Richard+Idriss+and+Jay+Saker

=South Korea 1AC= Succession Russia Regionalism China PS - deleting our page just makes it harder for you = = ** The United States federal government should implement a phased withdrawal of its ground troops in the Republic of Korea. **  = Advantage 1 is Succession   =

We see through a glass darkly, said the Apostle Paul, and that is certainly the case when it comes to North Korea. Power appears to be shifting as the Supreme People’s Assembly meets in Pyongyang. The premier has been replaced. Three other ministers were replaced. Six vice premiers were added. And Kim’s brother-in-law, Chang Song-taek, was elevated to the vice chairmanship of the National Defense Commission, the true fount of power in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. All of these moves were orchestrated by “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il, whose power has never seemed in doubt. The switch in prime ministers may reflect an attempt to boost the economy after a botched currency exchange last fall. One of the other ministerial changes covers foodstuffs—amid rumors of worsening food shortages. But Chang’s move may be the most important, since he is seen as Kim’s closest ally who managed the affairs of state when Kim was recovering from a stroke. Chang also has been tasked with helping to manage the anointment of Kim’s 28-year-old son, Kim Jong-un, as the latter’s successor. __ Adding mystery to the latest moves were three other recent leadership changes. In April a top party official was said to have died of a heart attack. In May a member of the NDC was said to have retired because of his age, 80, even though plenty of other aging officials hold top positions. And last week a senior official in the Korean Worker’s Party—a rival of Chang’s who also was reportedly entrusted with smoothing the transfer of power—was said to have died in a car accident.__ __All plausible explanations. But all equally ** plausible covers for a power struggle ** **. **__ Since then the Republic of Korea has cut economic ties and barred Pyongyang’s ships from South Korean waters. The North reciprocated by closing, or at least saying that it intended to close, the Kaesong industrial park, in which ROK companies employ North Korean workers. Hostile rhetoric has filled the air, but no one really wants war. Although the DPRK has made brinkmanship its principal negotiating strategy, Pyongyang knows that it would lose any conflict. Even when it comes to whatever nuclear capability Kim Jong-il has developed—miniaturizing weapons and developing delivery systems are not easy—deterrence works. He and his cohorts want their virgins (and liquor) in this life, not the next. The Cheonan’s sinking, while not likely to lead to war, does provide several important geopolitical lessons. First, __ there may be serious, potentially ** destabilizing internal regime conflicts  ** which are currently hidden. __ Theories abound about the sinking of the Cheonan, including rogue military act to block better relations with the West and officially sanctioned policy to win military support for Kim Jong-un’s succession. The recently announced personnel shifts only deepen the mystery. Second, the ROK’s military, despite supposedly possessing maritime superiority, must focus more on national defense. Seoul has been grandly thinking of an increased regional and even global military role. But when the North can use a midget-sub, as one theory runs, to sink a South Korean ship in South Korean waters, the Lee government must focus on its most important responsibility, safeguarding the nation. Third, the U.S.-ROK alliance has outlived its usefulness. The South is well-able to defend itself, with some 40 times the DPRK’s GDP and twice the DPRK’s population. There’s no reason for Washington, which faces a deficit of $1.6 trillion this year, to borrow money for the privilege of defending South Korea, which is well able to spend much more on its military if circumstances require. Fourth, __there’s no reason to expect a “soft landing” in the North.__ The existing regime has demonstrated enormous resilience, both in surviving crisis and in resisting change. However, __it took Kim Il-sung__, who won control with Soviet aid at the North’s founding in 1949, __decades to transfer power to his son, Kim Jong-il. The latter is in ill health and probably doesn’t have nearly as much time to orchestrate a similar transfer. The result could be a ** messy power struggle on Kim’s death ** __, with, in addition to Kim Jong-un, two other sons, a brother-in-law, a younger half-brother, past and present wives, various illegitimate children, and any number of officials who have been waiting years, even decades, for their chance to gain control. Finally, __the key to solving the “North Korean problem” is China.__ Shortly after the sinking of the Cheonan Kim Jong-il scurried off to the PRC, apparently with his chosen son in tow. Today Beijing provides the DPRK with the bulk of its food and energy. __Until now the Chinese leadership has believed that pushing Kim too hard risked the stability of the peninsula. But if Kim is willing to commit an act of war against the South, his regime is the real source of dangerous regional instability__. The PRC would be serving its own interest if it acted to neuter Pyongyang. It’s hard to believe, but __the situation in North Korea could get worse. Imagine a weak collective leadership after Kim’s death ** dissolving into warring factions ** as competing officials looked to their favorite Kim relative or army general. Imagine burgeoning civil strife, growing public hardship, and mass refugee flows. Or violence flowing across the Yalu River to the north and demilitarized zone to the south.__ __ Washington’s best policy would be to step back from this geopolitical miasma.__ Any map demonstrates which countries have the most at stake in a stable Korean peninsula: South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia. It is time for them to take the lead. America could help as they search for a solution. But North Korea truly is their problem far more than Washington’s problem. [], JMP) President George W. Bush famously said that he “loathed” North Korea’s Kim Jong-il. Yet the United States might come to miss the brutal dictator, with his abundant gut and bouffant hair. Resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis through diplomacy was never going to be easy; __ with an impending leadership change in Pyongyang, **  diplomatic solutions are likely to become near impossible . **__  Reports suggest that Kim Jong-il may have pancreatic cancer; some analysts predict he could die within the year. Since the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was established in 1948, only two men have held supreme power: Kim Il-sung, who died at age eighty-two in 1994, and his son, Kim Jong-il. The monarchical succession from the former to the latter faced opposition at home and in China, the DPRK’s closest ally, but Kim Jong-il’s rise to power was carefully orchestrated by his father in a process that took more than two decades. Who now will take the throne? North Korea has evolved into the modern equivalent of the Ottoman Empire. “Great Leader” Kim Il-sung was married twice and had many other relationships. Kim Jong-il apparently has had four wives or long-term mistresses. The result has been several children from different spouses as well as a number of illegitimate children. Family members have played a significant role in the regime. Kim Jong-il faced political competition from his uncle, Kim Yong-ju, who eventually was sidelined by Kim Il-sung. Kim Jong-il also pushed aside his younger half-brother, Kim Pyong-il, who since 1979 has been posted as ambassador to several European nations, keeping him out of domestic North Korean politics. When the elder Kim died in July 1994, Kim Jong-il appeared to face little opposition to taking control. Until Kim Jong-il fell ill, he appeared to give little thought to his succession. However, STRATFOR’s Roger Baker believes that Kim “has a very strong fear that after he dies, if the country changes direction, that his family may be on the receiving end of vigilantism or punished or killed.” That’s plausible, though Kim may simply desire to cement his legacy by choosing someone who would have little choice but to venerate Kim’s rule. Observes Atsuhito Isozaki of Tokyo’s Keio University: “Since Kim had a stroke last year, North Korea appears to be in a hurry in naming his successor.” Earlier this year Kim apparently designated twenty-six year-old Kim Jong-un, his youngest son, as his heir. Reports indicate that Kim Jong-un was recently shifted from his position at the Korean Workers’ Party to the National Defense Commission (NDC). Party and military officials have been tasked with promoting the younger Kim, jokingly referred to by some observers as “Cute Leader”; he is being called “Brilliant Comrade” and “Commander Kim” by the North’s media. Open Radio for North Korea reports that diplomats and military leaders have been informed of his new status and promotional efforts have been launched, including party and military propaganda campaigns. Reports are circulating that the succession may be confirmed at an upcoming party conference in October of this year or next. Another theory is that the process may be formalized in 2012, the centenary of the birth of Kim Il-sung. Kim Jong-un is a virtual unknown outside of North Korea. Only one photo of him exists, taken when he attended the International School in Bern, Switzerland. During his two years there he apparently demonstrated some proficiency in English, French, and German, enjoyed skiing and watching Hollywood action movies, and favored the National Basketball Association. Classmates say he showed no political interest, though he was only in his mid-teens then. However, __unless Kim Jong-il survives and rules for at least several years, the younger Kim is unlikely to have an easy a time claiming his political inheritance in a culture that typically reveres age—and in which potential rivals are many.__ The regime number two appears to be the elder Kim’s brother-in-law, Jang Song-taek, who disappeared in a purge a few years ago but recently reemerged. Kim Jong-il recently named Jang to the NDC. Jang is only four years younger than Kim and his independent authority is hard to assess. Jang, backed by the NDC’s O Kuk-ryol and Kim Yong-chun, is thought to have been tasked to act as Kim Jong-un’s principal mentor. However, he might not be satisfied playing a secondary role in the event of Kim Jong-il’s death. Many other senior officials have been waiting for years and even decades to take charge. Their loyalty to Kim Jong-il might not survive his death. Especially since there are more than a few Kim family members available to front for competing factions. For instance, Kim Jong-il’s oldest son is thirty-eight year-old Kim Jong-nam, who apparently fell into disgrace after he was discovered traveling on a forged passport while attempting to enter Japan in order to visit Tokyo Disneyland. He now lives in Macau. Although he seems out of the power equation and in a television interview voiced his support for Kim Jong-un, reports recently surfaced that his supporters were being purged and that Kim Jong-un’s aides organized an assassination plot, busted by China. (If true, this would seem to mimic the Ottoman practice of new sultans eradicating male family members who could challenge their ascension.) Kim Jong-un has an older brother, Kim Jong-chol. Their mother, Ko Yong-hui, is said to have been Kim Jong-il’s favorite wife. Before she died of cancer in 2004 she reportedly was promoting both sons as potential heirs. The twenty-eight year-old Kim Jong-chol is supposedly sickly and viewed as effeminate by his father. Nevertheless, he apparently runs the Party Leadership Department, traditionally a critical position. However, some of the department’s functions apparently have been transferred to Jang. Although Kim Jong-chol has formally pledged to support his younger brother, that could change and the former could be used by a competing faction. Kim Jong-il’s current wife/mistress, Kim Ok, and her relatives, though currently unimportant politically, also conceivably could play a role in providing a family connection in any ensuing power struggle. So could Kim Pyong-il, Kim Jong-il’s half-brother who is currently serving as the DPRK’s ambassador to Poland. More distant family members are not likely to dominate the North’s political future, but still might play a role in any factional struggle. __How this international soap opera will turn out is anyone’s guess. But it could have a ** significant impact on Pyongyang’s relations with the rest of the world ** —and not for the better.__ Given the horrors perpetuated by Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, __it is hard to imagine the situation getting worse in the DPRK. However, overt factionalism, a brutal power struggle, and political instability would add an incendiary element to peninsula affairs. Observes__ Dennis __Blair, Director of National Intelligence: ** “ Any time you have a combination of this behavior of doing provocative things in order to excite a response—plus succession questions—you have a potentially dangerous mixture.” **__ __At the very least, an insecure leader, weak collective rule, and/or a de facto military government all likely would ** make North Korean concessions on the nuclear issue even less likely ** **. **__ A new, more responsible and forward-looking regime—one that recognized real international influence requires significant reform—might eventually emerge. However, counting on that result would let hope trump experience. The United States should continue diplomatic efforts, both bilateral and multilateral. Moreover, __Washington should intensify its efforts to engage China in a concerted campaign to pressure Pyongyang and/or seek to effect regime change.__ At the same time, however, policy makers must realistically assess the future. The United States and North Korea’s neighbors had better prepare for the possibility of an even more unsettled and dangerous future. ** Kim Jong Un needs to score some political victories to ensure a stable succession process – right now he is using military provocations to try and win support of the military  ** ** Lee, 10  ** (5/27/10, Jean H., writer for the Associated Press, The Associated Press, “Analysis: Attack May Be Tied to NKorean Succession”, http://www.lexisnexis.com) Young, inexperienced and virtually unknown even at home, Kim Jong Un ** needs at least a few political victories   ** under his belt if he is to succeed his father as leader of communist North Korea. The sinking of a South Korean warship may well have provided Kim Jong Il's 20-something son and rumored heir with a victory that would bolster his support within the communist country's military, a million-man force in need of a boost after a November sea battle left one North Korean sailor dead. North Korea has vehemently denied involvement in the torpedo attack that sank the Cheonan near the Koreas' sea border in March, killing 46 sailors in one of the boldest attacks on the South since the Korean War of the 1950s. The timing might seem inexplicable: After a year of intransigence, North Korea seemed willing and ready to return to nuclear disarmament talks. But North Korea has never seen violence and negotiation as incompatible, and domestic issues a succession movement and military discontent may be more urgent than foreign policy. North Korea's leaders tightly control information and thrive on myths and lies. However, they cannot hide that the nation is in turmoil, struggling to build its shattered economy and to feed its 24 million people. The number of defectors is rising, and the encroachment of the outside world, through videos and films smuggled from China, has shown citizens what lies beyond the so-called Hermit Kingdom's borders. Kim Jong Il, now 68, is ailing. North Korea has never confirmed that he suffered a stroke in 2008, but his sudden weight loss last year and the persistent paralysis that has left him with a slight limp was visible during his rare trip to China last month. None of his three sons has had the benefit of the more than a decade of grooming Kim had by the time he took over after his father Kim Il Sung's death in 1994, and the regime says it is determined to usher in a "stronger, prosperous" era in 2012, the centenary of the patriarch's birth. Any change in leadership has the potential to be traumatic and tumultuous. A bold attack would be a quick way to muster support and favor in a country where one in 20 citizens is in the military. North Korea has attacked the South a number of times, despite the 1953 truce that ended the devastating Korean War. South Korea has never retaliated militarily, mindful of the toll another war would have on the Korean peninsula. The North's deadliest attack was a bomb smuggled aboard a Korean Air flight, which was decimated over the Andaman Sea in 1987, killing 115 people on board. A North Korean agent captured in connection with that plot said the mastermind was Kim Jong Il, then a few years shy of taking over as leader. Pyongyang has never admitted to any of the post-truce attacks and may have counted on little proof being uncovered when it sent a submarine loaded with a torpedo into the choppy Yellow Sea on March 26. But the distinctively North Korean script scrawled on the inside of a torpedo fragment found during the investigation, among other evidence, was a damning fingerprint. The Cheonan was a symbolic target: The 1,200-ton frigate was involved in a 1999 skirmish between the two Koreas that the South claims killed as many as 30 North Koreans. North Korea disputes the western sea border drawn by U.N. at the close of the Korean War, and those waters have been the site of two other bloody battles since 1999: a firefight in 2002 that killed six South Koreans, and a clash just last November that Seoul says killed a North Korean sailor. The North Korean navy was ripe for revenge. And defectors say it may have needed a boost, since even relatively well-fed military leaders in a regime built around a "military-first" policy had been going hungry in recent years. Not long after the November skirmish, the regime enacted sweeping currency reforms. North Koreans were ordered to exchange a limited amount of bills for a new currency, and to turn the rest over to the government a move that effectively wiped out any personal savings. The reforms were a disaster. There were reports of riots and unrest previously a rarity in totalitarian North Korea. If it was a move to showcase the young, Swiss-educated son's economic acumen, it was a miscalculation. The submarine attack, however, was a stealth move. North Korea's outdated arsenal cannot match South Korea's state-of-the-art systems, but the slow-moving sub somehow went undetected by Seoul's sophisticated radars. Regardless of who ordered the attack, credit for it may have been circulated among top military commanders to build support for the fledging heir apparent, already reportedly dubbed the "Brilliant Comrade." To the broader public, the North characterizes blame for the attack as a smear campaign instigated by the South. And that suits the regime's purposes just fine. There's nothing like a mortal enemy to rally the masses in North Korea, a reclusive state built on the philosophy of "juche," or self-reliance. Washington and Seoul are leading the effort to haul Pyongyang back before the U.N. Security Council for more sanctions or, at the very least, censure. Even that may play right into the Brilliant Comrade's political plans. In the past, the North has used its position as the bad boy of the nuclear world to behave even more badly. Missile tests in 2006 were followed by a nuclear test, its first. And last year, Security Council condemnation was followed just a month later by the regime's second atomic test. International criticism could provide the North with the opening to carry out a third test that would move the regime closer to its goal of perfecting an atomic bomb small enough to mount on a long-range missile. It would be another accomplishment for North Koreans to celebrate, and another achievement for the son to claim. It remains to be seen if and when Kim Jong Il will present his youngest son, a figure so enigmatic that his birthday, age and even his face remain a mystery, to the public as his heir-apparent. The annual gathering of North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament came and went in April without any sign of either the elder Kim, known as the Dear Leader, or the Brilliant Comrade. A rare extraordinary session has been scheduled for June 7. If the precocious prodigal son did indeed plot the attack that plunged inter-Korean relations to their lowest point in a decade and sent world leaders into a huddle on how to avert war, he may finally have a reason to make his political debut.
 * A massive power struggle is underway in North Korea – warring factions will facilitate several avenues for conflict **
 * Bandow, 6/9 ** – Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and former Special Assistant to Reagan (6/9/10, Doug, The Daily Caller, “Confronting North Korea: Who’s in charge?”[], JMP)
 * __ There never would be a good time for instability in North Korea .__ ** __The heavily armed regime continues with its nuclear program.__ It has been pulling back in its modest economic liberalization of recent years. __ In April the DPRK apparently sank the Cheonan __, a South Korean warship, ** __ the North’s first deadly act of war in more than two decades. __ **
 * Succession politics makes provocations __more likely and dangerous__ and crushes the chance of effective engagement to rollback North Korea’s nuclear program **
 * Bandow, 09 ** – Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and former Special Assistant to Reagan (7/29/09, Doug, “Kim’s Heir,”

