If China fails to intervene in North Korea, US will take action: Blinken
www.scmp.com
Top American diplomat warns that Beijing must help denuclearise Pyongyang or else Washington will bolster its defence alliances with Seoul and Tokyo.

America’s top diplomat on Friday said the US would take action if China declined to intervene in the military deployment of North Korea, a hermit state and Beijing ally the US has long accused of playing a destabilising role in East Asia.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he has told his Chinese counterparts that Washington wants Beijing’s help in handling the North Korean “nuclear programme” and denuclearising the Korean peninsula. He said the US would bolster its defence alliances with Japan and South Korea if China refrained from intervening.

Directing his remarks at China during a fireside chat at the Aspen Security Forum in the US state of Colorado, Blinken said: “We believe that you have unique influence and we hope that you’ll use it to get better cooperation from North Korea.

“But if you can’t or if you won’t, then we’re going to have to continue to take steps that aren’t directed at China but that China probably won’t like because it goes to strengthening and shoring up not only our own defences but also those of South Korea and Japan and a deepening of the work that all three of us are doing together.”

Beijing has criticised Washington’s defence alliances in East Asia, viewing them as efforts to monitor or contain China’s military. Seoul and Tokyo resent Pyongyang’s military tests, which sometimes take place near their airspace.

North Korea has conducted “one missile launch after another”, Blinken said. On July 12, Pyongyang carried out a second flight test of its Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile.

China, North Korea’s Communist neighbour, has offered it fuel and food aid in the past and brokered international dialogue on the country’s militarisation.

Blinken’s comments followed the disappearance on Tuesday of Private Travis King, an American soldier who ran into North Korea during a civilian tour near the border with South Korea.

The secretary of state said he had no updates on King’s whereabouts but that “there are certainly concerns” he might be subjected to torture in North Korea.

The US is now working to anchor a declining Sino-American relationship, Blinken said on Friday. He, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and President Joe Biden’s special climate envoy John Kerry have all visited China within the past two months.

“It was important for us to put some stability back into this relationship, to put a floor under it, to make sure that the competition we’re clearly in does not veer into conflict, and that starts with engagement,” the diplomat said.

Blinken said China could help stem production of the illegal drug fentanyl that reaches the US through Mexico, control global climate change, and allow for the release of American detainees.

“If we weren’t engaged, we would be rightfully tagged with being irresponsible,” he said.

But challenges persist, and Blinken said on Friday the US had started a formal investigation into reports of Chinese hacking into US government emails.

  • TWeaKEnglish
    1•1 year ago

    f you don’t consider SK a vassal what’s your take on the EU considering itself a vassal of america?

    The EU does not consider itself a vassal, a politically biased think tank presumed that it will act like one in a blog post online. The TL;DR of which is:

    However, it is far from clear that any of this debate will translate into policy measures that will affect US foreign economic policy. Many administration officials, in various author interviews since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, have expressed the view that Europeans may whine and complain, but that their increasing security dependence on the US means that they will mostly accept economic policies framed as part of America’s global security role. This is the essence of vassalisation.

    Vassalisation - the process of becomming a vassal.

    So it isn’t even the ECFR considering the EU a vassal, just the author’s interpretation that it might lead towards the EU becomming a vassal. It isn’t one yet, they are warning that it might become one.

    Also, in terms of real world vassal states and their comparison to South Korea and the EU, your statements are clearly hyperbolic and exaggerated. You are attempting to use emotionally charged language to argue, rather than actual insight pointing towards objective truth.

    • Move to lemm.eeEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Mate can you reply to me once please and not multiple times? I’m not responding to multiple comments with redundant shit like a stuck record, put it all in one place, if you want respectful responses to continue then have some respect and don’t do this multiple reply shit. It’s a massive waste of time.

      • TWeaKEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        This was my first reply, and the one with the most content in it. You replied to them newest first. The second was a criticism of your argument that you were dogmatic, when I don’t think you are. The third was on a completely different point that we agreed on. I made each of these as I went down the entire comment thread, not intentionally only replying to you, but just engaging with the conversation.

        In any case, I’ve taken in your points and will continue to read through the post you’ve linked later. I still don’t agree with your take on it (the EU is not a vassal, the article does not claim that but rather it warns of that happening), however I appreciate the arguments you’ve made.