President Xi, Courting North Korea’s Kim Jong-un at Pyongyang, Is Likely To Play Moscow Against Washington

President Xi Jinping’s summit Monday and Tuesday with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, at Pyongyang places Beijing squarely between Washington and Moscow in the search for domination of northeast Asia.Mr. Xi is believed not to support North Korea’s emergence as a nuclear power within eyesight of China as well as South Korea but is more interested in asserting Chinese influence while Mr. Kim provides arms and men for Russia’s war against Ukraine.Mr. Xi’s visit to Pyongyang, his first trip outside China this year and his first visit to North Korea in seven years, “will surely inject new impetus into the traditional friendship between the two countries,” said the Chinese state news agency, Xinhua, on the eve of the summit. “They are good neighbors, good friends, and good comrades….who have helped each other in time of need.”The commentary said not a word about either Russia or America, but the message was clear. As the leader of the country that rescued North Korea in the Korean War, Mr. Xi will remind Mr. Kim that he needs Chinese oil and food as well as the guarantee of defense if another war breaks out on the Korean peninsula.If Mr. Xi conveys President Trump’s eagerness for another summit with Mr. Kim, it will be to play Washington against Moscow, undermining the influence of President Putin. The fact that Mr. Xi hosted Mr. Putin at Beijing last month within days after his summit with Mr. Trump shows his desire to stand between them while increasing his own authority throughout the region.The State Department has fallen back on familiar demands for North Korea’s “complete denuclearization,” but Mr. Trump has to be aware that North Korea is unlikely to go along with even a pretense of cutting down on key elements of its nuclear program. Mr. Kim’s powerful younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, made that point clearly.A comment by a State Department spokesperson that America and China share the desire for North Korea’s denuclearization “is just a complete fabrication and false information,” Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency quoted her as saying. “And it may be a hope of the U.S. officials very much fond of uttering the archaic word ‘denuclearization,’” she said, “but it is absolutely untrue.”That Mr. Kim is no more inclined now to consider denuclearization than he was after his summits with Mr. Trump at Singapore in June 2018 and at Hanoi in February 2019 or at the truce village of Panmunjom four months later does not mean that they will not meet again.The head of the Korean program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Washington, Victor Cha, sees Chinese concerns about Japan and South Korea possibly driving Mr. Xi to press for a Trump-Kim summit. The argument, says Mr. Cha, would be that Mr. Xi might “help us on North Korea” because “your neighbor is just going to get a lot worse if you don’t work with us.” He pointed to Communist China’s need for strong relations with America while Japan and South Korea build up their own military strength.“A summit can happen even if Trump does not recognize or acknowledge North Korea as a nuclear state,” writes a lecturer in East Asian Studies at Stanford, Daniel Sneider. “The argument goes,” he says, “If Trump refrains from bringing up the issue, Kim will think he has gone more than halfway.” Russia, Mr. Sneider notes, has already acknowledged North Korea as a nuclear state. China may be ready to follow President Trump’s lead.One of the most experienced analysts on North Korea, Sydney Seiler, who has served on the national intelligence council and advised the American command in South Korea is not as optimistic.Mr. Kim “seems to be signaling he needs more assurance that a meeting with President Trump would not result in pressure to return to stalled denuclearization talks,” Mr. Seiler writes on the CSIS website. The prospect of Mr. Xi urging a Trump-Kim summit “seems unlikely,” predicts Mr. Seiler. Mr. Xi is “unlikely to expend much, if any, political leverage in an effort to bring Kim back to the denuclearization table — an effort Xi probably concludes is unlikely to bear fruit.”

President Xi, Courting North Korea’s Kim Jong-un at Pyongyang, Is Likely To Play Moscow Against Washington

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