I don’t really agree with any of the analysis thus far presented.
For a quick history lesson, China intervened on the side of North Korea for a few reasons in the Korean War:
- They were ideologically predisposed to the Kim regime, as it was a brothers-in-arms Communist regime.
- They did not want America to conquer North Korea, when MacArthur crossed the 38th parallel (against orders), many view that as the single biggest reason for Chinese intervention.
- The CCP’s control of China in 1950 was shaky, and the country was in tatters. It was a much less well run country in 1950 than it is today, with much less professional decision making involved. Many people believe Mao was paranoid that if North Korea fell American forces would just keep going north to try and reinstate Chain Kai-shek’s government. This one is sort of due to the weak state of Chinese decision making and intelligence at the time, again, the state was in chaos. With better intelligence Mao would have known that the realistic chance of America pushing into China was simply non-existent. The American public was deeply unhappy we lifted a finger to save South Korea, it was a deeply unpopular war that gave Harry Truman almost unprecedentedly low approval ratings. The idea that the public would stand for an aggressive invasion of China was laughable, or that the U.S. leadership was even willing to commit resources to such a thing.
There was never actually a deep and abiding friendship between Mao and Kim. They were ideological fellow travelers, but China intervened in the Korean War due to bad decision making and paranoia. The Communist brothers-in-arm thing was a very small piece of the puzzle, and one that by itself probably wouldn’t have lead to a Chinese intervention.
The idea that China then spent most of the 20th century backing North Korea isn’t accurate. The Kim regime has never been a particularly good ally, China was rewarded with the million or so men it lost fighting to keep America from conquering North Korea with a regime that largely sided with the USSR in the long, 20th century Cold War. In the Communist side of the Cold War by the 1960s the Soviets and China weren’t best buds anymore, both were Communists but neither was interested in any sort of globalist Communist philosophy that didn’t have themselves at the apex, since the Soviets envisioned global Communism with them as the preeminent country this caused an intractable break with China. Squirrely Kim il Sung in North Korea largely sided with Stalin and the Soviet Union. There also was more historical association between Stalin and Kim, for a few years after WWII North Korea was ruled as as a Soviet protectorate and Stalin then set up the DPRK with Kim at its head.
DPRK and China didn’t have “terrible” relations during the Cold War, but they were kind of akin to say, our current relationship with Russia. We have formal diplomatic ties, we say things in public that suggest hey “we don’t hate each other and find things of mutual benefit in our relationship” and etc, but not very far below the surface and very publicly we don’t really like each other at all.
Once the Soviet Union fell, and the early North Korean nuclear weapons program was discovered China kind of stepped up to quietly support North Korea’s regime. They didn’t want North Korea to have nuclear weapons, but they were wary of any attempt by the United States of regime change. That’s actually something that I don’t think American policymakers understood for a long time, probably until the last couple of years–China hates the thought of America forcing a regime change in North Korea. China doesn’t like at all the concept of forcing a country to change its ruling regime because that regime’s internal behaviors don’t meet some Western-oriented ideal. China has a very consistent record in UNSC decisions and in public statements of being very much against Western-led efforts to destabilize or remove from power authoritarians or dictators anywhere in the world. When it’s a country right on their border they are far more vehement on the matter.
With hindsight being 20/20, going back the the early 1990s there was probably an alternative path for dealing with North Korea. One in which the United States worked with China, formally guaranteed to respect North Korea’s territorial sovereignty, and in exchange there was an agreement for a serious and hardcore enforcement of an end to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. In a sense think of a similar deal to what we had with Ukraine after the Soviet Union fell apart. Neither the US or Russia wanted Ukraine holding a bunch of nuclear weapons, so we were able to convince Ukraine if they gave up their weapons neither superpower would threaten Ukraine’s sovereignty (that hasn’t worked out for them at least in part because there was no agreement that one power would protect Ukraine from the other–such a deal with North Korea likely wouldn’t have faced this issue because China would still have its defense pact with North Korea.)
