In contrast to the last, this post will be more serious in nature as it explores the realm of the international political system. I’ll try to make this as accessible as possible (sorry fellow Warwick academics, no IR theory in this *hopefully*).
The recent crisis in the Korean Peninsula no doubt sparked much debate on what the concerned countries will do next. Will Kim let his son play with the missile controls? Will South Korea retaliate if attacked as they said they would but failed to in each instances? Can the US muster enough bond buyers to fund them another show of force? Needless to say, it’s pretty much impossible to guess what will happen and let’s leave that to the politicians and academics.
What I will talk about today is China’s role in all of this. After the shelling of civilians and troops on the South Korean Island, China’s response was pretty muted. What was surprising was its initiative to host a de facto six party talk. However, all it got was an unenthusiastic non-reply from South Korea, Japan and the US. Instead these countries hosted their own meeting and responded in the form of military drills. Protests by China regarding the military drill were futile as USS George Washington starts launching F/A-18s at China’s doorsteps. Shortly after, the Americans started another exercise with the Japanese, its largest since the creation of its alliance.
All of these come to show all that China has quietly worked for in the past two to three decades of subliminal diplomacy to influence its neighbours was pretty much fruitless, albeit on some small countries south of its border (even Vietnam seems to cause a problem to China). While economic coercion as in the case of halting rare earth exports to Japan to release its fisherman arrested near the Diaoyu Islands, seemed plentiful, its soft power is another matter. If soft power is to influence actors to “want what you want” as proposed by Joseph Nye, then the extent of China’s soft power seems questionable in this respect.
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