** Even if the succession process goes smoothly, regime collapse is still inevitable which will destabilize the region  ** //** Meyers, 10 **//// – professor at Dongseo University in South Korea (3/26/10, B.R. Meyers, “ North Korea on the Edge; If the regime collapses, will the rest of the world be ready?” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704100604575145672974954144.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_RIGHTTopCarousel) // As for __tensions__ with the south, they __rose again__ Friday __with the sinking of a South Korean naval ship near a disputed maritime border with North Korea, although it wasn't immediately clear what had caused the sinking or if North Korean vessels were involved.__ The latest incident comes days after a conference in which some experts described the Kim dictatorship as being in the first stage of collapse. Americans should be paying attention: __If North Korea decides to go out in a blaze of nuclear glory—and its current penchant for kamikaze rhetoric suggests it might—the enormous number of casualties would likely include many of the U.S. troops stationed on the peninsula. ** But even a less-apocalyptic form of collapse could destabilize the entire region **__. Those South Korean experts might be wrong in their predictions, but __ the regime seems increasingly unlikely to last out the decade, even if the planned hand-off of power __ to the Dear Leader's son Kim Jong Eun __goes off without a hitch. The economy is only part of the problem .__ North Koreans endured far worse deprivation during the 1990s famine without flagging in their support for the regime. This brings us back to that wall poster, and to the regime's real crisis, which is more ideological in nature than economic. __The information cordon that once encircled North Korea is in tatters. __ Police in the northern provinces try in vain to crack down on the use of Chinese cellphones; citizens circumvent tracking devices by making brief calls from mountains and forests—sometimes to defectors as far away as the U.S. In provinces along the demilitarized zone, many citizens watch South Korean television. Even in Pyongyang, people listen to BBC or Voice of America radio, or view online news surreptitiously at companies with Internet access. __What the masses are learning is incompatible with their decades-old sense of a sacred racial mission .__ They have known since the 1990s that their living standard is much lower than South Korea's. The gap was explained away with reference to the sacrifices needed to build up the military. What the North Koreans are only now realizing, however—and this is more important—is that their brethren in the "Yankee colony" have no desire to live under Kim Jong Il. In 2007, after all, they elected the pro-American candidate to the South Korean presidency. Why, then, should the northerners go on sacrificing in order to liberate people who don't want to be liberated? Unable to answer this question, the regime in desperation has resorted to the most reckless propaganda campaign in its history. This "strong and prosperous country" campaign is nothing less than an effort to persuade the masses that economic life will change drastically by 2012, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Great Leader Kim Il Sung, the father of Kim Jong Il. The official media have dubbed 2010 a "year of radical transformation" that will "open the gate to a thriving nation without fail in 2012." On TV news shows, uniformed students smile into just-delivered computers, and housewives tearfully thank the Leader for new apartments. The media predict even greater triumphs "without fail" for next year. The Juche calendar—which starts with Kim Il Sung's birth year of 1912, from one and not zero—numbers 2011 as year 100, and thus hugely significant. Yet while posters show soldiers and workers arm in arm, refugees describe a sharp rise in public resentment of an army that often steals from farms and factories to feed itself. Refugees are just as credible when they report of a severe fertilizer shortage. The party has responded by demanding that apartment blocks deliver ever more human waste. Alas, the residents don't eat enough to meet the demand. Such misery prevailed in the mid-1990s too, but at least then the regime admitted an economic crisis, even as it mostly blamed the Yankees. Now it talks of a country transforming itself from one year to the next. No dictatorship can afford to lie so stupidly to its people, or to raise public expectations that will be dashed in a matter of months. __Unlike the East Germany of old, North Korea lacks the high walls, incorruptible border guards and surveillance technology needed to keep an entire populace in lockdown .__ Reports of demonstrations against the currency reform may have been exaggerated, but the belated decision to increase the amount of exchangeable currency shows there must have been unrest of some sort. It also indicates that the regime lacks the will to crush it in Tiananmen-style fashion. Kim Jong Il must either find new ways to inspire his people or watch ever more of them cross into China. But this isn't the only domestic crisis facing the Dear Leader. An increasingly infirm 68 years old (69 according to some outside experts), he is already way behind schedule in preparing his son's takeover. It was hard enough for the masses to accept the last hereditary succession in 1994; the official media must still hammer home the message that the Dear Leader was his father's only choice for the post. It will be infinitely harder to install Kim Jong Eun, who even now could walk down a Pyongyang street without being recognized. So the succession process will have to start in earnest by 2012, just as the "strong and prosperous country" campaign is falling on its face. How will the regime try to survive this looming "perfect storm" of ideological crises? Likely by seeking to ratchet up some diversionary tension with the outside world. Making this especially probable is the nascent glorification of Kim Jong Eun as a general in his father's image. He thus needs a perceived military triumph of his own. (Kim Jong Il came to power in 1994 as the hero whose show of nuclear resolve had brought Jimmy Carter on a surrender mission to Pyongyang.) __Last year's nuclear and ballistic provocations have set the bar higher for the regime, perhaps too high. This is the problem with deriving national pride almost exclusively from a nuclear program: The saber can only be rattled, and rattling gets old. __ __Whether the leadership opts for a bigger military provocation, and pushes its luck too far, or just tries to muddle through, with an inexorable decline of public support, the outlook for the country's survival has never been bleaker.__ Regime change? Out of the question. The Kim clan is inextricable with North Korean identity. A homegrown Gorbachev would find it impossible to shift focus from the military to the economy. Why should people toil under the North Korean flag in the hope of attaining a lifestyle that South Koreans enjoyed a quarter-century ago? Why not unify at once, and live in the system that has already proved itself? In view of all this, __one can only hope that the region's main powers are making more serious and thorough preparations for a North Korean regime collapse than they have so far let on.__ The effort to downplay the relevant contingency planning is of course understandable. It is hard enough for the Americans to get North Korea back to nuclear arms talks without admitting that they are readying for its demise. (Kim Jong Il can't have forgotten that Washington once promised him light-water reactors in the confidence that he wouldn't be around long enough to get them.) As for the South Korean government, it doesn't want to frighten its own people, who seem reluctant even to discuss the possibility of German-style unification. Leaks about official contingency plans—refugee camps safely removed from Seoul, for example—seem intended to reassure everyone that unification will proceed almost imperceptibly slowly. __The Chinese__, for their part, __have no choice but to deny that the thought of regime collapse in Pyongyang has even crossed their mind.__ And yet if Western press reports are any indication, __it is Beijing's future role that most troubles American planners.__ In 2007, __a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the U.S. Institute of Peace warned that "if the international community did not react in a timely manner as internal order in North Korea deteriorated rapidly, China would seek to take the initiative in restoring stability.'' The possibility has Seoul worried too. In reading about these contingency plans, one senses a general optimism that North Korea will not go down fighting. Here, too, as so often in the world's dealings with Pyongyang, there is a strong tendency to extrapolate from late Cold War history—to presume that these "hardline Stalinists" will be rational enough not to do anything suicidal. But this has never been a Stalinist state. The orthodox worldview is a paranoid, race-based nationalism with intellectual roots in fascist Japan.__ Related [|Downed South Korea Ship Spurs Questions] Since the East Bloc crumbled away in the early 1990s, North Korea has shown its true ideological colors ever more clearly. Last year it even deleted the word communism from the national constitution, elevating "military first" socialism to the country's guiding principle instead. At the same time it has made ever more extensive use of kamikaze terms and slogans ("Let us become human bombs in defense of the leader") taken almost verbatim from Pacific War propaganda. The official media routinely mock the leaders of the old East Bloc for giving up "without firing a shot," and vow that "there can be no world without [North] Korea." __ The possibility of a violent, potentially apocalyptic regime collapse in North Korea within the decade is one that all countries with an interest in the region should keep in mind __. They should also be more conscious of the internal ideological contradictions that make the country's long-term survival impossible. If North Korea must collapse anyway, it makes no sense for China to prolong things; the leadership will only go out with a bigger bang when the day finally comes. As for Americans, we should focus our contingency planning on a worst-case nuclear scenario instead of fretting about Beijing's role on a post-Kim peninsula. A Chinese occupation of North Korea should be the least of our worries.

