Here we go again. North Korea, armed with nuclear weapons, is playing a dangerous game and the Obama administration is consciously playing it along.
I am referring to the meeting between New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and two North Korean diplomats in Santa Fe yesterday.
First of all, the meeting yesterday, just like Bill Clinton's visit to Pyongyang earlier this month, could not have happened without the approval of the Obama administration. Those two North Korean diplomats were posted at their mission at the United Nations in New York and, at a minimum, needed the permission of the U.S. State Department to travel to New Mexico. To characterize these meetings as "private" is, frankly, dishonest.
This was especially true of Clinton's visit just a couple of week ago. President Clinton, unlike other senior politicians retired from the U.S. government, is deeply "in the loop" with respect to my file, as evidenced by his nut-cracking while campaigning for Mr. Obama last fall. (Indeed, he had cracked nuts about my cause while visiting China several years ago.) And in a slip of tongue on CNN yesterday, Mr. Richardson attributed the release of those two American journalists to the good diplomacy "by the Obama administration". In his mind, apparently, Clinton's visit to Pyongyang was not just a "solely private" humanitarian mission, as claimed by the Obama administration. Mr. Clinton's visit was arranged by the Obama administration in response to North Korea request.
As I have already revealed in my June 2 update and June 16 blog, not only had Pyongyang's May 25 nuclear test caused the greatest security damage to China, it was also aimed at China from the conception. After these revelations, North Korea fired 7 short-range missiles on or around July 4. Conventional wisdom had it that those missile tests were a provocation against the United States or its allies in the region. I would say that based on the number and the ranges of these missiles, they were further provocations against China by Pyongyang. Or more precisely, they were meant to send a signal to the United States.
And here is the big picture and certainly the North Koreans know it. I have proposed a plan to democratize China and, by using the common philosophy, to build a enduring cooperative relationship between China and the United States. However, the Obama administration has never given up the outdated idea of confrontation and containment in its China policy. Sensing the potential confrontation between China and United States, Pyongyang exploited the situation for its own advantage.
Evidently, Pyongyang wanted direct talks with the United States, perhaps thinking that it could get everything it wanted from the U.S. However, as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger pointed out: "[T]wo-party talks outside the six-party framework never made any sense. North Korean nuclear weapons threaten its neighbours more than the United States." By playing it along with Pyongyang's overtone, the Obama administration not only slapped the faces of its negotiation partners - who had been pressured to sign on to tough sanctions on North Korea just weeks before - by ignoring their concerns in the six-party process, its actions had also raised the possibility that it would use North Korea as another piece in its containment policy towards China.
Already, there were telltale signs of what Pyongyang wanted from an improved relationship with Washington. Soon after President Clinton's high-profile visit, North Korea touted the diplomatic success as the brilliant work of Kim Jong-un, heir-apparent of the secretive regime. While it is unclear at this time whether the Obama administration made any explicit promise in supporting such a leadership transfer scheme, the potential depth of conversations between those two governments could not be underestimated, especially considering that the U.S. administration, for its own self-interest, had a long track record of backing other countries' ruling classes at the expenses of their general public.
Of course, the North Korean regime could not have exploited the situation to its advantage had the Obama administration been more responsive to my idea of Sino-U.S. cooperation. In a genuine cooperative relationship between China and United States, there would be nothing for an international outcast to exploit. When both China and U.S. take a pragmatic view of the world, even countries like North Korea will likely follow. In that scenario, the problem of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons could be easily solved as North Korea will soon realize there is no need to possess such weapons.
Granted, as China democratizes, North Korea will necessarily feel pressured internally. I can understand the anxiety of its leadership, especially since I have called the regime "a family dictatorship". However, I believe democracy is ultimately for the good of its people. And it will be up to North Korean people to decide whether to follow the example of a democratizing China. While the current leadership will likely not budge, a Western-educated Kim Jong-un may turn out to be more open-minded. As such, I am optimistic about North Korea's future as a full-fledged member of international community with normal relations with other countries, including the United States.
Indeed, the whole region of East Asia will become more peaceful if and when China and United States start to cooperate on global issues with that common philosophy. And I am very hopeful for this Confucianism-influenced region. Concerning relation between human beings and relation between man and nature, Confucian philosophical sensibilities have much to offer to the emergence of a new global ethic which is, frankly, urgently needed for human survival in the 21st century. Ultimately, I believe the people in East Asia will be able to make a significant contribution towards world peace and sustainable development.
