WORLD VIEW:A measured, non-military response to the sinking of the 'Cheonan' is crucial, writes PATRICK SMYTH
CUI BONO?The great imponderable on the sinking of the Cheonan. Who benefited from the March torpedo attack on the South Korean naval vessel that killed 46 sailors?
There’s no doubt that the fingerprints of North Korea’s dictatorship are all over it, but why? And largely on an assessment of that question must hang the rationale for the scope of the inevitable punitive response from the South.
While much world attention this week focused on Thailand, the most serious threat to regional stability remains the standoff between Seoul and Pyongyang, still technically at war, with a million troops on the border since the 1950 to 1953 war – a relationship punctuated by the latter’s vacillation between confrontation and conciliation.
The Cheonansinking is but the latest in a long line of bloody reminders of that reality – pinprick attacks that have no strategic value beyond inflaming public opinion and destabilising tentative rapprochement. The deadliest blamed on North Korea, among many, was in 1987, when a South Korean aircraft was downed, killing 115 people.
The details revealed by Seoul on Thursday leave no room for doubt. The international investigation, involving teams from the US, Australia, Britain and Sweden, found overwhelming evidence that the Cheonanwas sunk by a torpedo made in North Korea, and fired by one of its submarines.
“There is no other plausible explanation,” the report says.
It found that torpedo parts recovered at the explosion site “perfectly match” technical drawings and specifications in North Korean pamphlets used for overseas buyers of military equipment.
The midget submarine apparently approached the Cheonanin international waters near the disputed western maritime border, an area where there have been naval skirmishes in 1999, 2002 and last year.
South Korea’s conservative president, Lee Myung-bak, insists his country “will take resolute countermeasures against North Korea”. The US and Japan are ready to back more UN Security Council sanctions, although China, seen as key to exercising leverage on it, and which provides the trade and aid that keeps Kim Jong-il afloat, is reluctant.
North Korea immediately denounced the investigation as a “sheer fabrication”, warning that any retaliation or punishment would prompt “tough measures including all-out war” – par for the course bombast.
China is host to the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, which include Japan, Russia, South Korea and the US, and the North is already under UN sanctions following its second nuclear test in 2009. UN resolutions last year allowed for inspection of cargo to and from the North; blacklisted organisations and people linked to the nuclear programme; and they imposed financial and trade restrictions and bars on the sale of luxury goods.
The only realistic sanction options available to South Korea involve pushing for the North’s increased international isolation and cutting back on inter-Korean trade, already in sharp decline in the two years since Lee has come to power.
This could end deliveries of sand, a key earner for the impoverished North. It could also close down Kaesong Industrial Park, a co-operative venture just north of the demilitarised zone – an act that would effectively end the “sunshine policy” of engagement that the South has pursued for decades and with which Lee is not enamoured.
But the determination that Pyongyang should understand that acts of piracy are not cost-free is constrained by fears that such measures will lead to increased hardship, not to mention the unpredictability of the North’s reaction, and the need to bring it back into the nuclear talks.
Despite the nuclear test last year, North Korea succeeded in ending a US diplomatic boycott by releasing a couple of journalists to former US president Bill Clinton. Since then it has also promised to return to the nuclear talks.
Pyongyang has clearly calculated that the sinking of the Cheonanwould not provoke a return to diplomatic isolation. But why Kim should want to test the limits of the South's patience this way is not clear, and a risky game. Not only does it invite retaliation, but it undermines mutual good faith, which is crucial for talks.
Some observers suggest the attack may not have been authorised by Kim, but was a provocation by conservative rogue elements within the army unhappy at the direction of the regime’s diplomacy, or as part of an emerging succession struggle.
Just as possible, Southern observers believe, is that the sinking was sanctioned by the ailing Kim as a show of strength aimed at winning the military’s support for the succession of Kim Jong-un, his third son.
The opaqueness of the North’s internal politics makes guesses highly speculative, but the very possibility of such guesses being true argues for a measured and non-military retaliation, however difficult such restraint is politically for Lee.