This report examines North Korea’s chemical and biological weapons capabilities in the context of its military doctrine and national objectives. It is based on open source literature, interviews and unpublished documents made available to Crisis Group. Companion reports published simultaneously assess the DPRK’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities and what the policy response of the international community should be to its recent nuclear and missile testing.[1] North Korea’s programs to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missiles pose serious risks to security. __ Pyongyang ’s nuclear capabilities are the greatest threat, but it also possesses a ** large stockpile of chemical weapons ** and is suspected of maintaining a biological weapons program.__ The Six-Party Talks (China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, South Korea and the U.S.) had been underway since August 2003 with the objective of ending the North’s nuclear ambitions, before Pyongyang announced its withdrawal in April 2009, but __there is no direct mechanism for dealing with its chemical weapons and possible biological weapons. The North Korean leadership is very unlikely to surrender its WMD ** unless there is significant change in the political and security environments. ** __ The Six-Party Talks pro­duced a “Statement of Principles” in September 2005 that included a commitment to establish a permanent peace mechanism in North East Asia, but the structure and nature of such a cooperative security arrangement is subject to interpretation, negotiation and implementation. Views among the parties differ, and no permanent peace can be established unless North Korea abandons all its WMD programs. The diplomatic tasks are daunting, and diplomacy could fail. If North Korea refuses to engage in arms control and to rid itself of WMD, the international community must be prepared to deal with a wide range of threats, including those posed by Pyongyang’s chemical and biological weapons capabilities. __Unclassified estimates of the chemical weapons__ (CW) __arsenal are imprecise, but ** the consensus  ** is that the__ Korean People’s Army __(KPA) possesses 2,500-5,000 tons,__ including mustard, phosgene, blood agents, sarin, tabun and V-agents (persistent nerve agents). __ The stockpile __ does not appear to be increasing but __ is ** already sufficient ** to inflict massive civilian casualties on South Korea .__ The North’s CW can be delivered with long-range artillery, multiple rocket launchers, FROGs (free rocket over ground), ballistic missiles, aircraft and naval vessels. North Korean military doctrine emphasises quick offensive strikes to break through enemy defences in order to achieve national military objectives before the U.S. can intervene effectively on behalf of its South Korean ally. However, __the North’s conventional military capabilities are declining against those of its potential foes, so the leadership is likely to rely on asymmetric capabilities for its national security objectives. This strategy poses a significant danger because it risks ** deliberate, accidental or unauthorised WMD attacks or incidents. ** __
 * Conventional weakness means deliberate, accidental, or unauthorized CBW use is likely **
 * ICG, 09 ** (6/18/09, International Crisis Group, “North Korea’s Chemical and Biological Weapons Programs,” [], JMP)


 * This would cripple U.S. combat effectiveness **
 * TULAK 19 95 **(Arthur, Captain in the US army and Master’s Degree in Defense and Strategic Studies, “Tactical nuclear weapons - does the U.S. army still need them?” [] )

As Dr. Gray pointed out, __Third World armies are seeking equalizers to defeat Western contingency forces__. For some, this equalizer will be a nuclear weapon, for most, chemical and or biological weapons. __ C hemical and bi ological w eapon s, if even they are not effective in producing casualties, can have a significant impact on the outcome of any major operation __ or campaign. Observations from the U.S. Army's combat training centers show that the __introduction of NBC agents into training scenarios contribute to__ mission degradation or __mission failure__. "To achieve the same objective, operations under NBC conditions require more combat power than operations not under NBC conditions."290 __An opponent__ of U.S. contingency forces __would be sorely tempted to use chemical weapons to handicap U.S. combat power__ and level the playing field. Such use would not necessarily have to be offensive in nature: chemical agents were used defensively in World War I to secure flanks and deter attacks across contaminated ground. __All aspects of combat operations become unbelievably difficult in an NBC environment__. The Army's Combined Arms in a Nuclear/Chemical Environment (CANE) tests showed clearly that unit performance was degraded in operations under NBC conditions. In operations conducted in full chemical protective suits it was noted that: § Attacks and engagements lasted longer. § Fewer enemy forces were killed. _ Friendly forces suffered more casualties. _ Friendly forces fired fewer rounds at the enemy. § Fratricide increased. § Terrain was used less effectively for cover and concealment.291 In an NBC environment, battle command becomes more difficult. Command posts and headquarters at all levels are likely targets. __ Control will be difficult even with the smallest unit. Personnel in protective clothing will be slow to respond to rapid changes in mission. The employment of these weapons will greatly alter the tempo of combat __ ." FM 100-5: Operations, 1993, p. 6-10. During Desert Shield/Desert Storm, U.S. policymakers were forced to consider what actions would be appropriate if Iraq were to use nerve agents against Coalition forces. Because the United States does not maintain an operational stockpile of chemical weapons, retaliation inkind would not be an option today. Our defensive measures are effective, and are seen by some to be an effective deterrent to enemy use of Chemical-Biological Weapons (CBWs).292 However, __if the enemy is merely trying to__ slow down our optempo, __handicap our strategy__, and strengthen his defenses, __our defensive capabilities might be an invitation to CBW use as the enemy would not seek casualties that might inflame public opinion, but instead would desire the immediate battlefield results CBW use would create for the defender. Chemical weapons used on U.S. forces would force commanders to initiate timeconsuming decontamination procedures. Even after decontamination, "outgassing" of residual agents on equipment would continue to pose hazards. An enemy would be tempted to use chemical weapons to degrade and slow U.S. operations in order to gain time to respond to U.S. maneuvers__. In Desert Storm, our forces moved to fast for the Iraqis to respond. Had the Iraqis used chemical weapons, that lightening speed would have diminished dramatically. A study by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, concluded that forces in a chemical environment experience a decrement of "at least thirty to fifty percent...in operational effectiveness due to restrictions imposed by [chemical] protective equipment [suits] and procedures."293 __While__ Secretary of Defense William __Perry has stated that our "new [conventional] military capability can also serve as a credible deterrent to a regional power's use of chemical weapons__ ,"294 __this seems to be a best case scenario that fails to take into account the "what ifs" and assumes rationality on the part of the opponent__, something the Army's doctrinal manual cautioned one not to do. Tactical Nuclear Weapons are our strongest deterrent available to prevent regional use of WMD against U.S. contingency forces. President Bush, when faced with this actual scenario, chose wisely to emphasize U.S. tactical nuclear capabilities then deployed in the land, air, and sea forces of the United States military.295 
 * CBW use would result in US nuclear retaliation **
 * SCHNEIDER 19 97 **(Barry, Director of the USAF Counterproliferation Center at Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, and an Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Future Conflict Studies at the U.S. Air War College., Future War and Counterproliferation, 72-73)

As a result, today, in the minds of many, the only legitimate use of U.S. nuclear weapons would be in response to a direct nuclear attack on the United States, its forces, its allies, or its vital interests.13 A U.S. nuclear response to much less severe attacks likely would be seen as severely disproportionate to the provocation, even if chemical or biological attacks were launched. However, __ if enemy __ __ CBW attacks __ were directed against important target~ in the American homeland, or if they __ caused horrific numbers of U.S. and allied casualties in the field, it might well be that U.S. public opinion then woul.d sanction a U.S. nuclear retaliatory response. In that case, an aroused American public might demand harsh nuclear retribution. __  
 * US nuclear response destroys the nuclear taboo—this makes worldwide nuclear wars inevitable **
 * GIZEWSKI 19 96 ** (Peter, Senior Associate, Peace and Conflict Studies Programme, University of Toronto, International Journal, Summer, p. 400)

__ Absolute and all-encompassing, the prohibition sets all nuclear weapons apart as unique, regardless of size or power. Nuclear explosives – both large and small – are equally illegitimate, and the latter remain so despite the existence of seemingly ‘legitimate’ conventional explosives of greater destructive power__. The distinction stems in part from widely held but rarely questioned perceptions of nuclear arms as ‘different.’ __ Nuclear weapons are distinct simply because they are perceived to be distinct __. The distinction also has roots in legal reasoning and diplomacy. __Traditions__ and conventions are crucial to the conduct of social relations. Once established, they __render behaviour predictable, help to co-ordinate actor expectations, and offer a gauge of intentions. If they are not held to be inviolate, these functions become more difficult. Transgression at any level threatens to erode shared understandings and expectations – increasing uncertainty and the inevitable costs__ and requirements __of coping with it. One violation makes subsequent, perhaps more serious, actions of the same type easier to contemplate and thus more likely. Thus, any breach of the nuclear threshold threatens more than one isolated act of destruction: it sets a precedent signalling potential chaos, which may well include the prospect of more destruction to come __. The international community is increasingly aware that cooperative diplomacy is the most productive way to tackle the multiple, interconnected global challenges facing humanity, not least of which is the increasing proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. __Korea and Northeast Asia are instances where risks of nuclear proliferation and actual nuclear use arguably have increased in recent years.__ This negative trend is a product of continued US nuclear threat projection against the DPRK as part of a general program of coercive diplomacy in this region, North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, the breakdown in the Chinese-hosted Six Party Talks towards the end of the Bush Administration, regional concerns over China’s increasing military power, and concerns within some quarters in regional states (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) about whether US extended deterrence (“nuclear umbrella”) afforded under bilateral security treaties can be relied upon for protection. __The consequences of failing to address the proliferation threat posed by the North Korea developments, and related political and economic issues, are serious__, not only for the Northeast Asian region but __for the whole international community.__ At worst, __ there is the ** possibility of nuclear attack ** __ 1 , __whether by **  intention, miscalculation, or  ** **  merely accident   **, leading to the resumption of Korean War hostilities.__ On the Korean Peninsula itself, key population centres are well within short or medium range missiles. The whole of Japan is likely to come within North Korean missile range. Pyongyang has a population of over 2 million, Seoul (close to the North Korean border) 11 million, and Tokyo over 20 million. ** __ Even a limited nuclear exchange would result in a holocaust of unprecedented proportions. __ ** But the catastrophe within the region would not be the only outcome. New research indicates that even a limited nuclear war in the region would rearrange our global climate far more quickly than global warming. Westberg draws attention to new studies modelling the effects of even a limited nuclear exchange involving approximately 100 Hiroshima-sized 15 kt bombs2 (by comparison it should be noted that the United States currently deploys warheads in the range 100 to 477 kt, that is, individual warheads equivalent in yield to a range of 6 to 32 Hiroshimas). __The studies indicate that the soot from the fires produced would lead to a decrease in global temperature by 1.25 degrees __ Celsius for a period of 6-8 years.3 In Westberg’s view: That is not global winter, but __the nuclear darkness will cause a deeper drop in temperature than at any time during the last 1000 years.__ The temperature over the continents would decrease substantially more than the global average. A decrease in rainfall over the continents would also follow… __The period of nuclear darkness will cause much greater decrease in grain production than 5% and it will continue for many years... hundreds of millions of people will die from hunger __ …To make matters even worse, __ such amounts of smoke injected into the stratosphere would cause a huge reduction in the Earth’s protective ozone. __ 4 These, of course, are not the only consequences. __Reactors might also be targeted, causing further mayhem and downwind radiation effects, superimposed on a smoking, radiating ruin left by nuclear next-use__. Millions of refugees would flee the affected regions. __ The direct impacts, and the follow-on impacts on the global economy via ecological and food insecurity, could ** make the present global financial crisis pale by comparison ** .__ How the great powers, especially the nuclear weapons states respond to such a crisis, and in particular, whether nuclear weapons are used in response to nuclear first-use, could make or break the global non proliferation and disarmament regimes. __There could be many unanticipated impacts on regional and global security relationships__ 5, __with ** subsequent nuclear breakout ** and geopolitical turbulence, including possible loss-of-control over fissile material or warheads in the chaos of nuclear war, and ** aftermath chain-reaction affects involving other potential proliferant states. **__ The Korean nuclear proliferation issue is not just a regional threat but a global one that warrants priority consideration from the international community.
 * Even a limited nuclear war causes rapid cooling and ozone disruption, collapses the economy, and spills over to other hot spots causing extinction **
 * Hayes & Hamel-Green, 10 ** – *Executive Director of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development, AND ** Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Education and Human Development act Victoria University (1/5/10, Executive Dean at Victoria, “The Path Not Taken, the Way Still Open: Denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia,” [])

Proceeding against the advice of my cardiologist, I must concede that for once, Ron Paul is actually on to something. __ The ground component of U.S. Forces Korea __, which costs U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars a year to maintain, __ is an __ equally __ unaffordable political liability on the South Korean street. We should withdraw it.__ Every Saturday night off-post brawl is a headline in the muck-raking Korean press, for which the American soldier is inevitably blamed, and for which angry mobs perpetually demand renegotiations of the Status of Force Agreement to give Korea’s not-even-remotely-fair judicial system more jurisdiction over American soldiers. __The South Korean people do not appreciate__ the security __our soldiers__ provide. The way some of them treat our soldiers ought to be a national scandal. Many off-post businesses don’t even let Americans through their front doors. ** __ The degree of anti-Americanism in South Korea is sufficient to be a significant force protection issue in the event of hostilities .__ ** South Korea does not have our back. South Korea made much of the fact that it sent 3,000 soldiers to Iraq, where they sat behind concrete barriers in a secure Kurdish area of Iraq, protected by peshmerga, making no military contribution and taking no combat casualties. Their contribution to the effort in Afghanistan has been negligible, which is more than can be said of their contribution to the Taliban (previous President Roh Moo Hyun reportedly paid them a ransom of up to $20 million in 2007 to free South Korean hostages who took it upon themselves to charter a shiny new bus to bring Christianity to Kandahar). South Korea has been an equally unsteady ally against China. __The American security blanket has fostered a state of national adolescence by the South Korean public.__ Too many of them (some polls suggest most) see America as a barrier to reunification with their ethnic kindred in the North. Maybe nothing short of a North Korean attack on the South can encourage more sober thinking by South Koreans about their own security, but I suspect a greater sense of self-reliance and even vulnerability might. During my service in Korea, as U.S. taxpayers subsidized South Korea’s defense, South Korea subsidized Kim Jong Il’s potential offense with billions of dollars in hard currency that sustained the very threat against which we were ostensibly helping to defend. South Korea never made North Korea’s disarmament a condition of this aid. Instead, that aid effectively undermined U.S. and U.N. sanctions meant to force North Korea to disarm. What does South Korea have to show for this colossal outlay now. __Because South Korea, now__ one the world’s wealthiest nations, __expects__ up to 600,000 __American soldiers to__ arrive __protect it__ from any security contingency, __successive South Korean governments actually cut their nation’s defense rather than modernizing it and building an effective independent defense.__ Consequently, South Korea still has a 1970-vintage force structure, designed around a 1970-vintage threat, equipped with 1970-vintage weapons. This is partly the legacy of ten years of leftist administrations, but it’s also the legacy of military welfare that allowed South Korea to defer upgrading its equipment, building a professional volunteer army, and organizing an effective reserve force to deal with security contingencies. Worst of all, __South Korea diverted billions of dollars that should have been spent on modernizing its military into regime-sustaining aid to Kim Jong Il__, to be used, as far as anyone knows, for nukes, missiles, artillery, and pretty much everything but infant formula. To this day, South Korea continues to resist accepting operational control over its own forces in the event of war. The U.S. Army presence in Korea is an anachronism, defending against the extinct threat of a conventional North Korean invasion. __The far greater danger is that if Kim Jong Il assesses our current president as weak, he will choose more limited or less conventional means to strike at our soldiers and their families.__ Given the reported presence of Taliban operatives in Seoul, he might even plausibly deny responsibility for an attack. Thus, while I don’t go so far as to accept the Princess Bride Doctrine (”never get involved in a land war in Asia”), __ I do not believe it is wise for us to have our forces within easy artillery range of Kim Jong Il, such that he may freely choose the time, place, and manner of our involvement__ I offer two qualifications here. First, __ this is not to suggest that we unilaterally abrogate the alliance with South Korea. ** Our air and naval installations in Korea provide useful power-projection capability ** and are far more secure __, ironically, than our many scattered and isolated Army posts. I can imagine any number of contingencies for which we’d want to have the ability to move people and supplies into South Korea in a hurry. Second, this is not to suggest that Ron Paul is not an anti-Semitic crypto-racist advocate of a thoughtlessly escapist foreign policy, and broadly speaking, an imbecile. This is just one occasion in which he inadvertently, in the fashion of a stopped clock, aligns with the correct result.
 * Withdrawing __ground troops__ solves – stops North Korea from probing U.S. weakness to draw our forces into a wider conflict. Air and naval installations will maintain power projection capabilities. **
 * Stanton, 10 ** – U.S. Army Judge Advocate in Korea from 98-02 and practicing attorney in Washington, D.C. (4/12/10, Joshua, The New Ledger, “It's Time for the U.S. Army to Leave Korea,” [], JMP)

