Since the Korean Armistice Agreement of July 27, 1953 until recent times, North Korea has violated the armistice 221 times. Most of these incidents took place near the Demilitarized Zone on the North Line Limit.
If we consider also the “hot” period of 1977, when the First Free Economic Zone was established in Pyongyang, North Korea has violated the armistice at least 221 times, including 26 military attacks. South Korea did almost the same with its 200 operations against North Korea, mainly occurred between 1976 and 1980.
Furthermore the United States launched attacks independently and autonomously, starting from the Southern lines, with some coordinated actions together with the South Korean forces – at least twenty raids targeted against some non-military infrastructure of North Korea.
Nevertheless the Demilitarized Zone, created to freeze the hottest period of the Cold War, when General MacArthur planned the launch of an A-bomb on the People’s Republic of China, is the result of an archaic phase of the Cold War itself.
The phase in which Winston Churchill thought he “had butchered the wrong pig” in World War II and had in mind an “Unthinkable Plan” against the USSR, worn out by a massive war effort made together with the Western Allies, with a view to bringing the war inside Western and Central Russia.
Everything changed with the new logic of the Cold War starting from the famous “long telegram” by George Kennan from Moscow, written after Stalin’s “Bolshoi speech”, sent encrypted in February 1946 and then turned into the article by Mr. X published on Foreign Affairs in 1947, lucidly entitled The Sources of Soviet Conduct.
It must be clearly said that we need to wipe away the relics of the first and second Cold War in the Korean peninsula.
It is worth noting that Stalin’s “Bolshoi speech” made it clear that the Soviet Union had to start again exporting Communism and that the Russian rearmament plan should proceed quickly, because the USSR was “surrounded by enemy countries.”
It must be said clearly: today those who think to preserve the relics of the first “cold war” are insane analysts.
The instability which arose and spread in the Yellow Sea, as early as the first “crab wars” between the two Koreas in the late 1970s, is a currently unacceptable risk both for the primary actors in the region and for their global allies.
The destabilization of the Chinese North-Eastern border with North Korea is a currently unacceptable risk for China. Russia has no intention of letting go in a fundamental region such as the Korean one, which is the link between the Asian regional seas and the Western invariants of the Russian maritime strategy. Japan itself cannot but recreate its pre-war “co-prosperity area” with Korea, not necessarily only with South Korea, since the size of its economy does not enable it to have any other way out. The United States have every interest in closing the Korean dossier so as to avoid the ongoing Central Asia’s destabilization and make their Pacific areas “viable”.
On April 28, 2016, Xi Jinping made it clear that “no instability would be allowed in the Korean peninsula”, and the game wars of the US CSIS point to a situation in which the United States, China and the Russian Federation are symmetrically able to “put pressures” on their regional points of reference to avoid the escalation. Hence no 2.0 Cold War, but the need for a “new thinking” going well beyond the 1990s-style dual logic.
Therefore the issue lies in creating a group of relevant nations, in terms of history, influence, interest and presence in the region, dealing not only with military and civilian nuclear power – the mistake which still affect Iran’s global strategy after the JCPOA signing and the slow lifting of sanctions against it.
As is well-known, the “six party talks” were born in a situation of need, which did not provide great leeway.
North Korea’s walkout from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 was the core of the problem, as if the NPT were still a serious matter, not to mention the fact that, during the fifth round of negotiations, North Korea agreed to close down its civilian-military structures for nuclear power generation so as to reach an agreement on fissile fuel and the stabilization of relations with the United States and Japan.
Many of the international “free rider” actions by North Korea are obviously a way to attract attention and increase the US price and interest in a final negotiation with North Korea. North Korea has only its partial nuclear threat, which is inevitably tactical.
The sooner the “Cold War museum” between the two Koreas is closed, the better for everyone.
North Korea aims at minimal damage with maximum strategic effect. Obviously so, since it has no other channels.
South Korea is rightly afraid of North Korea’s “war communism” (it is a technical term), but it knows that its economy, its national identity and its own strategic set-up are indefinable if the previously mentioned “Cold War museum” is still open. As North Korea, South Korea suffers from these relics of the Cold War, but with different effects.
Japan does not want to break its strategic and security continuity from the Persian Gulf to the Western Pacific region, for obvious reasons of energy and stabilization of its commercial and, now, military expansion.
China does not want the internal instability or the use of a regional conflict along its land and maritime borders with North Korea to create a ripple effect in a region characterized by the complex social and political dynamics of “modernization”, which are essential for Chinese security.
The United States have every interest in removing an irritating thorn in the flesh of South East Asia which could – also for the United States – destabilize friends and allies, thus blocking the US military and strategic continuity from the Greater Middle East up to the Indian Ocean. Russia does not want a loyal ally, such as North Korea, to be called into question, since it is the axis of Russia’s “nuclear proxy” in South Asia – a “proxy” very similar to the one managed by Russia for the nuclear equipment and plants of Bashar el Assad’ Syria.
Great Britain could join these new “talks” on the basis of its prestige, its undeniable mediation skills and its ability to ensure the new geostrategic equilibria. We have seen it recently in Central Asia. China’s interest is too evident to be underlined again.
Which could be the initial points of agreement between Great Britain, the Russian Federation, China, Japan, the United States, South Korea and North Korea? This question can be easily answered if we consider the matter outside the “incapacitating myth” of the Cold War.
1) Official and international recognition of the current borders, possibly with slight and not relevant changes, or official recognition of North Korea, with all the consequences it implies. 2) Evaluation of a set of agreements and trade and financial aid for North Korea at the 2007 cost: end of fissile material production and stabilization, always with an international role, of North Korea’s Special Economic Zones. 3) Collective guarantee of South Korea’s borders and security, signed also by North Korea. 4) A progressive demilitarization of the Demilitarized Zone, with multilateral guarantees to be verified periodically. 5) A military guarantee of both Koreas, involving both the Russian Federation and China. 6) Great Britain could deal with the international security of Korean waters, with ad hoc arrangements. As Stanislaw Lem said, “we have to continually start again from the end”.