Bitterness in Beijing over North Korea's betrayal may mean war

The Australian ^ | December 18, 2006 | Rowan Callick

[Jet Jaguar]

THE prospects for continued peace in north Asia depend on the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear status, which resume in Beijing today after 15 stormy political months on the Korean peninsula.

The dynamics have shifted dramatically since the last talks. When Pyongyang tested its first nuclear bomb two months ago, defying pleas from Beijing, it alienated itself from its only ally.

The extent of that alienation has been revealed in essays by China's leading strategic thinkers. The bitter sense of betrayal felt in China about its communist neighbour, on whose behalf 360,000 soldiers, mainly volunteers, died during the Korean war 53 years ago, sets the tone for the extraordinarily frank essays in China Security.

These essays, in a special publication by the Washington-based World Security Institute, discuss, often bleakly, the far-reaching implications of North Korea's nuclear program for China's foreign policy and the balance of power within China.

[prophetic]

N.Korea has always been a sock puppet of china.

For these rumblings of war to emerge is now perfectly in line with china's playbook to expand into the Koreas' and 'stabilize' the situation while annexing the north while poising to take the south.

[Gritty]

360,000 soldiers, mainly volunteers, died during the Korean war 53 years ago

Volunteers? Right!

Just like Stalin's Zeks were "volunteers"!

[Continental Soldier]

One needs to ask, quite seriously, why would China want a nuclear maniac at its border? All common sense says, they don't. Maybe, it is time to let China deal with this "situation."

[BIGLOOK]

MI ping

[bert]

....The extent of that alienation has been revealed in essays by China's leading strategic thinkers....

"Hegemony? We don't need no steenkin hegemony!!" Kim Jong-il


.....since nuclear weapons are regarded as a symbol of national strength......

"Strength through Starvation". Kim Jong-il

[McGavin999]

I think you are wrong. NK may have been a sock puppet, but there is no way on earth that China would have set itself up to be publically humilated by NK.

Some minor disobediance maybe, but to be publically kicked in the face in front of the entire world, sorry, there is no way that was part of China's plan.

[expatpat]

That's an interesting twist on the NK problem.

[Jet Jaguar]

Nodding.

[Joe Boucher]

I thought the same when I read that statement,"360,000 volunteers".
You go to the koreas and fight or die here in your bed type of volunteer?
As for the Chi-coms getting slapped by N.K. I just love it. Let china deal with the little turd in n.Korea.

[Billthedrill]

China's real strategic problem with respect to the proliferation of nuclear weapons is very simple - anything the North Koreans can do the Taiwanese can do better. And may well be doing as we speak. This was definitely not a step in the right direction for Chinese regional geopolitics.

It would really be interesting should the Taiwanese decide to purchase the necessary materials from the North Koreans. Don't think the Chinese haven't thought of it.

[ClaireSolt]

The Chinese dither and equivocate, too.

[Last Dakotan]

...on whose behalf 360,000 soldiers,

Probably way under counted given the modern firepower they were herded into in Chinese "mass attack" strategies. Most veterans talk about about killing thousands in single engagements.

[supremedoctrine]

"annexing the North while poising to take the South."
---this is the first serious talk I'm aware of predicting the possibility of war between North Korea and China. The talk has either been the veiled implicit saber-rattling war noises North Korea has made toward us, OR the thesis that some people has posited that China eventually will provoke us directly into war
with them.. But the scenario of China Vs. North Korea does put China directly facing us in the event that they take over the North and poise to take the South, who we would surely defend, putting us then face to face with China.
But it ain't gonna happen. Or at least I can't see it happening: if China waits much longer we may not be "tied up" in Iraq or elsewhere, and they can't count on the paper tiger melting in the rain.

[NickatNite2003]

Not one US servicepersons toe should
be put at risk of being stubbed to
save the evil regime of Kim Jong Il.

[NickatNite2003]

Yep! Kim Jong Il has again, spit
in the face of China, for all the
world to see.

Kim Jong Il is an arrogant little
man is he not? More arrogance than
brains.

>B-)

[NickatNite2003]

There is much more to the tensions
invilved here. NK soldiers have
been raiding into China for food
and anything else they can find.

Kim Jong Il has had two different
Chinese Intelligence rings rounded
up, tortured and killed. Nirth Korean
agents got into a big firefight in China,
when they tried to kidnap a regional
Chinese Intelligence Chief...

Among other things...

[cake_crumb]

"Bitterness in Beijing over North Korea's betrayal may mean war"

Subheading that accidentally got deleted: Winged Pigs May Sighted

[gleeaikin]

My husband killed one of those "volunteers" in hand-to-hand combat. For years he suffered from PTSD, and he had several scars he would never tell me about. Finally, when our dark haired son was in his early teens, this story surfaced, and with it the terrible guilt that he had killed someone's young teenage son. I shudder to think of all the family suffering that will come out of our current conflicts.

[Jumper]

A long time ago in a World where four nations stood alone, outside the United Nations, surviving on the "good will" election cycle of American electoral politics... Taiwan, South Africa, South Korea and Israel banded together to explore nuclear weapons. Much spectulation about nuke explosions off the S. African coast sever times in the 78-80 period, possibly ending in a pre-Lybian first of WMD transfer, e.g., the transfer of S. Africa to a less stable regime for military purposes (no longer a Western oriented Nations). Today, Israel is accused, or rather suspected, of having acquired the bomb - and one wonders how or where they tested it. More than a few governments around the world know how to connect the dots of the four countries. It took years for South Korea to join the UN in a prelude to their '88 Olympics - a major US coup on the International stage. Taiwan awaits either the fait of South Africa or continued world presence like Israel.

So does anyone out their think that North Korea would not have attacked the South, or that the Arabs would not have attacked Israel, or better yet why was China deterred by puny Taiwan.... I rather beleive the scientific exchanges in the 70-80's put these countries into a very quiet, technolgical and secure, military viable sustaining regimes.