Mounting multilateral pressure on Pyongyang

When the multilateral talks on North Korea were announced a few weeks ago, Russia’s seat at the table raised a few eyebrows. Until that point, the U.S. insistence was on five-party talks — the U.S., North Korea, South Korea, Japan, and China. Russia’s inclusion — and its historical ties to the DPRK — caused some to wonder if this was some kind of effort to level the playing field for Pyongyang. Well, as Fred Kaplan and the New York Times indicated yesterday, that speculation was way off. According to the Times:

Russia, traditionally an ally of North Korea, embarked today on a 10-day maritime exercise, partly in waters near North Korea, that will involve two traditional enemies of the North, Japan and South Korea. The exercise is the first time that warships from those three countries have conducted joint maneuvers. Also today, China and Japan announced that for the first time they would conduct mutual visits by warships. In addition, on Sept. 1, Shigeru Ishiba, chief of Japan’s Defense Agency, is to travel to Shanghai and Beijing, the first visit by a Japanese defense minister in five years…. North Korea, in response to this effort to isolate it ahead of the talks scheduled from Aug. 27 to 29 in Beijing, blasted the United States today, attacking Washington for leading 10 other nations in the Proliferation Security Initiative, an alliance devised to intercept North Korean ships suspected of carrying contraband…. This Saturday, in the thin strip of Russian territory that was a rear staging area for Soviet military support for North Korea in the Korean War, border troops and civil defense officials are to conduct drills based on the premise that huge North Korean refugee flows could start as a result of a new war on the Korean peninsula or by the collapse of the government of Kim Jong Il…. China, under the new leadership of Hu Jintao, asked North Korea earlier this year to renegotiate their half-century-old mutual defense treaty. North Korea reportedly replied that the timing was not good, with the United States pressuring North Korea over its nuclear program. Japan, another maritime neighbor of North Korea, is also growing increasingly wary. The Japanese Coast Guard has added two patrol cutters armed with 20- millimeter cannons on its west coast facing the Korean peninsula, and 26 officers have been added to customs offices in eight seaports frequented by North Korean freighters. Surrounded by increasingly hostile neighbors, Mr. Kim, North Korea’s leader, increasingly acts like a hunted man. In the last six months, he has kept a low profile, never appearing publicly at an event that was scheduled and publicized ahead of time.

Fred Kaplan explains the significance of Russia’s actions in Slate. The key grafs:

In previous multilateral negotiations—for that matter, throughout its half-century history—North Korea has played other, larger powers off one another, often quite shrewdly. A “shrimp among whales,” a nation founded on guerrilla tactics at the height of the Cold War, North Korea sees this sort of manipulation as essential to survival. The importance of Russia’s unprecedented involvement in this week’s military exercises—the signal that it appears quite pointedly to be sending—is that Kim Jong-il will no longer, or at least not so easily, be able to play this game. At this negotiation, on this issue, Russia stands aligned with all the other foreign powers.

Actually, rereading the Times story, Kaplan is understating things. Russia’s participation in naval exercises is a powerful signal, but just as significant is the bulking up of Japan’s forces and the cooling down of China’s friendship with Pyongyang. Ironically, by the time the talks start, the countries in the multilateral coalition that will have the biggest policy differences will be the U.S. and South Korea. Jim Dunnigan manages, in a single paragraph, to neatly summarize why the U.S. and South Korea disagree so frequently on what to do with North Korea (link via InstaPundit):

Why is there disagreement between the United States and South Korea over how to deal with the North? The main problem is that Americans fear that the north will quietly sell nuclear or chemical weapons to terrorist groups, and these weapons will end up being used in the United States. The north has used terrorist attacks against South Korea for decades, so we know what they are capable of. Thus American are anxious to do something about North Korean nuclear and chemical weapons. South Koreans are more afraid of the North Attacking the south directly, which they did once before in 1950. To deal with the terrorist threat, it seems reasonable to threaten the north. But to deal with the war threat, you have to use more conciliatory moves. South Korea and America both fear the north, but for different reasons, and each wants to apply a different, and somewhat incompatible, solution.

Developing….