Two men have ruled the northern half of the Korean peninsula for sixty-three years. “Great Leader” Kim Il-sung was installed by the Soviets after the peninsula was divided by the victorious powers at the end of World War II. He gradually moved his son, Kim Jong-il, into a central leadership role, and the “Dear Leader” took over after his father’s death in July 1994. But Kim Jong-il has gone missing amid rumors of illness, incapacity, or death. What comes next if the Dear Leader does not reemerge? North Korea offers a rare example of monarchical communism. The so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has the usual attributes of a communist dictatorship: dominant Korean Workers Party, secondary state institutions, and an oversized military. But the DPRK offers a unique twist—amidst a hierarchy filled with anti-Japanese guerrillas, party apparatchiks, and bemedaled generals is an extended family whose members slip in and out of power. At times __North Korean politics has the makings of an Ottoman soap opera, with competing wives and families.__ Kim Jong-il pushed aside an uncle and younger step-brother in his rise to power. He has three sons by two different wives (whether de jure or de facto no one knows for sure) and a son-in-law. His brother-in-law, Jang Song-taek, disappeared in a purge a few years ago but recently reemerged. Suspected illegitimate children wield political power and make economic deals. But if Kim is out, the family reign seems over. The Great Leader went to great effort to empower his eldest son. Jong-il first received public mention as the unnamed “party center,” allowing him to shape the communist hierarchy. But Jong-il’s oldest son is in disgrace. His second son is a couple weeks short of his twenty-seventh birthday. The youngest may be the most promising, but Korean culture venerates age and seniority. None of the sons have taken obvious, let alone important, political roles. Jang ranks second in the party hierarchy, but his influence absent Kim Jong-il is hard to assess. Top officials outside of Kim’s family are closely tied to the two rulers, but are unlikely to offer more than transitional leadership. Number two and de facto head of state Kim Yong-nam (no relation) is nearly eighty-one. The top military leader Jo Myong-rok is Kim’s number two on the National Defense Commission but also is over eighty-two. A better bet might be another, younger general, O Kuk-ryol. Of course, all speculation will prove irrelevant if Kim reemerges, hail and hearty. But he hasn’t been seen for a month and there is no logical reason for him to miss the North’s sixtith anniversary celebrations. While __ the political soap opera __ is entertaining, it ** __ could have deadly consequences .__ ** Analysts have long speculated on whether Kim was serious about negotiating away his country’s nuclear program and if he had sufficient authority to impose a pacific policy on the military. The nuclear negotiations recently stalled, with Pyongyang growing more belligerent after Washington refused to remove North Korea from its list of terrorist states. Whether this reflects a routine turn in DPRK negotiating strategy, an increase in military influence, or a problem with Kim Jong-il’s health no one knows. It’s tempting to believe that things can’t get worse in North Korea, where an unpredictable, brutal personal dictatorship has left the common people to suffer through mass immiseration and starvation. However, by all accounts Kim is intelligent and understands the challenges facing his nation. And it is conceivable, even if not likely, that he has been convinced of the economic and political benefits to be gained from nuclear disarmament. But if not Kim, then who? Assume his family maintains its hold over power—that might mean continuation of the status quo, though not necessarily. __A collective leadership might exercise caution towards the outside world__, but that likely would doom the nuclear deal as well as further rapprochement with South Korea. __ Military dominance could yield a responsible moderate__ determined to create a more prosperous and less isolated DPRK, __but hard-line rule seems far more likely __. Think Burma, for instance. __The most frightening scenario would be a violent power struggle and even national collapse. Then the best case would be mass refugee flows to South Korea and China. The worst case would be factional conflict spilling over North Korea’s borders, possibly attracting intervention by the South and China.__ Japan and Russia also would be vitally concerned in the outcome even if they remained aloof from any fighting. There’s not much Washington can do as East Asia waits with collective bated breath for confirmation of Kim’s fate. But even if he is alive and well today, a transition will eventually come. And nervous—indeed, panicked—uncertainty is likely to return. Indeed, __ should the international geopolitical environment worsen, with__, say, __increased tensions between China and the __ __U __ nited __S __ tates __as Beijing’s regional influence grow s, a North Korean succession crisis could be even more destabilizing. __
 * The plan solves by South Korea to effectively influence the leadership transition **
 * Bandow, 08 ** – Fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance and former special assistant to Reagan (9/15/08, Doug, “Dear Leader Goes South,” [], JMP)
 * __ The best American strategy would be to get out of the way. __ ** __Without a cold war raging, South Korea is of little security concern to America.__ With the ROK enjoying 40 times the GDP and twice the population of North Korea, __the South can defend itself.__ __Pull back America’s remaining troops, and ** Washington could leave dealing with an uncertain leadership transition in Pyongyang to  **__ others in the region, most importantly ** __ South Korea __ ** and China.

