Selling Security at the Price of $250 Billion

After a half round of friendly golf play and luxurious dinner in Ginza earlier this week, Japanese media was focusing on its effect in the big game between United States and China. It was proved that the effort of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to include US President Donald Trump in the team of maximum pressure on North Korea simply failed. Trump gave up his strong position against the North in exchange for drawing an economic deal amounting $250 billion dollars from China.

In the joint press conference, without accepting any question, with Chinese President Xi Jinping after their meeting in Beijing on Thursday, Trump appealed their agreement on putting economic pressure to let North Korea abandon its nuclear and missile development. There were no words of maximum pressure as he used on the issue in Japan. “All responsible nations must join together to stop arming and financing and even trading with the murderous North Korean regime,” said Trump.

Xi was standing like stonewall, taking no single step forward to put further pressure on the North. “The two sides will continue to fully and strictly implement UN Security Council resolutions. At the same time, the two sides commit to working toward a solution through dialogue and negotiation,” Xi spoke. He required United States to wait until China’s economic sanction would show its effect on economy of North Korea.

The biggest target for Trump was not the deal on defiant regime in Korean Peninsula, but economic deal that could persuade US people who had been frustrated with economic advance of China. Xi pledged $43 billion for development of natural gas in Alaska and $37 billion for purchasing aircrafts from Boeing. Trump could save his face in front of his delegation that included top managers of major US businesses such as General Electric or Qualcomm.

In short, China was successful in keeping momentum of dialogue-based solution on North Korean issue by paying a certain amount of money paralleled with US trade deficit to China. US sold its status of the indispensable leader for international security in Northeast Asia. It is likely that North Korea is going to rely more on China for the survival of its despotic regime than ever.

Big difference between those two giants was internal political stability. Xi was successful in establishing firm administration in the party congress earlier this month. Trump is still in a quagmire of accusation over legitimacy of his administration. As Xi insisted that Pacific Ocean had enough space for both China and US, it cannot be denied that US will one day lose a half of the Ocean.