North Korea would indeed consider returning to six-party talks on its nuclear program, which were last held in Beijing in December 2008.
It also suggests that nothing much has changed — that is, that North Korea will demand recognition as a nuclear power, on the basis of tests it conducted in October 2006 and again in May of last year. At the same time, North Korea will demand huge compensation in return for making a show of giving up its nukes — a process that's sure to revive memories of the failed 1994 Geneva agreement with the U.S. and the six-nation agreements of 2007 under which the North agreed on specific timetables for doing away with its nukes.
The UN statement is sure to provide ammunition for North Korean diplomatic moves, beginning with discussions that Pyongyang is reportedly requesting with the United Nations command at the truce village of Panmunjom under terms of the armistice. Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, said North Korea is asking for talks there about the Cheonan incident.
That report is consistent with North Korea's claim, as reported by the North's Korean Central News Agency, that the Cheonan case "should have been settled between the North and the South without referring it to the UN".
One thing is certain, however. North Korea is not going to use the talks at the Panmunjom forum to make any dramatic concessions or admissions of responsibility for sinking the Cheonan. The UN statement, as the North Korean report duly noted, was "devoid of any proper judgement and conclusion" — and made "without adopting any resolution".
North Korea is moving ahead on diplomacy with the confidence that China is firmly on its side — and sure to become more so as tensions increase in the region. The U.S., meanwhile, is counting on the Chinese to keep the North Koreans under control while bringing about a return to six-party talks.
It's as though the great powers with the most influence on their Korean surrogates have come to an understanding in which the U.S. is telling the South Koreans, the Cheonan sinking was too bad, now let's get over it.
Chinese professors were full of rationalizations and explanations. "China and the U.S. will try to avoid any eruption or elevation of crisis," said Zhang Quanyi, a professor at Zhejiang Wanli University in Ningbo, eastern China, as quoted by Yonhap, the South Korean news agency. "The current psychological confrontation is only a tension on the surface." The two, he said, "will work to have more strategic cooperation."
In the face of Chinese nervousness about joint exercises, Kim Mikyung, a professor at Hiroshima City University in Japan was quoted as saying, "Both sides know that they also have to work together."
ShareThis
