North Korea test for China

The unmistakable slap in the face delivered to China by North Korea’s aggressive testing of what is claimed to be a massively destructive hydrogen bomb, far bigger than the bomb used on Hiroshima 72 years ago, presents Beijing’s leaders with a challenge they must meet. The affront to them — as Malcolm Turnbull has put it — of Pyongyang carrying out a test that sent aftershocks across vast swaths of China just as President Xi Jinping was making the inaugural address to a showcase summit of the leaders of the so-called BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is clear.

When China hosts such events, it wants the focus wholly on them. But by choosing to detonate his hydrogen bomb as Mr Xi was making his inaugural address, the deranged North Korean despot Kim Jong-un ensured the world’s focus was firmly on his malevolent actions rather than the Chinese leader’s summit. Beijing’s leaders will stand diminished if they fail to react to what appears to be Pyongyang’s calculated affront and the immensely dangerous escalation of the crisis by the testing of what the North Koreans say is a bomb capable of being loaded into the nose cone of an ICBM.

US Defence Secretary James Mattis has been right to leave no doubt that even the threat by North Korea to use such a weapon against the US or its allies “will be met with a massive military response”. But with Pyongyang known to have hundreds of artillery guns permanently trained on the South Korean capital, Seoul, a city of 10 million, and no assurance the US would be able to destroy all of North Korea’s nuclear and missile sites in a lightning strike, the military options are at best extremely uncertain. Rather, as Mr Turnbull has said, the responsibility in the crisis — if the spectre of nuclear war is to be avoided — is now greater than it has ever been on China to use its economic leverage “to bring North Korea to its senses”. Pyongyang, the Prime Minister has pointed out, is not to China what East Germany was to the Soviet Union. Beijing, in Mr Turnbull’s view, is “dismayed and frustrated by North Korea’s conduct”. Last month, for the first time, it joined in supporting a unanimous UN Security Council vote for significantly intensified sanctions against North Korea. They kick in this week.

However, if Beijing wants to maintain any international self-respect, it is going to have to do much more to bring the Pyongyang regime to heel. This is not the first time Kim has timed major nuclear tests to conflict with showcase events hosted by Mr Xi. China’s responsibility after this latest bomb test is, as Mr Turnbull says, overwhelming, not least in its own interests. Conflict would be a disaster for the region and the world. And given the contempt with which the Pyongyang regime is now treating China, Beijing’s leaders cannot be sure they will not become targets for Kim’s dangerous malevolence. Nor would it be wise of them to ignore authoritative reports that Japan could be in a position to build its own nuclear weapon in about six months, and that Seoul might be tempted to do the same.

It is imperative the US and its allies present a united response. A situation in which Donald Trump threatens “fire and fury” but is then contradicted by General Mattis and Rex Tillerson plays into Pyongyang’s hands. So does Mr Trump’s criticism of crucial ally South Korea over its alleged wish to “appease” North Korea, and his incomprehensible threat, at this time, to scrap the US free trade agreement with Seoul. Kim’s dream is to see a split between Seoul and Washington.

Barack Obama’s lamentable, do-nothing policy of “strategic patience” bequeathed Mr Trump a terrible mess on the Korean peninsula. The way in which Kim has been able to ratchet up his nuclear program owes much to Mr Obama’s lackadaisical leadership.

Not for 60 years have the stakes on the Korean peninsula been higher. And neither has China’s overwhelming responsibility to bring the lunatics in Pyongyang to their senses and promote the cause of negotiation to end this nuclear threat been more urgent.