If we had been willing to give Kim Jong-il this agreement back in the early 90s it’s highly likely he’d have taken it. There were a lot of good reasons we didn’t go down this path, and some not good ones. One of the good ones is, it’d have outraged South Korea, which back then was a lot more hardline on the North. One of the bad reasons for not having gone down that path is we still had a Cold War mentality in which our ultimate goal was to topple the Kim regime, not work with it. Another bad reason is “treating with Communists” would be seen as weak and political unpopular.
A major roadblock to serious Chinese help on North Korea for the past 20 years has historically been we have a very obvious desire/policy of regime change as a stated goal. We did start saying under the Trump Administration that we aren’t interested in seeing regime change, but by then it was obviously too late.
Now a good question is, if we have started openly saying we aren’t interested in regime change, why is China still hesitant to fully pull the plug? I think largely because the time for them to do much has passed. Back in the early 1990s if we had worked out an agreement like I said, and Kim refused, it wouldn’t have been very hard for China to punish him–likely by removing him from power and installing a puppet. The reality is in the 20 years since, DPRK has fortified itself pretty damn well, it’s not reliant on China or Russia for its security. Neither country can just wave a wand and remove Kim (now Kim the 3rd) from power. Moreover, North Korea has had nuclear weapons since the GWB administration. So any calculation about dealing with DPRK for China has to include the fact it is dealing with a country that has nuclear weapons. China would like to see DPRK “behave” better, and dislikes the way they act, so that’s why they have been willing to engage in some level of punitive sanctioning. But the way China sees it, if the sanctions get so bad the regime collapses, how is that better for not just China, but anyone in the region? We have no clue what DPRK might do with its nuclear weapons in a scenario where the regime is collapsing.
Something to recognize from China’s perspective is nothing has changed for it vis-a-vis North Korea in years. All that’s changed is North Korea is now obviously very close to having a small fleet of ICBMs that can reach the U.S. mainland. But China has had ICBMs pointed at it from Russia, America, India, for years now (and in fact America has had ICBMs pointed at it from China/Russia for years as well), China likely doesn’t see DPRK now being able to target America as a reason to suddenly change its stance, particularly when I think its stance is basically boiled down to “there isn’t much we can do here that won’t make things worse.” FWIW China has been in range of North Korea’s nuclear weapons since the GWB administration.
China probably knows if DPRK wants to go out in a blaze of glory, it is much less likely to be a target than South Korea or Japan, but it’s not unlikely that such a scenario might involve Chinese troops having to get involved, and they could absolutely be at risk of a tactical nuclear detonation.
So the short of it is–historically China hasn’t worked well with us on North Korea because it fundamentally disagrees with the goal of regime change. It doesn’t fundamentally disagree with nuclear non-proliferation on the Korean peninsula, but at this point in time it has no real cards to play on the matter. It isn’t really in any magically different situation than we are. China has political options of pressuring Kim–which it has tried, Kim has basically told China to fuck off. It has military options to topple Kim–same as America, but China doesn’t want to eat a couple nukes as a cost for toppling Kim, and America doesn’t want South Korea or Japan to eat a couple nukes and a bunch of other shit as a cost for toppling Kim. China’s final option is economic, but the simple reality is while the Chinese border trade is good for the regime, it just isn’t vital any more. We actually had North Korea really locked down for a large part of the 90s and the regime survived. China recognizes North Korea is just too self-reliant and stable for closing off the last of its economic relationship to have much impact.
With ever-increasing American pressure China may end up doing just that, but it’s not likely to change anything on the ground.
That is such a large disconnect that I don’t even know what to say. I mean, if you said something like ‘I’m a bit skeptical of some of this’ or ‘interesting but not enough of a smoking gun’ I’d say that’s reasonable and maybe look for some additional cites (there are, of course, tons of them), but to link this to the same level as Saddam and WMD, well, you can believe what you like in that case. Nothing I can provide is going to change that level of head in the sand.