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By Juan T. Gatbonton, Editorial Consultant
The protracted controversy over North Korea’s
nuclear ambitions seems to have died down, at least for the moment.
The six-power talks have, at long last, proved surprisingly
successful—thanks, apparently, to China’s bottom-line opposition
to the nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il
dramatically dismantled the symbol of his nuclear facilities,
following his submission to China, chairman of the six-power talks,
of an accounting of his country’s nuclear arms program. With
international TV cameras filming, Kim’s once-hermetic Communist
regime blew up the concrete cooling tower of its main nuclear power
plant at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang. The last time Kim staged a
similar spectacle, in October 2006, it had been the underground test
of a nuclear weapon.
Obviously eager to produce a foreign-policy
triumph before his term ends, US President George W. Bush responded
swiftly. Defying the neo-conservatives grouped around Vice President
Richard Cheney, Bush took North Korea off Washington’s list of
state sponsors of terrorism—where it has been for 20 years—hence
making Pyongyang (theoretically) eligible for American aid and for
loans from the World Bank and other international lenders. The most
likely next step is the institutionalization of the six-power talks
as a ready forum for dealing with Northeast Asian problems as they
arise.
Kim’s global debut?
Optimists see Kim Jong Il as making ready to
reintegrate his hermetic regime into the global community. But the
players themselves remain cautious, prepared to take the Northeast
Asian détente step by step.
For Japan, North Korea’s nuclear missile
capability is the most crucial concern. But a sweeping defense
review that Tokyo recently carried out reaffirms Japan will continue
to shun the possession of nuclear arms. Of course, the Japanese
already possess nuclear technology—and the solid-fuel missiles to
match. (At the moment these are being used to send up weather,
telecom and spy satellites.) Not military self-sufficiency but the
strongest ties with the US make up Japan’s present-day core
strategy.
Meanwhile, an increasingly self-confident South
Korea (whose GDP is already larger than that of the whole of Asean)
is beginning to chart a foreign-policy course independent of its
American patron. Then also, Seoul may not been entirely passive in
the face of Pyongyang’s nuclear provocations. In November 2005,
the International Atomic Energy Agency accused Seoul of having
enriched a tiny amount of uranium—to a level close to what would
be useful in an atomic weapon. (Of course the South Korean
government denied the experiments had its blessings, explaining that
they were carried out by academic researchers “for scientific
interest, without the knowledge of the government.”)
If Japan is moving closer to the US, South Korea
may be moving closer to China—as Korean nationalists join the
Chinese in venting their historical anger against the Japanese over
rival claims to potential hydrocarbon deposits in the East China Sea
and in the Sea of Japan.
Apart from an exponential increase in
Seoul-Beijing relations, analysts also discern a creeping
reconciliation between the two Koreas, which contrasts with
apparently increasing strain between Seoul and Washington. New
generations of South Koreans—who have no recollections of the
Korean War—apparently resent what they regard as Washington’s
undermining of Seoul’s efforts to reconcile with Pyongyang.
The politics of national memory
Historical baggage left over from the Pacific
War still hinders the Northeast Asian states from leaving behind the
“politics of national memory.” Korean nationalism, like that of
the Chinese, remains fiercely anti-Japanese. And, quite regularly,
Chinese and Korean feelings have been inflamed by high Japanese
officials’ visits to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine—where war
criminals are venerated along with the war dead in the imperial
Shinto cult.
How emotional these competing nationalisms can
be is shown by the feelings aroused by conflicting claims over
uninhabited China Sea islets—between Japan and China over
Senkaku-Daioyu, and between Seoul and the Japanese prefecture of
Shimane over Dokto-Takeshima.
But, in the era of good feeling that seems to be
dawning in Northeast Asia, even these nationalist flare-ups may have
already been damped down. Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to
Tokyo in May—preceded by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao—seems to have
produced a veritable “sea of change,” in the Chinese view.
The two sides promised to develop a “mutually
beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests.” And
all the signs are that the time is propitious for a structural
change in the relationship between the biggest powers in Northeast
Asia—one more egalitarian than the old one had been. (Even the
easing of the Taiwan crisis is helping along their rapprochement.)
A sea of change in Japan-China relations
China is no longer a poor and helpless giant.
Not only is it growing much faster than anyone had expected. It is
also growing not as the Soviet Union had but as an open
economy—more open than even Meiji Japan had been during its own
ascent to power rank. Intercourse with the world community is
central to its growth. As China becomes richer and more powerful, it
will try to use its growing influence to reshape global rules and
institutions to better serve its interests. But it is more likely to
try and find its place within the system than to overturn it.
Notes and Comments appears fortnightly in The
Manila Times.
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