China, DPRK out-maneuver Obama before his Asia trip even begins

While North Korea is a basket case as far as its economy and human rights are concerned, Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il is a master tactician with an uncanny sense of timing.

Last  Monday, a few days before President Obama was due to begin his Asian visit by attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Singapore, the DPRK navy engineered a brief skirmish with South Korean vessels in choppy seas to the west of the peninsula.

The North Korean dictator’s message to Obama is that despite the country’s desperate need for food and fuel, the combativeness of its military is world-class. That this flexing of the muscle has to some extent succeeded is evidenced by the benign reactions from both South Korea and the U.S.

Seoul on Tuesday resumed approving border crossings into the North for businessmen and tourists. While attending APEC meetings in Singapore, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton steered clear of lambasting Kim for yet another foolhardy venture. Instead, she announced that Special Envoy Stephen Bosworth would soon visit Pyongyang to lay the groundwork for resuming the so-called six-party talks on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

Clinton told the media that Bosworth’s meeting with North Korean diplomats should not be misconstrued as bilateral talks between the two enemy countries.

“This is not a negotiation,” Clinton said. “It’s an effort to pave the way toward North Korea’s return to the six-party process.”

Yet there is no denying that Kim has already won some form of concessions by doing nothing more than displaying more roguishness. Bosworth’s trip to Pyongyang could be used in internal DPRK propaganda as a sign that the Obama administration is begging Dear Leader Kim to return to the six-party talks. Moreover, while Washington has insisted that Bosworth would only discuss the single issue of Pyongyang’s return to the negotiations, it will be difficult to convince the international community that the Bosworth visit is not at least a prelude to full-fledged bilateral negotiations — particularly given that Kim has up to now made no promise about the talks.

A key item on Obama’s maiden trip to China will be to persuade the Hu Jintao leadership to be more assertive in using its s influence to rein in the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran. The Chinese Communist Party leadership has in the past month or two, however, gone in the opposite direction by boosting economic and other ties with the two pariah states.

While meeting a senior DPRK military delegation in Beijing late last month, Hu vowed that Beijing would enthusiastically “push forward the China-DPRK cooperative relationship to new levels.”

Moreover, the Chinese leadership has essentially stopped enforcing sanctions on the DPRK that were imposed by the UN Security Council following Pyongyang’s May 25 nuclear test.

Meanwhile, Western diplomats in Beijing and Pyongyang have come to the conclusion that the Hu leadership’s decision to back Kim has been heavily influenced by PLA generals. Trading and resources-oriented Chinese companies with close ties to the army have been the major beneficiaries of much-enhanced economic relations with the DPRK, especially exploitation of the country’s rich mineral resources.

It is thus unlikely that Beijing would give Obama anything more than a vague, theoretical assurance that China will lean on Kim to send his negotiators back to the talks, which might be resumed in Beijing some time next year.

Willy Lam is a Hong Kong-based China scholar and journalist specializing in Communist Party politics and foreign policy.