When Kim Jong Il and his military machine set the world on its ear by testing a nuclear device, I along with many others thought that were definitely headed for dark days. I got this unfortunate news after having just finished watching “The Wire” on HBO and was still in the afterglow when my smiling face morphed into a look of abject horror. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that when the Fox News Alert blared across my flat-screen television, I reacted like the prototypical 1950’s housewife hammering frantically with a broom against a mouse scurrying across the kitchen. My wife thought I was having a stroke.
But this was nothing compared to how I felt a few days later when I heard that both China and Russia were against sanctioning North Korea for their blatant disregard for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT]. I sat in front of my computer mouth agape as I suddenly realized that it didn’t matter what the US said or did on the UN Security Council or what we wanted to see happen on the world stage, so long as China had a UNSC veto, they could derail any plan to contain North Korean, Iran, or any other expansionist/hostile nation. Never mind the neutron bomb, Chinas veto was the single most destructive weapon on the planet.
Oh how cried and moaned and kvetched about how in one seemingly innocuous headline, the United States was made to look toothless on all but the least important of geopolitical issues. I lamented that the NOKO Bomb (as all the hipsters are calling it) had made China the real superpower in the world and they seemed to be hell bent on making sure that the United States was roundly supplanted as the leader in world affairs and impotent to do much of anything in the way of stopping nuclear proliferation.
I suddenly became the child who suddenly realizes that there is no Santa Clause.
However, after all the crying, moaning and most importantly, the kvetching, I found a series of headlines that has turned a rather bleak situation into one where there is a glimmer of hope.
According to an article in The Australian, Beijing is openly considering "regime change" in Pyongyang after last week's nuclear test by their confrontational client state.
"In today's DPRK Government, there are two factions, sinophile and royalist," one Chinese analyst wrote online. "The objective of the sinophiles is reform, Chinese-style, and then to bring down Kim Jong-il's royal family. That's why Kim is against reform. He's not stupid."
More than one Chinese academic agreed that China yearned for an uprising similar to the one that swept away the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989 and replaced him with communist reformers and generals. The Chinese made an intense political study of the Romanian revolution and even questioned president Ion Iliescu, who took over, about how it was done and what roles were played by the KGB and by Russia.
Mr. Kim, for his part, ordered North Korean leaders to watch videos of the swift and chaotic trial and execution of Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, the vice-prime minister, as a salutary exercise.
The balance of risk between reform and chaos dominated arguments within China's ruling elite. The Chinese have also permitted an astonishing range of vituperative Internet comment about an ally with which Beijing maintains a treaty of friendship and co-operation. Academic Wu Jianguo published an article in a Singapore newspaper - available online in China - bluntly saying: "I suggest China should make an end of Kim's Government."
"The Chinese have given up on Kim Jong-il," commented one diplomat. "The question is, what are they going to do about it?"
What will they do about it indeed. The NOKO Bomb may have inadvertently led to the demise of Jong Il dynasty in North Korea, by of all hands China. I have said in the past and it has been affirmed by many analysts that N. Korea does the dirty work for China. They are something like Chinas personal mafia, what with all the counterfeiting of US dollars, drug running by N. Korean diplomats and large scale spy training going on. I would not have thought in a million years that Hu Jintao would throw his buddy the “Dear Leader” over the falls to safe face with the world community. But if the reporting in The Australian is indeed sound, that may in fact become a welcomed reality.
It all depends on what exactly China wants for themselves or sees as their needs. They want to dominate South East Asia and the Pacific in a sort of Big Brother way like the US used to do in Latin America. They are accomplishing this obviously through military build-up but more importantly through becoming a major economic impact player.
