From The American Thinker:
November 28, 2010
US, South Korea start joint military exercises; China panicking?
Rick Moran
As the US and South Korea begin joint military exercises, China appears to be fronting for North Korea by calling for "emergency talks" on the situation.
The question is; what is there to talk about? Without warning or provocation, the North shelled South Korean territory. Any sit-down with Kim would reward that bad behavior because eventually, the North Korean leader wants us to bribe him with goodies - food and fuel for his desperately starving people. If talks were to make peace more likely, then there might be a reason to sit down with the lunatics. But Kim sees talks as we might view going shopping. He pushes the right buttons and we come running, begging him to refrain from acting like a crazy man.
Not this time:
South Korea and the United States on Sunday began joint naval exercises that will include live fire and bombing drills, as hermetic North Korea deployed missiles close to the Yellow Sea and warned that it will turn the region into "a merciless shower of fire" if its territory is violated.
With tensions high in the region, China on Sunday called for an emergency session in December of the parties to the long-suspended six-way talks over North Korea's nuclear program. But the call for new talks, announced in Beijing at an unusual Sunday afternoon press briefing by Chinese nuclear negotiator Wu Dawei, received a chilly response here in Seoul.
China has been under intense pressure to rein in its often erratic ally, North Korea, and Beijing this weekend was engaged in an intense round of diplomacy -- including sending Beijing's top foreign policy official, Dai Bingguo, to Seoul for meetings -- trying to prevent this current crisis from escalating into a full-scale conflict. The partners to the six party talks are China, Japan, Russia, the two Koreas and the United States.
South Korean officials said the exercises, called in response to the North's deadly artillery barrage last week of civilian-inhabited Yeonpyeong Island, began when the USS George Washington aircraft carrier strike group entered the exercise zone, along with South Korean warships. Officials said the live firing would begin later in the day.
China, too, sees value in getting us to the table. They realize it is easier to get us to appease the North than have Beijing have to deal with the troublemaking Kim. Perhaps also, they don't wish us to see how impotent they are when it comes to getting North Korea to act like a normal nation.
We are not threatening North Korea with these naval exercises so the threat of war is not that great - unless Kim has decided otherwise. So Kim will bluster, the Chinese will whine about diplomacy, and we and our South Korean allies will do the only sensible thing; hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
Posted at 09:59 AM
And this, related, from ROK Drop:
By USinKorea on November 28th, 2010 at 5:35 am
China Calls for Emergency Meeting
» by USinKorea in: China,Inter-Korean Issues,Korea (North),ROK Military
China has called for an emergency meeting over recent events in Korea.
China on Sunday proposed emergency discussions among delegates to the six-party talks to discuss “complicated factors” on the Korean peninsula, as the U.S. and South Korea started a naval drill that has prompted dire warnings of reprisals from North Korea. (Wall Street Journal)
I wasn’t keeping up with things back when the Cheonan was sunk. I had to dig up this on the China’s reaction:
More than three months after the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council reached agreement Thursday on a draft statement deploring and condemning the March 26 attack, but not directly blaming North Korea. (Washington Post)
What to think?
Meanwhile, North Korea is recalling workers abroad:
A mass exodus of North Korean workers from the Far East of Russia is under way, according to reports coming out of the region. As the two Koreas edged towards the brink of war this week, it appears that the workers in Russia have been called back to aid potential military operations.
My sense is that China always drags its feet when the North does one of its provocations. North Korea has to generate a lot of angry momentum in the world press, world governments, and maybe the streets of Seoul and/or Tokyo. China doesn’t want the Pyongyang irritation, because when the North gets everybody pissed off, it puts pressure on SK and the US to put pressure on Beijing.
So the North has up the ante with a ground attack. OK. Many more people died in the Cheonan and it proved the North has the capability to sink at least a South Korean military boat without warning…
The reaction within South Korean society has also been less than lukewarm. The South Korean government put out some strong words but also tempered them just as the American government did…
I really don’t see any reason to believe China feels too much heat on this.
Does it know something about internal problems in North Korea that we don’t?
Has anybody seen anything about recent movements of troops in China to the border? I view provocations by Pyongyang as possible signs of worry within the regime about its near-term survival. The nuke and ICBM tests fit a pattern of behavior, and these recent killings are part of an escalation of provocations.
If China is moving troops near the border and calling for this emergency meeting when there isn’t really much international pressure against China, I wonder if they know something we don’t?
If I were in the SK, US, and Japanese governments, I’d be watching Chinese troop movements near the Korean border. It would not be a surprise to see some but if the movement is much larger than recent times it has done so, I’d start to looking harder for signs of instability within North Korea.
I’d love to talk to a lot of the North Koreans above the border right now. What are they saying about conditions in the North?
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