=Russia Adv – 1ac=
 * Advantage 2 is Russia **

Trade and Investment __In the late 1980s, North Korea's trade with the Soviet Union and its affiliates constituted three-quarters of North Korea's total trade volume. Bilateral trade between Pyongyang and Moscow sharply dropped from approximately $US1bn in 1989–90 to $US80m in the mid-1990s.__ After the three summits between Putin and Kim Jong-il in 2000–02, bilateral economic contacts and exchanges of economic delegations increased. Still, the level of economic cooperation remained low and there were few joint ventures. After 2000, bilateral trade increased to about $US130m in 2002–04.46 Still North Korea's trade with Russia in 2003 was less than 2 percent of its total trade volume. By contrast, North Korea's trade with China in the same year constituted one-third of North Korea's total trade.47 The Russia–DPRK trade volume in 2005 was lower than the 1990 level; and further declined from $US240m in 2005 to $US190m in 2006. The reduction in trade in 2006 was due to a reduction in Russian oil exports. Russia's exports to North Korea in 2006 stood at $US190m and Russia's imports from North Korea in the same year reached $US20m. The bulk of the trade was carried out between North Korea and Russia's Far Eastern regions, which accounted for 80% of the total trade between the two countries.48 The main Russian exports are coal, timber, petroleum products and nitrogen fertilizers. North Korea's main export items include workers, sea products, food and agricultural products.49 North Korea's imports from Russia far exceed its exports, resulting in a widening trade deficit for North Korea.50 North Korea is suffering from chronic and serious trade deficit overall. According to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), North Korea's trade volume reached $US3bn (excluding its trade with South Korea) in 2005, recording a trade deficit of $US1bn. The trade deficit is attributed to the drop in exports of fisheries goods and increased imports of energy resources, food, and machinery.51 China is North Korea's most important economic partner (except for South Korea) and China's economic influence over the country is increasing. Economic cooperation between the DPRK and China is on the rise, whereas __ economic cooperation between the DPRK and Russia remains flat. __ China's trade with and investment in the DPRK is carried out by small firms, which are proactive and aggressive, but __Russia's economic cooperation with the DPRK is led by big, unwieldy state-owned firms.__ 52 There have been numerous talks between the DPRK and Russia to expand economic cooperation, but very few of the planned projects have been actually implemented. __ Russia has been pushing for trilateral economic cooperation combining Russia's technical facilities, the DPRK's labor, and the ROK's capital. North Korean factories__ built with the support of the Soviet Union, including the Kimchaek steel plant, the Seungri chemical plant, the Ryongsong bearing plant, and the Anju textile plant, __need repairs and upgrading. Russia is proposing to modernize these industrial facilities with the ROK's capital. Gazprom Neft is interested in a project aimed at overhauling the Seungri Oil Refinery in North Korea. The two countries will also discuss the possibility of resuming supplies of Russian crude oil to Seungri if an agreement can be reached between Russian oil producers and the North Korean government.__ 53 Russia and North Korea are interested in a joint project to build an interstate electro-transmission line between Vladivostok and Chongjin. Russia's electricity monopoly Unified Energy Systems (UES) is interested in providing electricity to South and North Korea. UES wants to pursue a trilateral project through which it will build an electric line from the Far East to North Korea and supply it with 800 megawatts of electricity. UES made a couple of proposals, but nothing came out of it.54 __According to a draft protocol of the Russian–North Korean intergovernmental commission in March 2007, Russia's Eurocement Group will take part in the modernization of the North Korean Sunchon Cement Complex. The protocol listed other possible joint projects including cooperation__ in repairing and scrapping ships at the Ryongnam shipyard, joint production at the Taedonggang Storage Battery Plant, and a joint venture at a North Korean bearing plant.55 North Korea wants Russian companies to construct the second line of the East Pyongyang power and heat plant and to reconstruct another two power and heat stations.56 Iron Silk Road __ Putin is keen on the "iron silk road" project of linking the TSR to the TKR for economic and security reasons. He states that this project would contribute to the development of the Russian Far East and help reduce tensions in Korea. __ Following the 2000 inter-Korean summit talks, __Seoul and Pyongyang agreed to re-link an inter-Korean railway severed by the division of the nation. If the TKR were linked up with the TSR, trilateral economic cooperation between Russia, the ROK, and the DPRK would gain momentum. __ Putin broached the iron silk road plan when he first met with Kim Jong-il in 2000, and Kim reportedly responded favorably. Putin continued to promote the iron silk road and triangular economic cooperation when he met with President Kim Dae-jung while attending the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000. At this meeting, the two leaders agreed to connect the TKR to the TSR.57 Putin and Kim Jong-il confirmed their will to pursue the iron silk road plan when they met a second time in 2001. Before the iron silk road project is realized, inter-Korean railroads must be re-linked. In May 2007, North and South Korea carried out test runs of trains across the demilitarized zone, and during the second inter-Korean summit in October 2007, Kim Jong-il and Roh Moo-hyun agreed to open their border to freight railroad services. In December 2007, North and South Korea resumed the inter-Korean cargo train service between the Munsan Station in the South and the Panmun Station in the North (a 19.8 km route). The cross-border railway service had been suspended since the Korean War (1950–53). __The cargo railroad service would run on weekdays carrying raw materials, parts and manufactured goods to and from the Gaeseong Industrial Complex in North Korea, and South Korea.__ For economic reasons,58 Seoul is primarily interested in the Seoul–Pyongyang–Sinuiju line (along the west coast of the Korean peninsula) connecting the TKR to a Chinese railroad more than the Seoul–Wonsan–Khasan line (along the east coast of the Korean peninsula) linking the TKR to the TSR. Russia, however, wants South Korea to choose the east coast option. __Moscow has persistently pushed for the iron silk road plan.__ In December 2002, a working group of Russian railway ministry experts completed a thorough examination of the 101.2 km-long Wonsan–Geumgangsan stretch of the future TRK.59 Russia had already upgraded a 240-km-long section from Ussuriysk to Khasan by October 2003.60 Russia intends to link the lines between Vladivostok and Cheongjin in North Korea in the first phase and then connect the railway to South Korea in the second phase. The Russian Railways (RZD; state-owned railroad monopoly in Russia) has pursued trilateral cooperation with the DPRK and the ROK to reconstruct a railway stretch from the Khasan station to the Rajin in the northeast of North Korea and to construct a container terminal in the port of Rajin. Russia's Vostochny port near Nakhodka is saturated with freight. Moscow and Pyongyang plan to use the renovated Rajin port to ship freight from Northeast Asia to Russia and Europe after the railroad section is renovated and Rajin port is modernized.61 The 55-km (34-mile) Rajin–Khasan line can connect to the TSR. North Korea's railroads are outdated, ill maintained and in need of repairs. The RZD has pushed to establish an international consortium to finance the $US7bn project to renovate the TKR and to link it to the TSR. In 2001, North Korea and Russia completed a survey on the North's railroad conditions. In March 2006, Pyongyang agreed to the Russia's proposal to form an international consortium to finance the reconstruction of the TKR.62 At the tripartite talks in March 2006, transport chiefs of Russia and the two Koreas agreed to renovate the Rajin-Khasan section as a pilot project. In late April 2007, RZD and the North's Ministry of Railways signed a non-binding memorandum of intention on the reconstruction of a railway section from the Russian border station Khasan to the North Korean port of Rajin. The memorandum also included their intention to construct a container terminal in Rajin.63 On 17 May 2007, Russia and the DPRK launched a first test run of railway traffic between Rajin and Khasan.64 In July 2007, the RZD' representatives announced that the company decided to begin repair and construction work in the third quarter of this year. The reconstruction of the Rajin-Khasan railroad stretch is estimated to cost $US1.7bn.65 According to ROK Foreign Minister Song Min-soon, as of December 2007, the South Korean consortium and Russia's railway company (without North Korea's participation) were discussing the creation of a joint logistics company which would reconstruct the Rajin-Khasan stretch.66 Difficulties in securing the fund are delaying the project. North Korea is less than enthusiastic about the TKR project because its leaders fear their country's collapse and do not want to show to the outside world the poor conditions of their railroads. More importantly, __ tensions in DPRK–US relations remain the ** main political obstacle ** to implementing the __ Khasan–Najin __ railroad project. __ In this context, __a statement by the president of the RZD company__, Vladimir __Yakunin__ , on the company's website __is telling: "At the end of last year__ [2004] __North Korea said that since the USA toughened up its policy towards North Korea the country 'sees no point' in holding a second trilateral meeting of experts to discuss the implementation of the project to reunite the T rans- K orean R ailway and link it with the Trans-Siberian Railway."67 The plan to link the TSR with the TKR will work only after North Korea's nuclear crisis is resolved and inter-Korean reconciliation deepens.__ The plan's success will also depend on securing the funds for the project. China and Russia are in competition to develop Rajin, and China is ahead of Russia. China established the Rason International Distribution Company Limited through the joint investment of the People's Committee Economic Cooperation Company in Rason. The Chinese company secured 50-year exclusive management rights to Port #3 and Port #4 in Rajin and a national highway linking Hunchun and Rajin.68 China reportedly expressed its willingness to invest over $US1bn in Rajin. China is interested in building a 93-kilometre line from Rajin to Hunchun and in constructing logistics, commercial and industrial facilities in Rajin. China's main northeastern port of Dalian is overcrowded and Rajin could ease the burden and give China easy access to the East Sea.69 Debt Repayment Pyongyang's debt to Moscow remains another major obstacle to overall economic cooperation. North Korea owed Soviet Russia about 3.8 billion hard currency.70 North Korea incurred over two-thirds of the debt through purchases of weapons and military equipment from the Soviet Union.71 As the legal successor to the Soviet Union, Russia demanded Pyongyang's assumption of the debt responsibility, and during the second session of the Russia–North Korea Joint Economic Commission in 1997, North Korea for the first time promised to repay its debt to Russia. Since then, negotiations on the debt repayment have been held intermittently, but no agreement has been reached yet. Talks on the debt issue discontinued in 2002, but resumed in late 2006. Russia's Vneshtorgbank and North Korea's Foreign Trade Bank reportedly agreed to set the debt amount at $US8bn after considering interests accrued and the changed exchange rate.72 Until then, Russia held the position that North Korea's debt repayment was a precondition for revitalizing bilateral economic cooperation. In late 2006, Russia proactively engaged the DPRK to negotiate the debt issue, offering to write off the bulk of the debt and proposing new conditions to pay back the remainder. This approach appears to be intended to induce the DPRK to join trilateral economic cooperation with Russia and South Korea and encourage North Korea's continued participation in the Six-Party nuclear talks. According to a Russian diplomatic source, North Korea in recent negotiations offered Russia the rights to develop its underground resources and suggested a lease of land in its ports.73 In talks held in December 2006, Russia proposed "to write off the greater part of the debt and settle the remaining sum on easy terms."74 During a meeting of the intergovernmental commission in March 2007, Russia proposed a number of economic measures to resolve the debt problem, including investment and in exchange for property.75 Konstantin Pulikovski, co-chair of the Russia–North Korea intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation, revealed in March 2007 that North Korea called on Russia to take a political decision (or forgive almost the entire debt) on the debt issue: "The [North] Korean side is openly and plainly saying that in the current situation North Korea is unable to repay its debt to Russia and is proposing to take a political decision on this issue."76 The unresolved debt issue continues to obstruct Russia–DPRK cooperation in economic and scientific-technical spheres. North Korean Laborers North Korea began to send its contract laborers to the Soviet Union as early as 1945.77 According to one estimate, the DPRK currently earns $US5m-$US20m annually by exporting labor to Russia.78 The presence of the North Korean work force in Russia constitutes a significant component of bilateral economic cooperation.79 In 2007, North Korea ranked fourth among countries in terms of the number of its labor force (over 21,700) in Russia.80 North Korea has expressed an interest in increasing the number of its workers. During his official visit to Moscow in August 2001, Kim Jong-il proposed to send more than 5,500 North Korean workers every year. During this second unofficial visit to the Russian Far East in 2002, he again proposed sending an additional 2,500 North Korean workers to the region.81 But the Russian Far East does not have enough jobs to satisfy North Korea's demand. North Korean laborers are engaged in logging in Khabarovsk Krai and Amursk Oblast and farming and apartment construction in Primorye. In February 1995, the Russian government renewed its logging agreement with North Korea, effective for the next three years.82 The renewal agreement included provisions for North Korea's guarantee of better human rights for its workers in Siberia and the right of Russian law enforcement officials to intervene in North Korea logging camps. These stipulations came about after public outcries over the torture and executions of the lumberjacks by North Korean security agents in the Khabarovsk Krai.83 In 1997, the number of North Korean lumberjacks in the Far East decreased by two thirds, from 15,000 to 5,000, due to the reduction of lumber production and increased rail transportation costs in Russia.84 At the end of the 1990s, North Korean loggers in Russia numbered less than 7,000.85 In 2006, over 2,000 North Korean loggers were working in the Amur and Khabarovsk regions.86 North Korean loggers in Khabarovsk Krai are paid about $US170–$US190 per month and North Korean construction workers in Primorye $US120–$US130 a month.87 About 200 North Korean workers are engaged in fishing and mining in Sakhalin.88 In 2005, the total number of North Koreans working in the Russian Far East stood at 13,806. Most of them were on three or six month contracts and very few were on 1–3 year contracts.89 The terms of contract for North Korean workers vary. North Korea's state-owned firms allow the workers to keep as little as 10 percent of their wages. In some instances, North Korean workers, especially at the construction sites in Vladivostok, are required to earn a fixed amount of money but allowed to keep additional income. In other instances, they are not paid in cash but in-kind or in coupons. North Koreans' labor may also be used to pay for timber or oil.90 Conclusions With Putin's arrival in the Kremlin, a new era dawned in Moscow–Pyongyang relations. After a decade of estrangement, the two neighbors finally reached rapprochement. The relations warmed up quickly in 2000 when Putin enthusiastically courted Pyongyang and Kim Jong-il reciprocated. Both Putin and Kim Jong-il initially harbored high hopes for their newly restored relationship. Putin hoped to regain lost influence on Korean affairs by re-establishing ties with Pyongyang. He also wanted to use joint economic projects to develop the Russian Far East and in doing so, assert Russia's position as a major power in Northeast Asia. He was not, however, willing to "pay the price." There are two ways to gain influence over recalcitrant North Korea: it can be either bought or enforced. Putin's Russia offered neither unconditional support, nor profuse assistance to North Korea; and it was not ready to use force to subjugate the country. Kim Jong-il harbored unrealistic expectations of Russia as well. He was hopeful that Putin, as in the Soviet era, would readily grant his requests for military items, energy provision, and economic assistance, and provide them gratis. Repeated requests fell on deaf ears, and every time the same response was heard: "cash only!" Moscow and Pyongyang soon lowered their expectations and became realistic. While trying to stay on Pyongyang's good side, Moscow sought to project its image as an objective mediator and to promote multinational economic projects. Pyongyang, on the other hand, looks to Russia mostly as a counterbalance against the USA. __ North Korea's persisting nuclear crisis chilled Moscow–Pyongyang relations. It soon became obvious to Russian leaders that Kim Jong-il continued to be intent on dealing with the USA directly for security guarantee and economic aid, and to treat Russia as a secondary player __ in his survival game. Besides, __North Korea's persisting nuclear crisis and the danger of an armed conflict in the Korean peninsula overshadowed all Moscow–Pyongyang relations. North Korea's nuclear issue has to be resolved first before anything meaningful can be done between the two countries.__ Russia's lack of imagination and irresoluteness has also contributed to the current state of stagnation and inactivity between them. What are the prospects for Moscow–Pyongyang relations? __Barring drastic turns of events, the relationship is likely to remain calm and limited in the near future. US foreign policy and US–DPRK relations hold the key to Russia–DPRK relations. For both Russia and North Korea, the USA is the most important country to be reckoned with.__ By the same token, North Korea has become highly dependent on China in political and economic terms, and Russia will have tough time competing with China. The onset of a mini-Cold War between the USA and Russia may lead to a rekindling of intimate relations between Moscow and Pyongyang, but this scenario is unlikely. What is more likely is a complete immobilization or a sudden death due to serious illness of Kim Jong-il. What impact this eventuality will have on Moscow–Pyongyang relations will be anybody's guess. No matter what happens, Russia will have a long way to go before it is recognized as a major political–economic player in Korea and Northeast Asia.
 * Independently, peaceful US overtures toward Korea is critical to break the deadlock in Russian-DPRK relations and pave the way for a massive expansion of renewed economic ties on the peninsula **
 * Joo, 09 ** – Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan (April 09, Seung-Horris, “Moscow–Pyongyang Relations under Kim Jong-il: High Hopes and Sober Reality”)

__Among the__ energy-exporting __countries that Korea hopes to partner with for energy cooperation, Russia is of great importance.__ In terms of the economic and geographical availability of energy, __Russia appears to be an ideal partner for cooperation.__ The oil fields in eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East are still underdeveloped compared with western Siberia. __Large international oil companies are__ almost __absent__ in those regions __because of__ high Russian mineral taxes and the __Russian government’s insistence that foreign investors be minor partners in energy development projects. However, for Korean energy companies__, which seek to participate both in the upstream and downstream phases of energy development, __those terms could still be acceptable.__ And, from __Russia’s point of view, cooperation with Korea could be attractive because Korean energy companies have structural limitations to becoming major partners .__ Furthermore, __ Russia is time-pressed to bring into production the energy resources located in eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East. While Russia heavily depends on energy exports for its economic growth, energy production from western Siberia is expected to plateau in the near future. Russia needs a significant amount of investment to tap into the energy resources in geographically complex and expensive regions.__ Cooperation with Korea could also diversify its distribution channels away from China. This diversification would make it attractive for Russia to devise a cooperation strategy with Korea.
 * Solves the Russian economy- now is key **
 * Kang 08 **(Seonjou, Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, “Korea’s Pursuit of Energy Security”, [|__http://www.keia.org/Publications/Other/KangFINAL.pdf__])

