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In
Korea and Taiwan confrontation can be counterproductive
By
Jonathan
Power
October 25, 2002
London - At first the news from North Korea seemed
like an almighty setback to thoIse who believe we can
deal with grave security problems more by engagement
rather than confrontation. Not only did it appear to
knock the shine off Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Prize,
since his greatest achievement, apart from Camp David,
was his successful diplomacy that brokered the 1994
freeze on the country's nuclear bomb making, it appeared
it might well open the doors again to those Republicans
who eight years ago were arguing for the U.S. to bomb
North Korea.
A strange thing appears to have happened in those
eight years. For all the bluster with President George
Bush's notion of an "axis of evil", no longer is the talk
this wild. The accent is all on diplomacy and an
emphasising of what is still apparently being honoured in
the old 1994 agreement, the freezing of plutonium
production, the most potent raw material for nuclear bomb
manufacture.
Eight years ago, Brent Scowcroft, the former National
Security Advisor to president George Bush senior (and now
the dove on going to war with Iraq) said that President
Bill Clinton would be making a terrible mistake if the
U.S. did not immediately bomb the North Korean
reprocessing plant before the cooling rods containing
plutonium, sufficient to make half a dozen nuclear
weapons, could be transferred to it.
In the end Carter was able to pull off his remarkable
diplomacy because Clinton feared the consequences of war.
The Pentagon told him that the U.S. could lose 50,000
troops. Also that it was possible that North Korea
already had in its arsenal two or three nuclear weapons
and that if the regime thought it might lose the war it
would use these.
Nothing has really changed in the interim to alter the
dangers of going to war. The U.S. many times broke
its side of the bargain. At various times a Republican
dominated Congress made it impossible for the
Administration to deliver on various parts of the U.S.
side of the bargain, in particular the ending of the
trade embargo. And now the North has broken in the most
blatant manner possible an important element in the
nuclear freeze, (although it should be stressed it
doesn't appear to have actually gone into nuclear bomb
production).
The war option is no more viable than it was eight
years ago. It comes as no surprise that Japan, the
country, apart from South Korea, that has the most to
fear from North Korea's nuclear armament and missile
programs, is arguing that the 1994 agreement needs to be
revitalised not abandoned. And perhaps indeed the North
Korean admission of its clandestine activity is more a
cry for openness and creative diplomacy than a new threat
to deliver nuclear annihilation.
Here in Taiwan there is a sense of wait and see.
Taiwan is used to living under threat. The antagonist it
faces across the Taiwan Strait is far larger, better
armed and in every way more formidable than North Korea.
It is five years since the last blow up in this delicate
relationship. Angry at Taiwan's attempt to break out of
its diplomatic isolation with a quasi-official visit of
Taiwan's president to America China "test-fired" missiles
in the Taiwan Strait, only to be met by a dramatic show
of U.S. naval strength in the same waters. But since
then, and particularly with the electoral victory of the
long time opposition, the Democratic Progressive Party,
the relationship has quietened. It may not be harmony and
it is still subject to sudden flair ups, as when
President Chen Shui-bain in August spoke of their being
"one country on each side" of the Strait. But each crisis
seems to occur at more distant intervals and the wind
goes out of them quicker each time.
There are some here who argue that Taiwan is being
slowly throttled by the Chinese diplomatic embargo, but
it's hard to believe that when the Taiwanese economic
presence in the mainland is growing by leaps and bounds
and China is becoming increasingly reliant on Taiwanese
high-tech expertise and when Chinese tourists in droves
can be seen milling around the Chinese art treasures in
the National Palace Museum. There is the occasional voice
in the legislature arguing for Taiwan to develop its own
nuclear weapons so that China would no longer dare
intimidate the island. And there are those, like Vice
President Annette Lu who, in an interview with me, try to
fudge the one China issue by saying "we are one Chinese".
All such voices tend to have somewhere at the back of
their mind an independent Taiwan as their goal.
But this will never work out. China is too vast and
too powerful to be deflected from its goal of a unified
China (which the U.S. formally supports)- even if Taiwan
started to build nuclear weapons. Indeed, that would
provoke China to move pre-emptively.
The issue is more subtle: how to make sure China
respects the individuality and personality of Taiwan.
This means above all respect for Taiwan's democracy, rule
of law and total autonomy in domestic affairs- not like
Hong Kong where since re-union some important principles
have been undermined, not least the commitment to proceed
to democracy.
The main goal for Taiwan must be the same goal as in
America's dealing with North Korea- the avoidance of war.
There is no point in standing up for human rights and
benign principles if the method chosen is so antagonistic
it leads to war. War is the worst of all human wrongs and
as it runs its course every human right in the book is
smashed to pieces.
As with North Korea engagement rather than
confrontation is the path to take.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
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