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East Asia Diary: Of a Grasshopper Challenging a Cock and Other Matters

September 2004 saw Jiang Zemin taking what is apparently his last bow on the stage of Chinese politics. September will, however, also be remembered for Taiwanese Premier Yu Shyi-kun's "balance of terror" talk threatening attack on Shanghai and the Three Gorges Dam in China if Taiwan were attacked. Yu was also trying to justify a controversial 15-year arms purchase plan from the US costing Taiwan over US$18 billion. While the opposition Guomindang (KMT) chairman cited a Taiwanese saying when comparing Yu's threats of mutual destruction to a "grasshopper challenging a cock", in China itself, Hu Jintao took the bait using his first speech at the meeting of China's new CMC to tell the PLA to prepare "for a military struggle".

However, going by the happenings in the region this month the Chinese cock appears to have more than one challenger and more than a few headaches.

The revelations in early September, that South Korean scientists had conducted secret nuclear tests in the early 1980s and in 2000 followed by the North Korean declaration later in the month that it had weaponized the fuel from 8,000 reprocessed spent fuel rods, have queered the pitch considerably in the Northeast Asian strategic environment.

One, the hypocrisy of the US when dealing with issues nuclear has been exposed. Whereas it went to war against Iraq on the flimsiest of WMD evidence, continues to excoriate the Iranians and takes a non-compromising attitude toward the North Koreans, its official response to the South Korean affair has been almost casual and dismissive.

Two, the official Japanese response has also been muted, despite indications that it has urged the US itself to act strongly. This is because of two reasons. First, the Japanese need to keep the focus on North Korea whose actions it uses in part, to justify its "normalization" drive toward a more active role in international affairs - politically as well as militarily. Second, acknowledging South Korean nuclear capability would leave Japan with a question of 'face' or 'prestige' in a region where it has a history of being a dominant power. Third, like the issue of troop dispatch to Iraq and the subsequent kidnapping of its civilians that divided public opinion in Japan over its role and status in world affairs, the Korean exposes too will only sharpen the domestic debate over its own recessed option position.

Three, the South Korean revelations clearly show the limits to which countries like it or Japan may be willing to rely on the US's protective umbrella. The South Korean nuclear programme has roots that go back to the early 1970s, when the military dictator, Park Chung-Hee, gave it the go-ahead following American defeat in Vietnam and Washington's rapprochement with China. It was only after a US pledge to stop troop withdrawals from South Korea that the programme was stopped in 1975. But given the equally strong opposition within South Korea to any strong handed tactics towards North Korea, it remains a bit of a puzzle why the South Koreans would want to develop a nuclear option. The explanation might in part have to do with the fact that democratic South Korea still has a deeply conservative military, strongly suspicious of the intentions of its neighbours. Leaving aside North Korea, there are outstanding disputes with Japan over the Dokdo islands as well as with the Chinese over historical claims to the ancient kingdom, Koguryo, that ruled over much of present-day North Korea and Manchuria. Both disputes had surfaced again over the last several months.

Four, for China the turn of events clearly threw a spanner in the works as far as organizing the six-party talks went. Apart from saying that it was "concerned" over the news from South Korea, China's reaction too, was rather low-key reflecting perhaps its primary aims - in the immediate term, of preventing the Japanese from using North Korea as justification for a "normal" military role; and over the longer term of preventing a collapse of North Korea that would lead to a takeover by the South and by implication American presence on Chinese borders.

Paradoxically, each of the major players in the region - the US, China and Japan - have different reasons for muted responses to the South Korean affair. In the process, what is being brushed under the carpet is that after several years of pillorying India and Pakistan for going nuclear, Northeast Asia, under the 'supervision' of two of the strongest votaries for currently existing nuclear regimes is probably becoming a bigger nuclear headache for the world.

And finally, let no one underestimate what the Taiwanese "grasshopper" is capable of.