__If internal war does strike Russia, economic deterioration will be a prime cause __ __. __ From 1989 to the present, the GDP has fallen by 50 percent. In a society where, ten years ago, unemployment scarcely existed, it reached 9.5 percent in 1997 with many economists declaring the true figure to be much higher. Twenty-two percent of Russians live below the official poverty line (earning less than $ 70 a month). Modern Russia can neither collect taxes (it gathers only half the revenue it is due) nor significantly cut spending. Reformers tout privatization as the country's cure-all, but in a land without well-defined property rights or contract law and where subsidies remain a way of life, the prospects for transition to an American-style capitalist economy look remote at best. As the massive devaluation of the ruble and the current political crisis show, Russia's condition is even worse than most analysts feared. If conditions get worse, even the stoic Russian people will soon run out of patience. A future conflict would quickly draw in Russia's military. In the Soviet days civilian rule kept the powerful armed forces in check. But with the Communist Party out of office, what little civilian control remains relies on an exceedingly fragile foundation -- personal friendships between government leaders and military commanders. Meanwhile, the morale of Russian soldiers has fallen to a dangerous low. Drastic cuts in spending mean inadequate pay, housing, and medical care. A new emphasis on domestic missions has created an ideological split between the old and new guard in the military leadership, increasing the risk that disgruntled generals may enter the political fray and feeding the resentment of soldiers who dislike being used as a national police force. Newly enhanced ties between military units and local authorities pose another danger. Soldiers grow ever more dependent on local governments for housing, food, and wages. Draftees serve closer to home, and new laws have increased local control over the armed forces. Were a conflict to emerge between a regional power and Moscow, it is not at all clear which side the military would support. Divining the military's allegiance is crucial, however, since the structure of the Russian Federation makes it virtually certain that regional conflicts will continue to erupt. Russia's 89 republics, krais, and oblasts grow ever more independent in a system that does little to keep them together. As the central government finds itself unable to force its will beyond Moscow (if even that far), power devolves to the periphery __. __ __With the economy collapsing, republics feel less ____ and less incentive to pay taxes to Moscow __ when they receive so little in return. Three-quarters of them already have their own constitutions, nearly all of which make some claim to sovereignty. __ Strong ethnic bonds promoted by shortsighted Soviet policies may motivate non‑Russians to secede from the Federation. Chechnya's successful revolt against Russian control inspired similar movements for autonomy and independence throughout the country. If these rebellions spread and Moscow responds with force, civil war is likely. Should Russia succumb to internal war, the consequences for the United States and Europe will be severe. A major power like Russia __ -- even though in decline --  __ does not suffer civil war quietly or alone. An embattled Russia n Federation might provoke opportunistic attacks from enemies such as China __ __. __ Massive flows of refugees would pour into central and western Europe. __Armed struggles ____ in Russia could easily spill into its neighbors. Damage from the fighting, particularly attacks on nuclear plants, would poison the environment of much of Europe and Asia __. Within Russia, the consequences would be even worse. Just as the sheer brutality of the last Russian civil war laid the basis for the privations of Soviet communism, a second civil war might produce another horrific regime. Most alarming is the real possibility  that __<span style="background: yellow; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-highlight: yellow;">the ____ violent disintegration of Russia could lead to loss of control over its nuclear arsenal. __ No nuclear state has ever fallen victim to civil war, but even without a clear precedent the grim consequences can be foreseen. __ Russia retains __ some 20,000  __ nuclear weapons __  and the raw material for tens of thousands more , __ in scores of sites scattered throughout the country __ __. __ So far, the government has managed to prevent the loss of any weapons or much material __. __ __ If war erupts __ __, __ however , __ Moscow's already weak grip on nuclear sites will slacken, making weapons and supplies available to a wide range of anti-American groups and states. Such dispersal of nuclear weapons represents the greatest physical threat America now faces. And it is hard to think of anything that would increase this threat more than the chaos that would follow a Russian civil war. __ Lack of attention to the threat of civil wars by U.S. policymakers and academics has meant a lack of response and policy options. This does not mean, however, that Washington can or should do nothing at all. As a first measure, American policymakers should work with governments of threatened states to prevent domestic conflict from erupting. Contingency plans for closing the Mexican-American border should be considered. And the possibility of a Mexican civil war raises the issue of American intervention. How and where the United States would enter the fray would of course be determined by circumstances, but it is not premature to give serious thought to the prospect. To guard against a conflict in Saudi Arabia, the United States should lead the effort to reduce Western dependence on Saudi oil. This will require a mixed strategy, including the expansion of U.S. strategic oil reserves (which could be done now, while Saudi oil is cheap and available), locating new suppliers (such as the Central Asian republics), and reviving moribund efforts to find oil alternatives. None of this will be easy, especially in an era of dollar-a-gallon gasoline, but it makes more sense than continuing to rely on an energy source so vulnerable to the ravages of civil war. For __<span style="background: yellow; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-highlight: yellow;">Russia __ , America must reduce the chances that  __ civil __ __<span style="background: yellow; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-highlight: yellow;">conflict __ there __<span style="background: yellow; color: black; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-highlight: yellow;">will unleash nuclear weapons against the U ____ nited S tates. __ ** Trans-Korean pipeline solves the environment and Korean war  ** ** Asakura, 2k  ** – Director of the Mitsubishi Research Insitute in Director of President Eco and Energy Corp (Kengo, 5/15/2000, Oil & Gas Journal, “Trans-Korean gas pipeline could help Asia energy security, environmental problems” l/n) Trans-Korea line pluses Regarding advantages of Trans-Korean Peninsula Pipeline development, there are three aspects to focus on. First, it would contribute to ** energy independence ** and further the establishment of alliances among the countries concerned. As shown in Table 2, each country, including the US, would receive significant benefits. Strengthening a framework of economic mutual dependence through natural gas trade would make a great contribution to building trust and peaceful relations in the region. // Table not shown  // Second, it would offer ** environmental benefits **. Switching from coal to natural gas would make a great contribution to air quality improvements in both northeastern China and North Korea and thus also help resolve the contentious issue of cross-border acid rain. As energy consumption is expected to increase in the future along with economic development of China, it becomes increasingly important to shift from coal to less-polluting fuels such as natural gas, in order to avoid a steadily worsening deterioration of the environment there. Third, it would promote regional integration. The Trans-Korean Peninsula Pipeline could likely help instill an atmosphere amenable to the eventual unification of North and South Korea. And it also con tributes to strengthening the foundation of a stable energy supply from the Tyumen River area to China, Russia, and North Korea. As a result, progress could be made on a regional development plan for the Tyumen River area. It then follows that this project could afford opportunities to help make the greater concept of an "Asian energy community" come true. = Advantage 3 is Regionalism  =
 * A Russian economic collapse will trigger nuclear strikes against the US, provoke a Russo-Sino war, kills the environment, and prolif **
 * David 99 – ** Professor of Political Science at John Hopkins University [Steven R., “Saving America from the Coming Civil Wars,” // Foreign Affairs,  //Jan/Feb, LN]

At the conclusion of the Second World War, the United States established bilateral military alliances in the Asia-Pacific intended to contain Soviet and Chinese communist expansion in the region. __US security strategy now focuses largely on combating terrorism and denying weapons of mass destruction to so-called rogue states. It is a strategy that cannot be implemented with geographic mutual defense treaties formed to address conventional military threats.__ Furthermore, the United States has demonstrated in Afghanistan and Iraq that it is prepared to pursue its global security interests unilaterally, even at the risk of its political relations with traditional alliance partners. __ What happened over Iraq between the __ __<span style="background: lime; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: lime; padding: 0in;">U __ nited __<span style="background: lime; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: lime; padding: 0in;">S __ tates __ and its European allies could equally happen between the __ __<span style="background: lime; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: lime; padding: 0in;">U __ nited __<span style="background: lime; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: lime; padding: 0in;">S __ tates __ and its Asian allies over__ Taiwan or __North Korea with serious consequences for the interests of countries in that region. East Asian powers need to develop a collective security strategy for the region that ** does not rely ** on the __ __<span style="background: lime; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: lime; padding: 0in;">U __ nited __<span style="background: lime; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: lime; padding: 0in;">S __ tates’ __participation.__ Prudence suggests that East Asian countries need to take the opportunity offered by the recently inaugurated East Asian Summit (EAS) to begin the process of developing an East Asian community as the first step toward the realization of an East Asian Union. This will occur only if led by a strong, proactive Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). China is now the world’s second-largest economy, almost two-thirds as large as the United States in terms of domestic purchasing power. In 2005 China overtook Japan to become the world’s third-largest exporter of goods and services. In 2004 it was the third-largest trading partner with ASEAN; the second largest with Japan, Australia, and India; and the largest with the Republic of Korea. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has estimated that in 2004, in purchasing power parity dollar terms, China’s military expenditure was US$161.1 billion, the second highest in the world. The Pentagon has estimated that in 2005 China’s military expenditure was two to three times larger than its official figure of US$29.9 billion. China’s growing economic and military strength along with the United States’ preoccupation with its new security agenda has made some East Asian countries increasingly apprehensive. __Particularly since September 11, bilateral military alliances have become less relevant to US security interests, and the__ __ U __ nited __ S __ tates __will likely reduce its military presence in the East Asian region.__ Parts of Asia believe that Chinese hegemonic aspirations for East Asia could emerge if the United States were to disengage from the region. Fear of China and the possibility that it harbors hegemonic aspirations were among the factors that led to the creation of ASEAN in 1967 and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1993. Engaging China in an East Asian union in the future would ensure it will pay a high price in loss of trade and investment if it acts against the interests of the union’s other members. Prospects for an East Asian Community In December 2005 ASEAN hosted an inaugural East Asian Summit in Kuala Lumpur. The summit involved the 10 ASEAN countries; the ASEAN+3 countries of China, Japan, and South Korea; as well as Australia, New Zealand, and India. The summit declaration of December 14, 2005, described the meeting as a forum for “dialogue on broad strategic, political and economic issues of common interest and concern with the aim of promoting peace, stability and economic prosperity in East Asia.” The declaration also noted that the summit could “play a significant role in community building in this region.” ASEAN would work “in partnership with the other participants of the East Asian Summit,” but ASEAN was to retain leadership, preventing control of East Asian community building by either the ASEAN+3 countries, which China could dominate, or the 16 EAS countries, which some felt could steer the EAS toward what would be an unwelcome “Western” agenda. It remains to be seen whether an East Asian community can emerge under ASEAN leadership. ASEAN is an association: it is not a strong regional institution with common interests and objectives. It reflects the diversity of its membership, which has traditionally preferred an unstructured organization, a consensus approach to decision making, and avoidance of controversial issues or intervention in the affairs of its members. The ASEAN Way under Challenge ASEAN’s ways, however, may be changing. Since the late 1990s ASEAN’s non-intervention principle has come under challenge. In 1997 ASEAN was faced with an Asian economic crisis triggered by currency speculators and in 1997 to 1998 with a regional pollution haze problem caused by illegal land-clearance fires in Indonesia. ASEAN’s ineffectiveness in these crises brought internal scrutiny to bear on ASEAN’s policy of non-intervention in domestic affairs. As a result, since 1999 ASEAN foreign ministers have discussed these and other transnational problems—illegal migration, terrorism, and the drug trade—that call for collective responses. They have also considered allowing ASEAN to oversee electoral and governance processes within member states. In 1999 a number of ASEAN countries defied the long-standing ASEAN position that East Timor was an internal matter for Indonesia and sent peace-keeping forces to the island to help quell the violence instigated there by anti-independence militia backed by Indonesian armed forces. In 2005 ASEAN placed public pressure on the government of Myanmar to allow an ASEAN delegation to visit Myanmar and assess what progress had been made in human rights and democratization. With the aid of the United States and European Union, ASEAN also persuaded Myanmar to relinquish its role as ASEAN chair. ASEAN’s actions in the 1990s suggest increased sensitivity to the negative effects of individual member nations on the organization’s international standing as well as the beginning of openness toward intervention in the domestic affairs of its members. Toward Realization At its December 2005 summit, ASEAN agreed to institute an ASEAN Charter by 2020 to provide what Malaysian Prime Minister Badawi has called a “mini-constitution,” a document that will establish an institutional framework for ASEAN as well as a legal identity recognized by the United Nations. The older members—Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand—want ASEAN to become something more than an association. Institutionally strong and mostly democratic, they might more readily welcome a rules-governed organization similar to the European Union. Others with institutionally weak, authoritarian governments, such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam, are wary of placing their domestic policies under greater international scrutiny and favor the status quo. If the former nations prevail it will augur well for the realization of an East Asian community with the potential to evolve into an East Asian Union. __ An East Asian community __ composed of the 16 EAS participants would represent more than 60 percent of the world’s population and possess a combined GDP greater than the European Union. It __ could provide significantly increased trade benefits to its members, help dampen Sino-Japanese rivalry, ease the present tensions in the region over Japan’s Pacific War, encourage more cooperative attitudes toward the issue of natural resource exploitation in East Asia, promote engagement over containment, and ** prevent domination of the region by any major power ** .__ The determining factor will be ASEAN’s ability to provide the leadership necessary to create a strong, independent East Asian Union.
 * U.S. alliance relationships are unsustainable – Asian powers should develop a regional security strategy that __does not__ rely on the U.S. – solves WMD terrorism, tame China, prevents Sino-Japan conflict, Japan imperialism, solve resource conflicts and stop major power domination **
 * Francis, 06 ** – former Australian Ambassador to Croatia and fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University from 05-06 (Fall 2006, Neil, Harvard International Review, “For an East Asian Union: Rethinking Asia's Cold War Alliances,” [], JMP)

