Obama Pressures China to Get Tough on North Korea

ANALYSIS

(Dec. 7) -- The Obama administration's frustration with China is almost tangible amid a whirlwind of diplomacy over warlike action from North Korea.

The White House, in the wee hours Monday, announced that President Barack Obama got a chance to call his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, on Sunday night to discuss the deadly Nov. 23 North Korean artillery shelling of a South Korean island and the North's recent revelations that it is now enriching uranium.

But the fact that it took nearly two weeks for leaders of the two most influential nations in the region to hash out the crisis was a less resounding development than the Obama administration's understated acknowledgment that China isn't even helping yet.

Obama "urged China to work with us and others to send a clear message to North Korea that its provocations are unacceptable," the White House said. This came after the statement described the two leaders as agreeing on the need to work together toward peace and stability in Northeast Asia, although it noted that only the U.S. president condemned the North Korean shelling.

Pressed about the delay, Deputy White House Spokesman Bill Burton told reporters that they are world leaders with "pretty busy schedules," and he didn't to go beyond the early-morning statement.

China may be the most important player in any international dealings with North Korea, about the only provider of a lifeline to the weak North Korean economy and the volatile, opaque communist leadership in Pyongyang. Beijing's participation in de-nuclearization talks in the 1990s and the past decade provided the pivotal carrots and sticks that helped bring North Korea into agreements with the United States and its partners then.

But China has, at least publicly, kept to the sidelines this year. Its condemnation of last week's joint U.S.-South Korean war games in the Yellow Sea was much harsher than its reaction to the North Korean shelling, which brought a call from Beijing for calm on the Korean Peninsula that placed no blame. The sinking of a South Korean naval ship in the spring, blamed by most of the world on a North Korean torpedo, brought a similarly mild reaction from China, which blocked the United Nations from taking any strong response against Pyongyang.

Hours after Obama reached Hu on the phone, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton convened an emergency meeting on North Korea at the State Department with the foreign minsters of Japan and South Korea.

They agreed, Clinton said, "that North Korea's provocative and belligerent behavior jeopardizes peace and stability in Asia," and that the North's action "threatens us all, and that it will be met with solidarity from all three countries."

They issued a statement emphasizing trilateral cooperation, adding that they "looked forward to China's efforts" to make North Korea live up to past agreements and that are committed "to building strong, productive and constructive relations with China."

In the meantime, though, "it is necessary to strengthen" their three-way cooperation "to maintain peace and security."

Asked what she'd like China to do, Clinton said little beyond repeating, "We look forward to China playing a vital role in regional diplomacy."

"They have a unique relationship with North Korea, and we would hope that China would work with us to send a clear, unmistakable message to North Korea that they have to demonstrate a seriousness of purpose in ending their provocative actions, and there are many ways that they can do that," Clinton said.

The White House issued a statement describing National Security Adviser Tom Donilon's meeting with the Japanese and South Korean officials, and it made no mention of China at all.

China's internal deliberation on North Korea is almost as hidden from the West as policymaking in North Korea itself. And the Chinese inaction may be less an unwillingness to cooperate with Washington than doubts among China leaders, who know -- and fear -- that North Korean instability could flood China's borders with hungry refugees.

China may also simply be flummoxed by a problem that has plagued the international community for decades.

"Over time, China's lack of real influence has become clearer and clearer," said Joshua Kurlantzick, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Rather than exerting leverage, China has been played for a fool, revealing that China is not yet ready for the great power status to which it aspires," Kurlantzick wrote last week.