Diplomacy via the official leak

Earlier this week I speculated as to why North Korea did not respond to a series of South Korean military drills.  In the list of possibilities I provided, I was somewhat skeptical that Chinese pressure was the answer.

In today’s New York Times, however, Mark Landler quotes some Obama administration sources suggesting that Chinese (and Russian) pressure was a determining factor:

after a tense week, when the threat of war hung over the Korean Peninsula, the Obama administration and Beijing seem finally to be on the same page.

Administration officials said the Chinese government had embraced an American plan to press the North to reconcile with the South after its deadly attacks on a South Korean island and a warship. The United States believes the Chinese also worked successfully to curb North Korea’s belligerent behavior.

China’s pressure, several senior officials said this week, might help explain why North Korea did not respond militarily to live-fire drills conducted this week by the South Korean military, when a previous drill drew an artillery barrage from the North that killed two South Korean civilians and two soldiers.

As evidence of the policy shift, officials pointed to recent remarks by China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, in which he urged the North and South “to carry out dialogue and contact.” Previously, Beijing’s response had been to propose an emergency meeting of the six-party group that negotiates with North Korea over its nuclear program, a step the United States opposed as rewarding the North’s aggression….

China swiftly dispatched a senior diplomat to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and officials said he conveyed a strong message about “the unacceptability of attacks and killings of South Koreans,” said a senior American official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters.

“The idea that there could be these one-off provocations without expectation of a military response, as the North had behaved in the past, the Chinese now understand that this is no longer the reality, no longer acceptable,” he said.

John Pomfret hits similar notes in his Washington Post story.  Actually, it’s an even more optimistic assessment : 

The United States and China  are closing out the year on a positive note on many fronts – including trade, military ties, climate change and global security – as both sides prepare for their presidents’ second summit, set for next month.

After a tense year during which U.S. officials, including President Obama, openly criticized China, and their Chinese counterparts returned the favor, there is a sudden switch in tone from the Commerce Department to the National Security Council. Instead of portraying China as protectionist or as an "enabler" of North Korea’s provocations, administration officials are praising China, referring to it again as a responsible partner….

The most remarkable about-face has occurred in the administration’s attitude toward China over the Korean Peninsula. Two weeks ago, a senior administration official accused China of creating the conditions that allowed North Korea to start a uranium-enrichment program and launch two deadly attacks on South Korea. The tensions on the peninsula threatened to dominate the summit.

But in recent days, senior administration officials have praised China for pressing North Korea not to react to a South Korean military drill Monday. Officials referred specifically to a visit by China’s top diplomat, Dai Bingguo, to North Korea on Dec. 9. After the meeting, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported that China and North Korea had reached a "consensus" on the situation on the peninsula – which many analysts interpreted as meaning North Korea had agreed not to provoke South Korea in the short term.

Administration officials also commended China for soft-pedaling a proposal to hold emergency talks between South and North Korea, China, Russia, Japan and the United States as part of a way to calm the situation. Instead, the officials said that China had accepted a U.S. plan that put improving ties between the South and the North ahead of any multilateral talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Administration officials portrayed the United States and China as working in lockstep in dealing with the crisis, which many thought had reached the brink of war last weekend. China continued to urge restraint on North Korea, they said, while the United States worked with Seoul to ensure that its exercises were "firm" but also "non-confrontational and non-escalatory," a senior administration said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

Nonetheless, it is not clear whether China’s pressure has worked. On Thursday, North Korea threatened to launch a "sacred" nuclear war that would "wipe out" South Korea and the United States if they started a conflict.

Chinese President Hu Jintao is scheduled to make a state visit to Washington on Jan. 19. Obama visited China in November 2009.

China’s approach on the Korean peninsula is certainly interesting, but what I find really interesting is the Obama administration’s conscious decision to talk about this to the Times and Post.  Part of this might be the warming up of relations that traditionally precedes a great power summit.  Part of it, however, might be the administration’s effort to signal to their Chinese counterparts that they understand that Beijing has engaged in a policy shift — and the Obama administraion genuinely appreciates that shift. 

This point is likely banal obvious to longtime foreign policy hands, but I bring it up in the context of the Wikileaks cables.  The attention paid to these diplomatic cables can lead to the impression that all diplomacy that matters is conducted in secret corridors.  This kind of coordinated official leaking, however, is the bread and butter of 20th and 21st century statecraft — and it’s not going away anytime soon.