** Regionalism is currently halfhearted – only a __clear sign__ of U.S. withdrawal can motivate __sustainable__ regional security cooperation  ** ** Carpenter and Bandow 4 - *  ** Vice President of Defense and Foreign Studies at the Cato Institute, AND ** Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute **  (  ** Ted Galen Carpenter, 12/2004, The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations With North and South Korea, pg 160-161)DR  <span style="font-size: 8.0pt; letter-spacing: .05pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> The security treaties with the United States and the U.S. troop presence allow the diversion of financial resources to domestic priorities. And relying on the United States for security ** avoids painful debates about what kind of policy those countries need to pursue ** **. ** The U.S. security blanket is entirely too comfortable for Washington’s clients. ** Without a decisive move by the United States  ** to take away that security blanket by a certain date, changes in the security posture of South Korea and Japan will be very slow to occur. Second, the United States should encourage the various nations of East Asia to take greater responsibility for the security and stability of their region. In ** limited and at times hesitant ways ** that process is taking place even without U.S. encouragement. ASEAN has begun to address security issues, most notably taking an interest in the disorders in Indonesia that threatened to spiral out of control in the late 1990s and that continue to pose a problem. Australia assumed a leadership role in helping to resolve the East Timor crisis. It was revealing that Canberra became more proactive after the United States declined to send peacekeeping troops or otherwise become deeply involved in that situation. 37 According to the conventional wisdom that U.S. leadership is imperative lest allies and client states despair and fail to deal with regional security problems, Australia’s actions suggest just the opposite. ** When countries in a region facing a security problem cannot offload that problem onto the United States, they take action to contain a crisis and defend their own interests. **    More recently, Australia has developed a more defined and robust regional strategy. In a June 2003 speech, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer stated that Australia would not necessarily turn to the United Nations before acting in crises that could affect its security. Instead, Canberra was prepared to join— and sometimes even lead— coalitions of the willing to address urgent regional challenges. Downer spoke as Australia prepared to send 2,000 police officers and supporting military personnel to the Solomon Islands, which had experienced such an epidemic of violence and corruption that it verged on being a failed state. Earlier, Prime Minister John Howard had told Australian lawmakers that having failed states in its neighborhood threatened Australia’s interests, because such states could become havens for criminals and political extremists. 38 Perhaps most revealing, the Australian government plans to double its defense spending over the next three years with the intent of becoming a much more serious military player. 39    Third, Washington should indicate to Tokyo that it no longer objects to Japan’s assuming a more active political and military posture in East Asia. Quite the contrary, U.S. officials ought to adopt the position that, as the principal indigenous great power, Japan will be expected to help stabilize East Asia, contribute to the resolution of disputes, and contain disruptive or expansionist threats that might emerge. Washington also should use its diplomatic influence to encourage political and security cooperation between Japan and its neighbors, but U.S. policymakers must not let East Asian apprehension about a more assertive Japan dictate American policy and keep the United States in its role as regional policeman. It is reasonable to explore with Tokyo avenues of cooperation in those areas where there is a sufficient convergence of interests. That cooperation should not, however, take the form of a new alliance. Proposals to reform and strengthen the alliance are unwise. 40 They will perpetuate Japan’s unhealthy dependence on the United States even as they arouse China’s suspicions of a U.S.–Japanese attempt to contain the People’s Republic. An ongoing security dialogue and occasional joint military exercises would be more appropriate than a formal alliance for East Asia’s security needs in the twenty-first century. Elaborate, formal treaty commitments are a bad idea in general. They are excessively rigid and can lock the United States into commitments that may make sense under one set of conditions but become ill-advised or even counterproductive when conditions change. Beyond that general objection, a U.S.–Japanese alliance would be likely to create special problems in the future. Such an alliance would provide tangible evidence to those in the People’s Republic who contend that Washington is intent on adopting a containment policy directed against China. 41 The United States should retain the ability to work with Japan and other powers if Beijing’s ambitions threaten to lead to Chinese dominance of the region, but Washington must be wary of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. An informal security relationship with Japan would preserve the flexibility to block China’s hegemony, if that danger emerges, without needlessly antagonizing Beijing. ** America still can have a potent power projection capability with a reduced military presence based in Guam and other U.S. territories in the central and west-central Pacific. **

Korea’s Option of Multilateral Security Cooperation in Northeast Asia The idea of multilateral security cooperation in Northeast Asia is not a recent one. __Since__ 19 __88__, __Korea has advocated regional security cooperation, and in__ 19 __94__ , __Korea officially proposed the Northeast Asia Security Dialogue__ (NEASED) __at the ASEAN Regional Forum__ (ARF). Serious discussion of multilateral security cooperation in Northeast Asia started in 2005 during the Six Party Talks to resolve the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula. In fact, the Six Party Talks have been an important generator of innovative ideas, and participants in the Six Party Talks have gradually realized the importance of a multilateral security mechanism in Northeast Asia, even if they do not share identical interests in such a mechanism.6 From Korea’s perspective, a semi-regional arrangement like the Six Party Talks produces five main benefits.7 First, a multilateral security arrangement in Northeast Asia composed of the United States, China, Japan, Russia, North Korea, and South Korea will provide insurance to the concerned parties that the agreements struck at the Six Party Talks will not be violated by the participants. Cheating and lack of trust are among the fundamental problems in solving the Korean nuclear crisis, and a multilateral binding of agreements can help solve the problems by increasing transparency and the transaction costs of violating the agreements. Second, __a multilateral security arrangement in Northeast Asia is fundamentally a global security arrangement, as it includes all the global powers except the__ __ E __ uropean __ U __ nion. The United States and China unofficially form the Group of Two (G2), Japan is an economic superpower, and Russia used to be the leader of the Eastern bloc. __The high concentration of superpowers in Northeast Asia poses a threat to Korea because ** an outbreak of great-power conflict in the region will definitely devastate Korea, if not the world. ** Therefore, ** Korea has reason to promote a multilateral security mechanism ** that increases transparency among global powers and functions as a confidence-building measure.__ Third, __voluntary or involuntary betrayal by the__ __ U __ nited __ S __ tates __has preoccupied many Koreans and security experts.__ Some Koreans felt betrayed when the United States agreed to the division of the Korean peninsula. The Park Chung-hee government felt abandoned when the United States withdrew a significant portion of U.S. soldiers from Korea, and was taken aback by rapprochement between the United States and China. Many Koreans got upset when the United States supported the authoritarian Korean government and kept silent during the Kwangju massacre in 1980. They again felt betrayed when it was rumored that the Clinton administration planned air strikes against North Korea without informing South Korea. And they were upset with the unilateral foreign policy stance of the George W. Bush administration, including its decision to pull rthe second infantry division out of Korea. __ A multilateral security arrangement in Northeast Asia will mitigate the security concern of Korea when the __ __<span style="background: lime; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: lime; padding: 0in;">U __ nited __<span style="background: lime; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: lime; padding: 0in;">S __ tates __either voluntarily or involuntarily defects from its commitment to Korea. __ Fourth, __ multilateral security cooperation in Northeast Asia is necessary to ** establish a peace system on the Korean peninsula ** and ultimately unify Korea.__ Many Korean people doubt that the major powers, including the United States, want the unification of the Korean peninsula. __Korea wants to deal with these powers transparently through a multilateral security cooperation mechanism.__ Fifth, seeing the latest global financial crisis and the rise of China, many Koreans recognize the need to adjust Korea’s external strategy to the changing geoeconomic world. __Making exclusive ties with the__ __ U __ nited __ S __ tates __may be a high-risk investment in a past hegemon__, while exclusive ties with China would be a high-risk investment in an uncertain future. __In this transitional period for geoeconomics, multilateral security cooperation is an attractive partial exit option for Korea.__ __A multilateral security mechanism in Northeast Asia appeals to Korea, so ** if voice and loyalty in the U.S.-Korea relationship do not reveal positive correlations, then Korea will pay more attention to multilateral regional options. **__ Moreover, ** __ if the U.S. capability and credibility in delivering its security promises to alliance partners are questioned, there will be fewer veto powers in Korean politics against a multilateral security mechanism in Northeast Asia __ **__, particularly when such an option still maintains a loose form of the U.S.-Korea alliance.__ Multilateral regionalism solves all impacts. Ryoo, 04 – (Winter 2004, Jae-Kap Ryoo, Kyonggi University, “U.S.-Korea Security Alliance in Transition: A ROK Perspective,” International Journal of Korean Studies, Fall/Winter 2004, Vol. IIX, No. 1 )
 * Specially, withdrawal will reduce Korea’s veto of multilateral security mechanisms – yielding a peace system on the peninsula that prevents great power war **
 * Lee, 09 ** – Seoul National University (December 2009, Geun, “The Nexus between Korea’s Regional Security Options and Domestic Politics,” [|www.cfr.org], JMP)

__A collective security structure may well fall far short of being an ideal security organization, but it may nevertheless be one of the best options because it provides more security and stability than alternative structures__. __ A collective security system provides for better balance against aggressors and more effectively dampens the sources of aggression than other types of security systems .__ 68 __ It strengthens deterrence by reducing the uncertainties of coalition formation. It also facilitates the identification of aggressor states .__ 69 However, an ideal collective security system assumes a very high degree of congruent interests among its members. If successful, __ this collective security arrangement, as comprehensive coalition, would replace victor and vanquished, allies and opponents , with a community of powers that could deter aggression , sanction violations, and sustain shared, peaceful norms .__ 70 Is it possible to establish such a comprehensive collective security arrangement in Northeast Asia? In principle, __the alternative of multilateral security cooperation is indispensable in containing and eventually resolving the myriad of bilateral disputes in a region that can spin out of control.71 A full-inclusive, multilateral economic and security structure can be an important solution for the Northeast Asia-Pacific security community. A security community __ that shares dependable expectations of peaceful change __ will erode zero-sum approaches to regional security by creating habits of cooperation and demonstrating the benefits of participation.__ 72 __ Keeping the desirability of multilateralism and the remaining effectiveness of bilateralism in mind, we can move toward another alternative which combines the benefits of both way and will be discussed below.__

= Advantage 4 is China   =

“First Among Equals,” [], JMP)  It’s the job of military planners to plot future contingencies, which is why the U.S. Joint Forces Command looked ahead in its newly published Joint Operating Environment 2008. __Despite obvious foreign threats, America’s destiny continues to remain largely in its own hands.__ No other country could draft such a report with such a perspective.  The Europeans, constrained by the European Union and their memories of World War II, must cast a wary eye towards Russia and have little military means to influence events much beyond Africa. For all of its pretensions of power, Moscow is economically dependent on Europe and fearful of an expanding China; Russia’s military revival consists of the ability to beat up small neighbors on its border.  Countries like Australia, South Korea and Japan are not without resources, but they are able to influence their regions, no more. Brazil is likely to become the dominant player in South America, but global clout is far away. India and China are emerging powers, but remain well behind Russia and especially the United States. Every other nation would have to start its operational analysis with America, which alone possesses the ability to intervene decisively in every region. The main challenge facing the United States will be becoming more like other nations. That is, __over time other states will grow economically relative to America. That will allow them to improve and expand their militaries.__ Washington will long remain first among equals, the most powerful single global player. But __eventually it will no longer be able to impose its will on any nation in any circumstance.__ That doesn’t mean the United States will be threatened. Other countries won’t be able to defeat America or force it to terms. But the outcomes of ever more international controversies will become less certain. __ Other governments will be more willing in more instances to say no to Washington. Especially China. __ Much will change in the coming years, but as the JOE 2008 observes, The Sino-American relationship represents one of the great strategic question marks of the next twenty-five years. Regardless of the outcome—cooperative or coercive, or both—China will become increasingly important in the considerations and strategic perceptions of joint force commanders. What kind of a power is Beijing likely to become? Chinese policymakers emphasize that they plan a “peaceful rise,” but their ambitions loom large. Argues JOE 2008, while the People’s Republic of China doesn’t “emphasize the future strictly in military terms,” __the Chinese do calculate “that eventually their growing strength will allow them to dominate Asia and the Western Pacific.” More ominously, argues the Joint Forces Command, “The Chinese are working hard to ensure that if there is a military confrontation with the__ __ U __ nited __ S __ tates __sometime in the future, they will be ready.”__ Yet this assessment is far less threatening than it sounds. The PRC is not capable (nor close to being capable) of threatening vital U.S. interests—conquering American territory, threatening our liberties and constitutional system, cutting off U.S. trade with the rest of the world, dominating Eurasia and turning that rich resource base against America. After all, the United States has the world’s most sophisticated and powerful nuclear arsenal; China’s intercontinental delivery capabilities are quite limited. America has eleven carrier groups while Beijing has none. Washington is allied with most every other industrialized state and a gaggle of the PRC’s neighbors. China is surrounded by nations with which it has been at war in recent decades: Russia, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and India. Indeed, today Beijing must concentrate on defending itself. In pointing to the PRC’s investment in submarines, the JOE 2008 acknowledges: “The emphasis on nuclear submarines and an increasingly global Navy in particular, underlines worries that the U.S. Navy possesses the ability to shut down China’s energy imports of oil—80% of which go through the straits of Malacca.” The Chinese government is focused on preventing American intervention against it in its own neighborhood, not on contesting U.S. dominance elsewhere in the world, let alone in North America. __Washington almost certainly will be unable to thwart Beijing, at least at acceptable cost. China needs spend only a fraction of America’s military outlays to develop a deterrent capability__ —nuclear sufficiency to forestall nuclear coercion, submarine and missile forces to sink U.S. carriers, and anti-satellite and cyber-warfare weapons to blind and disrupt American forces. Washington could ill afford to intervene in East Asia against the PRC so equipped. Such a military is well within China’s reach. Notes JOE 2008: “by conservative calculations it is easily possible that by the 2030s China could modernize its military to reach a level of approximately one quarter of current U.S. capabilities without any significant impact on its economy.” Thus, absent the unlikely economic and social collapse of China, __in not too many years Beijing will able to enforce its “no” to America.__ Washington must reconsider its response. U.S. taxpayers already spend as much as everyone else on earth on the military. It’s a needless burden, since promiscuous intervention overseas does not make Americans safer. __ To maintain today’s overwhelming edge over progressively more powerful militaries in China, Russia, India and other states would require disproportionately larger military outlays in the __ __<span style="background: lime; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: lime; padding: 0in;">U __ nited __<span style="background: lime; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: lime; padding: 0in;">S __ tates. ** __ It’s a game Washington cannot win. __ ** A better alternative would be to more carefully delineate vital interests, while treating lesser issues as matters for diplomacy rather than military action. Equally important, __the American government should inform its allies that their security is in the first instance their responsibility.__ Washington should act as an offshore balancer to prevent domination of Eurasia by a hostile hegemon. But __the__ __ U __ nited __ S __ tates __should not attempt to coercively micro-manage regional relations.__ __ Stepping back today would ** reduce pressure on Beijing to engage in a sustained arms buildup to limit U.S. intervention ** in the future. If the PRC nevertheless moved forward, its neighbors could take note and respond accordingly. Encouraging China to keep its rise peaceful is in everyone’s interest.__ Despite the many challenges facing U.S. policy, America retains an extraordinarily advantageous position in today’s global order. __ Eventually, the __ __<span style="background: lime; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: lime; padding: 0in;">U __ nited __<span style="background: lime; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-highlight: lime; padding: 0in;">S __ tates __ is likely to fall to merely first among many—the globe’s leading state, but no longer the hyper- or unipower, as America has been called. ** The sooner Washington begins preparing for this new role, the smoother will be the transition. **__
 * The plan eases the transition to a more multipolar world – trying to cling to the status quo makes hegemonic decline and conflict with China inevitable **
 * Bandow, 09 ** – Fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance and Cato Institute and former Special Assistant to Reagan (1/12/09, Doug,

