“Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth” – Archimedes, Greek mathematician and physicist, on realizing the science behind the lever and fulcrum.
The President lambasted North Korea in the UN. Finally, someone stood up in that assembly and said what needed to be said. In response, Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s despot, announced that he was considering testing a nuclear weapon over the Pacific Ocean. Kim suggested he was going to demonstrate both the weapon and the delivery system, that is, put a weapon in the nose of a missile and launch the missile into the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
This would be the first atmospheric detonation since 1980 (when China conducted it’s last above-ground test). It’s been more than 50 years since any nation detonated a weapon mated to a missile.
For North Korea, launching a missile into the Pacific Ocean means the missile must overfly some other nation. A missile launched into the Philippine Sea would over-fly the Republic of Korea and certain small, Japanese islands; a missile fired elsewhere into the greater Pacific Ocean area would need to over-fly Japan, unless it were launched into the very northern reaches of the Pacific, over-flying Russia. Of the small number of live weapon tests (weapons mated to a missile) conducted in the 50s and 60s, none were ever launched over another nation’s territory.
The reasons are obvious: a system failure of any type might result in a nuclear weapon falling on – and perhaps detonating in – another country.
Whether Kim will actually do this remains to be seen. What we need to ask now is this: What might be done to prevent him from conducting such a test?
We’ve enhanced sanctions against North Korea; they are as stringent now as they’ve ever been. Yet, China continues to trade with them; China insisted on an exemption for oil shipments to North Korea via their pipeline, citing concerns about wax (paraffin) build-up if fuel flow was ended and the pipe was allowed to return to ambient temperature. So, they “need” to keep the oil flowing.
In concert with smuggling of a host of items across the border, to include missile technology, the simple truth is the Chinese government continues to pay lip service to international sanctions, confidant that no one is really going to do anything to China. China is the Middle Kingdom after all, the center of the world. The world can’t really survive without the center. That, at least is Beijing’s viewpoint.
The truth is somewhat different.
China is a net importer of food and of fuel, and the amounts imported each year are increasing. China still sends hundreds of thousands of students overseas for educations that can’t be obtained in China. Wealthy Chinese citizens send tens of billions of dollars overseas for safekeeping every month; US purchases of Chinese goods equates to – net – more than 3 million US jobs lost to Chinese manufacturers; a number that equates to perhaps twice that many (or more) Chinese laborers.
There are any number of companies, in the US and elsewhere, that would be willing and able to step in and fill that shortfall. It would mean more expensive goods. But everything can’t be reduced to a price; security – freedom from fear of Kim with nuclear weapons – is probably worth the extra costs of certain goods.
Each of these represent a problem that China cannot easily address, each represents a place to apply leverage.
Add this: Standard and Poor’s just lowered China’s bond rating. So, despite the rhetoric, China’s self-polished image of economic robustness is not a true image; there are blemishes, some of them quite large. China has serious economic flaws, many of them systemic, the predictable results of central planning.
The result is that China is, in fact, quite susceptible to economic leverage from the US and the rest of the world.
If Kim conducts the test, China must be held responsible. We need to make that clear to Beijing.
But before that happens, we need to use our leverage against China, and through China, North Korea. To keep Kim and North Korea “in the box,” we don’t need to move the world, just China. We have the leverage to do so, if we want to use it.
Copyright 2017 Arrias
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