Is US willing to go along with S. Korea on Cheonan?


Patrick Cronin

By Sunny Lee
Korea Times correspondent

BEIJING ― South Korea is doing the right thing by bringing the Cheonan incident to the U.N. Security Council, but it should be realistic about how much it can expect from the world body to assign any punitive measures against Pyongyang, said a noted U.S. security expert on East Asia.

"We don't control the U.N. We don't control the resolution. And the only resolution (if any) we could get through is going to be fairly lukewarm," said Patrick Cronin, senior director of the Asia-Pacific security program at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank.

It is not yet clear whether the Security Council will pursue new sanctions, release a statement or call on the U.N. secretariat to launch an independent investigation into the sunken frigate.

Cronin, who visited Seoul last year and met privately with officials from Cheong Wa Dae to discuss the U.S.-South Korea alliance and security issues on the Korean Peninsula, gave full support to President Lee Myung-bak's handling of the matter.

"You can't have your navy officers and crew members getting killed and not take some kind of action. You have to do something. But it's prudent not to start a war over this incident. And I think President Lee is doing one of the few things that's appropriate and that would not provoke a war," he said.

Yet China's reluctance to toughen its stance toward the North has been the prime obstacle to Seoul's bid for sanctions against North Korea over the Cheonan, which was torn apart by a North Korean torpedo before it sank, killing 46 sailors in March. Beijing is a veto-wielding permanent Security Council member and a long-time ally of Pyongyang.

Meanwhile, the leverage by Washington over China has also become weakened by Beijing's endorsement last week for the U.S. initiative to sanction Iran at the Security Council.

"It was like the U.S. telling China to do more. And China responded by saying, 'We will vote for sanctions on Iran. How about that?'" said Cronin.

According to Cronin, Beijing preemptively deflected pressure on the Cheonan by going along with Washington on the U.N. Security Council resolution on Iran.

"I think the Chinese found it much, much easier to go along with the resolution on Iran, than they are willing to support any kind of real sanctions on North Korea," Cronin said, adding security implications based on geopolitical proximity to China has factored into Beijing's calculations.

"Iran is distant from China. North Korea is right on its border," he said.

Its reluctance to punish North Korea also comes from its overriding concern for stability in the volatile Asian region, which makes it prefer "inaction" so as not to upset North Korea, which might react in a way that further destabilizes the peninsula, such as a major arms conflict that would spill over to the Chinese side, analysts say.

On this obsession with stability, Cronin said, South Korea and the U.S. made the correct observation, yet made a wrong conclusion on how China would respond. "Because we think we share the same goal of maintaining stability, we assumed we could actually get China's cooperation. That's where we made a mistake," said Cronin.

This week, UNSC members will deliberate on Seoul's demand for action against its northern neighbor. News reports over the weekend, however, said China already notified a visiting South Korean diplomat last week in Beijing that it would oppose any resolution against North Korea.

China's position makes South Korea rely more earnestly on the U.S., its most important ally. Washington has repeatedly thrown its support behind Seoul's position and also urged China on numerous occasions to act on the Cheonan matter. Yet, Cronin predicts how far the U.S. will go along with South Korea will be ultimately limited by the U.S. own strategic priorities with regard to North Korea and what it wants to do with China.

"What we want from the Chinese, frankly, is not a U.N. Security Council resolution on North Korea," said Cronin.

"What we want is to be able to sit down and talk frankly about future scenarios in which the North Korean regime changes, possible collapses."

America will be also prudent not to deplete its leverage with China over the Cheonan affairs, he said. "The Chinese do want things from us. We do also want things form them. And there's no doubt that we could probably find some issue that would make it worthwhile for China to go along.

"But I don't know whether the U.S. would want to play the card in this case," Cronin said.