NO NORMAL DIPLOMACY The U.S. finds itself in an unenviable situation: one in which it has no military options, yet normal diplomacy is futile. Diplomacy of the sort being pressed upon the U.S. by South Korea amounts to paying North Koreans for acting temporarily less scary until the next occasion for extortion. I have argued that the only way to solve the problem is to transcend it: to think not like a diplomat, who is paid to manage, but like a statesman, who is paid to transform basic circumstances. I proposed last October that the major powers — the U.S., Japan, Russia, and China — unite to condition aid to North Korea in such a way as ultimately to undermine North Korean sovereignty. This proposal stood at least a chance of getting at the real source of the problem, which is the nature of the North Korean regime; and it could provide benefits to all the major powers that they could not otherwise achieve for themselves. I also acknowledged its drawbacks: that North Korea would not easily allow itself to be managed into oblivion and might lash out (which might happen anyway); and that the degree of cooperation we required, especially from China, might not be forthcoming. China has in fact proved recalcitrant, but not irremediably so. Indeed, __the Chinese__ seem to appreciate the gravity of the present situation, and __may still be prepared to cooperate with the U.S. if we persist in our efforts.__ The reason is that the Chinese may ultimately put their own national interest above habit. The key Chinese interest is that Korea not be nuclearized, because that presupposes a nuclear Japan. China also prefers, however, for perfectly understandable Realpolitik reasons, that Korea not be unified. China has been a free rider on U.S. policy and power for years to achieve both of these interests, and has never been forced to choose between the two. Now that choice is looming: China's reliance on U.S. policy to prevent the nuclearization of the Korean peninsula is proving ill-founded. Meanwhile, as a result of North Korean proliferation, the U.S. has an interest in bringing about a unified non-nuclear Korea in which some redefined U.S. military presence underwrites the peninsula's non-nuclear status. If forced to choose between a) a nuclear North Korea and b) a unified Korea under Seoul's aegis whose non-nuclear status is underwritten by the U.S., China would be slightly crazy not to choose the latter. But it will not so choose until the choice becomes inevitable. A secondary Chinese interest, often cited, is Beijing's fear of chaos on its border. But unless one assumes that North Korea can be reformed successfully, a proposition for which there is no evidence, waiting will only make things worse from the Chinese perspective. The more time the North Korean regime has both to fail and to build nuclear weapons, the more likely its eventual collapse will be maximally calamitous. China's policy today amounts to propping up an influence-resistant and disaster-prone regime — seething with refugees ready to pour across the Chinese border by the hundreds of thousands. Concert with the U.S., Japan, and Russia, on the other hand, would give China far more influence over what may happen in North Korea, and help to manage it. If the Chinese leadership sees its choices for what they really are, why would it choose a course of minimal influence and maximum ultimate peril? SENDING OUT FOR CHINESE And so we come to thoughts the administration may or may not have allowed itself to think, about how the U.S. can achieve the cooperation it needs to solve the North Korean problem. In other words, how can we bring other powers, particularly China, to the point of serious decisions that will lead them to join with the United States? Charles Krauthammer recently suggested using the "Japan card" for this purpose — in other words, telling the Chinese that their failure to help us isolate North Korea would make the U.S. receptive to Japanese nuclear-weapons development. The U.S. need not say a word to Beijing about this, however; the Chinese understand the stakes better than we do. Besides, we have a far more dramatic option — the explanation of which requires a brief preface. __It made sense for the U.S. to risk war on the Korean peninsula between__ 19 __53 and the end of the Cold War__, for Korea was bound up in a larger struggle. We could not opt out of any major theater in that struggle without the risk of losing all. But __it no longer makes sense to run such risks.__ What larger stakes since 1991 have justified the costs and dangers of keeping 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, the overburdening of the U.S.-South Korean relationship, and the tensions caused to the U.S.-Japanese alliance? None that is readily apparent in the cold light of U.S. interests. __The division of Korea puts U.S. interests at risk more than it does those of any other major regional power__ (we have troops there; we — not China or Russia or Japan — face directly a nuclearizing adversary), and for the sake of the lowest stakes. __ Think about what the U.S. might suffer if war broke out in Korea __, and about what we would gain from its not breaking out. We would suffer thousands of dead GIs, the probable ascription of responsibility for the razing of Seoul (and maybe Tokyo), and __maybe ** accidental conflict with China. ** What do we gain from the status quo? ** Perpetual diplomatic heartburn with Japan  ** and others__, and the privilege of fruitlessly negotiating with Pyongyang. In short, the end of the Cold War dramatically changed the balance of risks and rewards in U.S. Korea policy, and should have led us to adjust our stance. But U.S. policymakers conducted business as usual, only responding to North Korean threats and never themselves taking the lead to solve the underlying problem. __We should have managed the transition to South Korea's responsibility for its own security__, while at the same time joining with other regional powers to limit North Korea's trouble-making potential. Had we started early enough, before North Korea had nukes, we would have had far more robust military options to enforce a muscular diplomacy than we do today. Better late than never, however; we still need to rethink the Korea problem down to its roots. When we do, we immediately see our other option: ** __ Announce our intention to withdraw all U.S. military forces from Korea. Lots of South Koreans would be delighted. More important, such an announcement would force China and the other parties to the problem to face reality. __ ** __South Koreans, having to defend themselves, will either see the illusions of their own policy or suffer the consequences of maintaining it.__ But it's their country, and, frankly, their potential misfortune no longer matters to us as much as it did during the Cold War. __If North Korea becomes a six-or-more-weapon nuclear power, we will be far away, ** with deterrence reasonably intact, ** and with a decent if imperfect ability to prevent North Korea from exporting fissile materials and missiles.__ China, however, cannot relocate. __ If we profess an intention to leave, Beijing will then have to choose between a nuclear North Korea and Japan __ (and maybe South Korea, too) __on its doorstep, or joining with the U.S. and others to manage the containment, and ultimately the withering away, of the North Korean state. ** Until it is faced with such a choice, Beijing will temporize and try to fob off the problem on Washington, hoping as before to free-ride on us ** for an outcome that benefits China more than it benefits the U.S. That's reality, and the Chinese need to face it. We can help them do so.__
 * Withdrawal solves accidental war with China, stops friction with Japan and yields a nuclear free peninsula **
 * Garfinkle, 03 ** – taught American foreign policy and Middle East politics at the University of Pennsylvania and is editor of The National Interest (1/27/03, Adam, National Review, “Checking Kim,” [], JMP)

Possible Futures of a Confrontation between China, Taiwan and the United States of America ”, []]
 * Conflict with China will escalate to global nuclear war **
 * Hunkovic, 09 – **American Military University [Lee J, 2009, “The Chinese-Taiwanese Conflict

__ A war between China, Taiwan and the United States has the potential ** to escalate into a nuclear conflict and a third world war ** __, therefore, __many countries__ other than the primary actors __could be affected by such a conflict, including Japan, both Koreas, Russia, Australia, India and Great__ __Britain, if they were drawn into the war, as well as all other countries in the world that participate in the global economy, in which the U__nited __S__tates __and China are the__ two __most dominant__ members. __ If China were __ able __ to __ successfully __ annex Taiwan __, __the possibility exists that they could then plan to attack Japan and begin a policy of aggressive expansionism__ in East and Southeast Asia, as well as the Pacific and even into India, __which could in__ __turn create an international standoff and deployment of military forces to contain the threat__. In any case, __ if China and the U __ nited __ S __ tates engage __ in a full-scale conflict, there are few countries in the world that will not be __ economically and/or militarily __ affected __ by it. However, China, Taiwan and United States are the primary actors in this scenario, whose actions will determine its eventual outcome, therefore, other countries will not be considered in this study.

** Bandow, 09  ** – senior fellow at the Cato Institute and former special assistant to Reagan (2/24/09, Doug, “Balancing Beijing,” EBSCO, JMP) So Washington should exhibit humility about its ability to force change. As Secretary Clinton observed, “We have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can’t interfere” with cooperation on other issues. Ultimately a positive relationship with Beijing is more likely to lead to a more liberal China. The result is not foreordained, but as always engagement offers the better bet. The United States shouldn’t hesitate to promote its ideals, but it must recognize its limits in enforcing them. Washington also should look on benignly as the PRC expands its commercial and diplomatic ties around the world. Even a sober military analyst like Tom Ricks of the Washington Post recently warned: “I am not sure what China is up to in Africa. But I have the nagging thought that we will figure it out in 15 years and be sorry.” Yet the United States and Soviet Union spent most of the cold war sparring for influence in the Third World to little meaningful effect. Money was spent and lives were lost, but in the end it didn’t much matter who was numero uno in Vientiane, Kinshasa, Luanda or Managua. It matters even less today. As my Cato colleague Ben Friedman puts it, “There is little that China can do in Africa to make it stronger or to damage U.S. interests.” If Beijing wishes to invest heavily in places with little geopolitical heft, why should the United States object? Even more important, Washington needs to back away from any kind of arms race with the PRC. The latest Pentagon Joint Operating Environment 2008 ominously declared that while Beijing doesn’t “emphasize the future strictly in military terms,” the Chinese do calculate “that eventually their growing strength will allow them to dominate Asia and the Western Pacific.” The annual Pentagon assessment of PRC military spending appears to show Beijing’s conscious effort to build a force capable of deterring American intervention against China in East Asia. As a result, Aaron Friedberg, until recently Vice President Cheney’s chief foreign-policy adviser, worries that the balance of power “is beginning to shift in way that, under the wrong set of circumstances, could ** increase the risk of miscalculation and conflict ** .” Yet the question is, what balance of power? Beijing poses no threat to America’s homeland or even Pacific possessions and will not do so for decades, if ever. The United States possesses a far stronger military to start—eleven carrier groups to none, for instance—spends five or more times as much as the PRC on defense (excluding the costs of Afghanistan and Iraq) and is allied with most important industrial states in Asia and Europe. There is no Chinese threat or potential threat to America. At issue is relative influence in East Asia and the security of Washington’s friends in that region. Yet ** the PRC so far has been assertive rather than aggressive and those nations  **, particularly Japan and South Korea, could do much more individually and collectively for regional security. Washington should not hesitate to sell arms to friendly states, including Taiwan, despite Chinese protests, but should leave them with responsibility for their own defense. Of course, a policy of continued restraint by Beijing will make it far easier for the United States to back away. In any case, there is little that Washington can do, at least at acceptable cost, to maintain U.S. dominance along China’s borders, as the PRC —whose economy already ranks number two or three, depending on the measure, in the world—continues to grow. Washington would have to devote an ever larger amount of resources to the military, in the midst of economic crisis, to ensure its ability to overcome far more limited Chinese capabilities. Even then, Beijing is unlikely to forever accept U.S. hegemony. ** Confrontation if not conflict would be likely ** **. **   The better option would be to** temper America’s geopolitical pretensions ** and accept a more influential PRC in its own region. China will grow in power, irrespective of Washington’s wishes. America’s chief objective should be to ensure that this rise is peaceful, as Beijing has promised. U.S.-China diplomatic relations passed the thirty-year mark last fall. The relationship has survived great challenges and is likely to face even greater ones in the future. But despite inevitable differences between the two nations, much depends upon strengthening their ties. The twenty-first century will turn out far differently—and positively—if America and the PRC prove willing to accommodate each other’s economic and geopolitical ambitions.
 * Motivating Beijing to take a greater regional role ensures its peaceful rise **


 * Realism is true and inevitable – a shift away collapses into chaos. **


 * __ Mearsheimer __ ** 200** __ 1 __ ** [professor of political science at University of Chicago, // The Tragedy of Great Power Politics //, pg. 361]

__The optimists' claim that security competition and war among the great powers has been burned out of the system is wrong.__ In fact, __ all of the major states around the globe still care deeply about the balance of power and are destined to compete for power among themselves for the foreseeable future __. Consequently, __ realism will offer the most powerful explanations __ __ of international politics over the next century __, and this will be true even if the debates among academic and policy elites are dominated by non-realist theories. In short, __the real world remains a realist world. States still fear each other and seek to gain power at each other's expense, because international anarchy-the driving force behind greatpower behavior-did not change with the end of the Cold War, and there are few signs that such change is likely any time soon.__ States remain the principal actors in world politics and there is still no night watchman standing above them. For sure, the collapse of the Soviet Union caused a major shift in the global distribution of power. But it did not give rise to a change in the anarchic structure of the system, and without that kind of profound change, there is no reason to expect the great powers to behave much differently in the new century than they did in previous centuries. Indeed, __considerable evidence from the 1990s indicates that power politics has not disappeared__ from Europe and Northeast Asia, the regions in which there are two or more great powers, as well as possible great powers such as Germany and Japan. There is no question, however, that the competition for power over the past decade has been low-key. Still, __ there is potential for intense security competition among the great powers that might lead to a major war. __ Probably __the best evidence of that possibility is the fact that the United States maintains about one hundred thousand troops each in Europe and in Northeast Asia for the explicit purpose of keeping the major states in each region at peace.__