Why the Fight With North Korea

 Is Really About China

Elizabeth Dias

Oct 12, 2017

In recent weeks, President Trump and Pyongyang have escalated
 their war of words over North Korea's nuclear weapons testing,
with both sides hinting it could end with a nuclear conflict.

But while the rhetoric has focused on North Korea, the Central
 Intelligence Agency is just as worried about China.

CIA analysts say the North Korean tests have heightened the
concerns the U.S. has about managing the rise of China, which
 sees the conflict as a way of keeping the U.S. off-balance in Asia
while maintaining its influence over its immediate neighbors.

“It is, to us, not just an immediate national security threat,” the
 CIA’s Michael Collins, deputy assistant director for
East Asia Mission Center, said last week at a national securit
y conference at George Washington University.
 “It is forcing us to think about the long-term management
 of China.”

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The North Korea problem looks different
from Beijing’s eyes than it does from
Washington’s. Neither country
 wants a nuclearized North Korea,
and China,
like Washington, condemned North Korea’s 
recent missile launches and backed 
the United Nations’ latest sanctions
against North Korea in September.
 But China’s strategic interests in the region
 are different from the U.S.’s objectives.
 China is focused on expanding its regional
influence in Southeast Asia, and in the
 long term, increasing its global might.

“China still looks at the North Korea problem through the lens
of what the U.S. is doing,” the CIA’s Yong Suk Lee, deputy assistan
t director for the Korea Mission Center, said at the same security
 conference last week. “China’s strategic goal is to frustrate the
 U.S. and maintain a permanent division of the Korean peninsula.”

Division on the peninsula is especially important for China because
 it helps counter the impression that the U.S. could contain
China’s rise.
North Korea serves as a “buffer state” for China amid strong U.S.
 alliances with its neighbors, South Korea and Japan. Man
 in China also see the demise of North Korea as tied to the rise
 of South Korea, and thus U.S. power.

“It would be perceived as a victory for America, a defeat for China,
” says longtime diplomat Christopher Hill, an assistant Secretary o
f State under George W. Bush who is now dean of the University

 of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies.

This calculus does not mean China is not concerned about
 nuclear war, but rather that China has its own geostrategic timeline. 
Beijing would rather deal with a nuclear North Korea later, 
ideally when Chinese power is greater than the U.S.’s, says
 the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ senior
 vice president for Asia and apan Chair, Michael Green.

“A nuclear North Korea, if it behaves, is acceptable,” he says,
 “and far more acceptable than the regime collapsing and China
 finding on its border a unified Korea that is aligned with the
United States, or China finds all of the chaos that comes from
 war on the peninsula.”

Chinese are split on the issue, says Hill. But for some, the cure
 for a nuclear North Korea may be worse than the disease.
“Especially from the vantage point of China’s national security state
, they have real concerns about the perception that the U.S. has once
 and for all won the cold war on the Korean peninsula,” Hill says.
 “There could be concerns about what this would to do to
 China’s security policy, that is, if the U.S. put listening post
s or troops up on the
 Yellow River, on the Chinese border.”

But already, China is facing a cost. South Korea has installed and
 deployed launchers of the U.S. anti-missile THAAD system,
designed to shoot down missiles mid-flight. Japan, South Korea,
 and the U.S. are forming a closer alliance. Missile defens
e technology is still only linked bilaterally, but multilateral strength
is growing more broadly among U.S. allies, who are doing
 joint missile defense exercises. “Their worst nightmare is
 coming together,” says the American Enterprise Institute’s
Dan Blumenthal, director of Asian Studies.

It is complicated because China also wants stable relationship with U.S.
 “They are rivals, they are not an enemy,” Blumenthal says.

China also might not have the luxury of pushing action on
North Korea down the road. Pyongyang conducted its sixth
nuclear test last month. Weeks later, Trump expanded the Treasury Departments’ ability
 to target those who financially engage North Korea. Trump als
o said that Chinese president Xi Jinping told Chinese banks to
stop doing business with North Korea, which the Chinese
 government
 has not confirmed. “They have to respond to the Trump
administration’s pressure,” says Green.

Just how deeply the Trump Administration wants to engage
China in dealing with North Korea remains to be seen.
Trump is scheduled to visit China in November. Last month
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made his second visit to China.
His trip was slated to focus on the North Korean crisis,
but events were overshadowed when Trump tweeted that
 Tillerson was “wasting his time” negotiating with Kim Jong Un.

“As soon as Tillerson went out there, he essentially got recalled
 by a tweet,” Hill says. “There’s a lot of work that needs to be
 done with China, but unfortunately there is no one in place to do
 that work.”