While no person at all grounded in the realities of modern ship building and handling as well as the state of play in regional politics could have concluded otherwise, it is reassuring to find out that the scene of the crime was rife with high quality forensic materials. The sinking is clearly the result of a torpedo hit. The torpedo is of a type furnished to North Korea by China during the eighties.
The North Koreans had an excellent motive for sinking the Cheonan. It was not, as some pundits have averred, a vengeance strike for the sinking by South Korean patrol boats of a Northern small surface combatant. Rather the sinking was motivated by a strong need in Pyongyang to assure the Six Power Talks remain in hiatus while sparing North Korea and its patrons in Beijing the embarrassment of taking direct responsibility.
The Chinese have indicated an ambivalent attitude toward the sinking ever since it took Beijing a full month to offer pro forma condolences. The Men of the Forbidden City also have more fundamental ambiguity regarding their relation to the Hermit Kingdom of the North and the continuation of the face-losing Six Power Talks which, after all, were a Chinese invention.
In a real sense North Korea is a tiger which the Chinese mounted back during the Korean War when they sent their legions of "volunteers" to rescue Pyongyang from disaster and protect their industial northeast against any potential US/UN air threat. First for reasons of an ideological nature and then for motives of a more practical sort, such as the need to protect social and economic stability from a flood of North Korean refugees, Beijing has had no choice other than that of propping up the decrepit dictatorship of Dear Leader and his father.
At the same time North Korea has become ever more dependent upon the subventions provided by Beijing. At one time, back when there was a Soviet Union, Pyongyang could play its two patrons off against each other as both Moscow and Beijing jockeyed for leadership of the "Socialist Camp." Since the implosion of the Soviet Union, China has been the sole source of whatever passes for economic stability in the North.
The tiny anemic tiger and its giant rider cannot abandon one another without unacceptable losses and damage. For the North Koreans the disaster of a Chinese abandonment would be almost instant governmental collapse and chaos or a spasm of war directed against the South with consequences massive and bad for both North and South. For the Chinese the consequence of letting the North go would be either internal Northern chaos or the (perhaps literal) fallout of war on the peninsula. Neither is desirable from the perspective of Beijing--although the second would be far less so.
Even if Pyongyang does not launch a spasm attack, any collapse in the North would result in a flood of people crossing the Tumen and Yalu rivers with a very negative impact on China. The northeast is China's rust belt and has seen more than a few outbreaks of social unrest in the past ten years. An influx of North Koreans would be an exacerbation which Beijing cannot contemplate with equanimity.
The North Korean regime is not one given to compromise. Nor is it given to abandoning its only diplomatic card, the nuclear program, without a payoff of truly stupendous nature. Even the largess promised by the US, South Korea, Japan, and others in previous efforts to defang the North Korean nuclear potential proved to be insufficient in the eyes of Dear Leader and the coterie surrounding the throne.
It is possible that the only payoff which would convince Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear quest, dismantle its miniature atomic arsenal, and act as if it were a mature and responsible government would be the reunification of the peninsula under terms highly favorable to Northern dominance. This is a price far too high for the South Koreans--or the US and Japan--to pay.
It may even be a price too high for Beijing to continence given the capacity of the South Korean economy and technological inventiveness. Beijing is well aware that South Korea like Japan has an off-the-shelf capability to become a nuclear weapons possessing power. It is also well aware that the ruling oligarchy with or without Dear Leader or a blood successor is not predictable in its behavior, so a North Korean dominated peninsula with a nuclear potential and a very productive infrastructure at present would be a game changer in regional dynamics.
As a result it is debatable that the Trolls of Beijing really, really want to see the Six Power Talks resume given that they are doomed to fail--and China resents being linked so intimately with a diplomatic failure of global proportions. So, if as a result of the Cheonan sinking the South Koreans reject reopening the talks, China will not be upset no matter how much rhetoric to the contrary spews from their foreign ministry.
This leaves the question of what the South Koreans can do to balance the books. War is not an option as even the rumor of the remotest possibility of war would spook investors so that capital would flee the South at an awesome rate of knots. If the evidence presented by South Korea is "objective and scientific" enough to impress both Beijing and Moscow, there is some chance that the Security Council would impose yet more sanctions on the North.
That, of course, would be a big "so what?" in the eyes of Pyongyang. The Hermits are secure in knowing that Beijing cannot let the North go down the tubes no matter what sanctions might be considered. If nothing else Beijing can always invoke "humanitarian" considerations to continue trade in essentials such as food, energy, and the exchange of raw materials for manufactured goods. And, the Hermits have a ready clientele for their top end products such as missiles and missile components--to say nothing of nuclear energy related technology. And, the record shows, the North with Chinese assistance can readily break any UN imposed quasi-blockade.
North Korea committed an act of mass murder on Southerners. It has been recognized as just that by South Koreans generally and the younger generation in particular. With the identification of the murder weapon as one of Chinese manufacture, the ire of the Southern population will include China as well as the trigger pullers in Pyongyang. This political reality complicates the matter of a Southern response.
It would take a gesture of an unprecedented nature on the part of Beijing to both cool animus directed against it but also to facilitate the ability and willingness of the South Korean government to heed Chinese admonitions to remain "calm." Just what that gesture might be remains to be seen, but the proposition that Beijing is considering that option cannot be dismissed lightly or quickly.
In a very real sense the ball is resting firmly not in the court of Seoul nor in that of Pyongyang but in that labeled "Beijing." There is no doubt but the Chinese want "calm" in the neighborhood. What also must not be doubted is that it is up to them to do all that is possible to assure that desired condition ensues.
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