China will be the key to any peaceful solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis.
Put another way, if I had five minutes with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson I would repeat “it’s China, stupid.”
Okay, maybe I would use more polite words. Still, my anger is justified because Tillerson has again complicated U.S. diplomatic efforts on North Korea. Speaking at an event in Washington, Tuesday, Tillerson made two critical errors.
First, he literally begged the North Koreans to come to the negotiating table. During a question and answer session with former George W. Bush national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, Tillerson explained that “We’ve said from the diplomatic side we’re ready to talk anytime North Korea would like to talk, and we’re ready to have the first meeting without precondition.”
Without precondition? Give me a break.
Tillerson’s almost desperate language here will reinforce Kim Jong Un’s expectation that he retains the strategic initiative. Put simply, Kim will see Tillerson’s words and think that the more tests he carries out and the more advanced his nuclear-ballistic missile program grows, the more the U.S. government will be willing to concede.
Even then, Tillerson’s second failure was more concerning. Because America’s chief diplomat rewarded China for failing to support effective diplomacy.
Describing Chinese participation in the existing sanctions regime, Tillerson lauded Beijing. “I will tell you, in our judgment, they have participated; they are fully implementing the sanctions.”
To Chinese President Xi Jinping, Tillerson’s words are fit for a Peking Opera. Indeed, echoing Chinese government praise welcoming Tillerson’s “efforts to ease tension and promote dialogue to resolve the problem,” Chinese state media thanked Tillerson for his offering. Under the headline “Tillerson signals readiness to talk with DPRK despite unrelenting Trump,” Xinhua described Tillerson’s language as “indicating a softening of the hawkish U.S. stance…”
It’s not hard to understand the Chinese excitement: Tillerson has just given President Xi an excuse to avoid increasing his sanctions pressure on Kim Jong Un.
This is a big problem. As I noted following North Korea’s most recent missile test, the Trump administration must now sanction Chinese financial institutions that facilitate Kim’s foreign capital flows. In order to get China to move the needle in Pyongyang, Beijing must come to understand that absent that needle moving, America will ensure it shares our pain in face of Kim’s threat. Until recently, the Trump administration seemed to have embraced this dual nation pressure-strategy.
No longer, apparently.
Yet it’s clear that Tillerson doesn’t recognize the strategic paucity of his comments. After all, as soon as he had thanked China for doing very little, Tillerson asked Beijing to increase its pressure! “The president would like to see China cut the oil off.” Tillerson continued, “The last time the North Koreans came to the table, it was because China cut the oil off. Three days later, the North Koreans were at the table talking. And the president feels we’re really at that stage. So he’s putting a lot of pressure on the Chinese to do more with respect to oil.”
Mr. Secretary, you’ve just opened the valve on that pressure.
If any more proof was needed of Tillerson’s failure here, Russian President Vladimir Putin was happy to add new material to Russia’s trolling campaign. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov praised Tillerson, stating that “Such constructive statements impress us far more than the confrontational rhetoric that we have heard up to now.”
What a joke.
Nevertheless, Tillerson’s comments were also extremely ill-advised for another reason: President Moon Jae-in of South Korea is currently on a visit to Beijing. That visit represents China’s ongoing effort to separate President Moon from President Trump, and now Xi can tell Moon “Look at the U.S., they are backing down so you should also.”
Trump needs to get his house in order.
As I say, the key to getting Pyongyang to alter course is to get Beijing to tighten the noose around Kim’s neck. And the key to getting Beijing to tighten the noose is for the U.S. to show Xi that China will suffer as long as Kim does not.
Don’t get me wrong, Tillerson means well and deserves sympathy for serving under such an unpredictable boss. That said, it’s now abundantly clear that the secretary of state is undercutting policy on two exigent issues of national security. It’s time for him to retire.
