The Chinese failure to disarm North Korea: Geographical proximity, U.S. unipolarity, and alliance restraint

ABSTRACT

This article explains China’s abortive attempt to stop North Korean nuclear development between 1993 and 2016. It attributes this failure to two international conditions. The first is geographical contiguity. As an adjacent great power, China had limited leverage over North Korea. Beijing’s threats of sanctions lacked credibility, as sanctions could trigger dangerous local instabilities. Its security inducements implied a risk of subordination, which Pyongyang was unwilling to accept. The second is the unipolar international system. Unipolarity curbed Beijing’s ability to protect Pyongyang from the United States, while simultaneously inducing China to pass the buck of restraining North Korea to the American unipole. This article corroborates these main arguments by drawing upon primary and secondary sources in Korean, Chinese, and English.

KEYWORDS:

• North Korea
• China
• alliance
• nuclear weapons
• arms control
• East Asian security

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Wooseon Choi, Jung-nam Lee, Hylke Dijkstra, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This research received valuable feedback at seminars organized by the International Studies Association, the Korean Association of International Studies, and the Suanbo Security Studies Group.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Dong Sun Lee is a professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Korea University. Lee received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago and conducted research for the East-West Center, before assuming his current position. He also was a visiting scholar at the George Washington University in 2010. His current research focuses on Asian security order, East Asian alliances, nuclear proliferation, and asymmetric conflict. He is author of Power shifts, strategy, and war: Declining states and international conflict (Routledge, 2008) and of articles in scholarly journals, including Asian Security, Australian Journal of International Affairs, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Journal of East Asian Studies, Journal of International and Area Studies, Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Korea Observer, and Pacific Focus.

Iordanka Alexandrova is a research professor at the Peace and Democracy Institute, Korea University, where she received her Ph.D. in political science and international relations. Her main research interests are East Asian security and alliance theory. Alexandrova currently focuses on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and nuclear nonproliferation. Her most recent publication is ‘The European Union’s policy toward North Korea: Abandoning engagement’ (International Journal of Korean Unification Studies, 2019).

Yihei Zhao is a post-doctoral researcher at the School of International and Public Affairs at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Zhao received her Ph.D. in political science and international relations from Korea University. Her current research focuses on Asian security and US-China relations. She is a co-author of the article ‘China’s policy towards North Korea’s nuclear weapons program: From a free rider to a controller?’ (Korean Political Science Review, 2017).

Notes

1 The published article incorrectly transliterates the author’s name as Chou, Fa-hua. The translation of the title is our own.

2 Demonstrating North Korea’s concerns about great-power neighbors’ military presence is that Pyongyang demanded Chinese troops to withdraw soon after the 1953 armistice and decided to build a nuclear complex thereafter (Armstrong, 2017, p. 106; Mansourov, 1995, p. 26; Szalontai, 2005, p. 130).

3 Pressman’s theory cannot explain this case: Beijing underutilized power despite the presence of those conditions that he posits promote mobilization—like the restrainer’s leadership prioritizing restraint in unity (Lee, 2014).

4 Beijing was in a “pivotal position” to restrain both Washington and Pyongyang (Crawford, 2003): China had interests in a stable Korean Peninsula, the ability to shape United States—DPRK conflict, and flexibility in choosing sides.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Korea University [grant number K2009221].