North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's death has strategists and policymakers asking the same question: What's next? Among some there is a strong sense that a leadership change in Pyongyang represents the best opportunity in decades for North Korea to join the international community as a normal state. Pyongyang stands at a crossroads.
With a new leader in Pyongyang, there is an opportunity for North Korea to recognize the mistakes of the past, as China did over 30 years ago, and opt for reform, stability, reconciliation, and integration. Much of North Korea's destiny will be determined within the country itself, but the US and China cannot sit on the sidelines. Indeed, China and the US should work together to encourage Pyongyang to take the path of stability and integration, and thus inaugurate a new era of US-China cooperation and strategic mutual trust.
Beijing has long been concerned that political reform in Pyongyang could stoke instability and a flood of refugees across the border. Yet, the grinding poverty of the North Korean people, coupled with recent attacks on South Korea and the continued development of nuclear weapons, demonstrate that an unreformed North Korea may influence regional stability.
China has experience managing the transition from a poor, isolated state into a prosperous country that is integrated with the rest of the Asia-Pacific region. Encouragement from Beijing for Pyongyang to adopt reform and opening policies and build the institutions to support them should be enhanced.
For its part, Washington will also have to reevaluate its approach to North Korea. Past efforts to reach out to Pyongyang and encourage better behavior were tempered by concerns that doing so would "reward bad behavior" and encourage future belligerence.
North Korea's leadership now has an opportunity to embrace a more positive vision for the country's future. For Washington, this means active engagement and incentives to draw North Korea in from the cold, without sacrificing principles for denuclearization and alliance coordination.
The five members of the Six-Party Talks should develop a roadmap for denuclearization that both recognizes previous agreements and allows all sides to start anew. The US should front-load positive inducements for denuclearization and give Pyongyang the chance to take a new direction.
Washington and Beijing, must lead North Korea toward a new, positive approach. This will mean developing a joint vision for the future of North Korea that includes a clear roadmap, as well as resolve to hold Pyongyang accountable for hostile behavior. Such an approach can only be accomplished via regular, high-level communications between all members of the Six-Party Talks, but especially between China and the US.
While coordination between the US and its Asian allies is critical and ongoing, progress has to date been hamstrung by a lack of effective coordination between Beijing and Washington. Yet formal mechanisms for US-China cooperation are already in place. Indeed, the challenge is not a lack of mechanisms, but to find the will to coordinate.
US-China cooperation to address North Korea's impact on regional security and Chinese sovereignty also has the potential to enhance US-China strategic trust over the long-term. Although pundits on both sides tend to emphasize divisions, effective collaboration between Washington and Beijing could herald a new era of US-China cooperation, which could spread into other areas of common interest. As concerns about a lack of US-China strategic trust continue to be expressed by both sides, such cooperation is sorely needed and is now possible.
North Korea remains the biggest issue in peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific, both because of its history of belligerence and because of the regime's brittle rigidity.
Continued provocations from North Korea could jeopardize regional stability and economic development and again put the US and China on opposite sides of a crisis that neither seeks.
Washington and Beijing today have an opportunity to work together for a new era of North Korean integration and stability, while enhancing US-China cooperation and building strategic mutual trust.
Abraham M. Denmark is an Asia-Pacific Advisor at the Center for Naval Analyses, and a former Country Director for China Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Joshua Eisenman is Senior Fellow in China Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington DC and teaches Chinese politics at New York University.
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