Summitry takes center stage

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

Opinion

Donald Kirk

Summitry takes center stage

Posted : 2023-09-07 16:35

Updated : 2023-09-07 16:35

By Donald Kirk

History is playing games. Who, as Saigon was falling to the forces of "North" Vietnam in April 1975, would have looked into a crystal ball and seen an American president 50 years later talking with Vietnam's top leaders about aiding their Communist regime?

Biden, as the American-supported "South" Vietnamese were falling to the "North" Vietnamese, was 32, in his first term as a senator from Delaware and not known for a strong position on American involvement in the war. Unlike John Kerry, who also got elected as a senator, then ran for president and served as secretary of state, Biden never served in the armed forces. Student deferments spared him from the military. Kerry, wounded in Vietnam while a lieutenant in the Mobile Riverine Force, was a fiery anti-war zealot after he got out of the Navy.

Biden, accompanied by Kerry, will be in Hanoi on Sunday and Monday. Biden and Vietnam's No. 1 leader, Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the ruling Communist Party for the past 12 years, are likely to agree on a "comprehensive strategic general partnership" ― a term that falls short of an alliance but shows their desire to tighten their friendship while China strengthens its claims on the South China Sea, including oil and natural gas deposits in Vietnamese waters.

The summit in Hanoi, however, may not be the most portentous meeting of top leaders in the next few days. It's tempting to compare the North-South division of the Korean Peninsula with that of Vietnam, but Korea remains unsettled as long as the North's Kim Jong-un brandishes nuclear warheads and long-range missiles while vowing to take over the South. In the very near future, he will likely be meeting Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

They met for the first time four years ago in Vladivostok, reversing the near-rupture in their relations that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of Communist rule. Relations between Moscow and Pyongyang had been strained ever since Russia began demanding payment in hard currency for much-needed commodities, including oil and food, for which Pyongyang had been paying with near-worthless North Korean won while Joseph Stalin and his successors were in power.

This time Putin and Kim will be talking about North Korean assistance in replenishing heavy weaponry and artillery shells for the war in Ukraine. North Korea has already been exporting shells and rockets to Russia. Shipments could increase exponentially as Russia asks North Korea for items that are made far more cheaply in the North than elsewhere, including Russia.

"The Russians can buy rifles and machine guns from North Korea for much less than it costs to make them in Russia," one expert told me. But what can the Russians offer in return? Plenty.

Traffic flows by rail across their narrow 20-kilometer-wide Tumen River frontier, and goods move by boat within the territorial waters of both countries. The Russians can ship oil, coal, food and other products that the North badly needs, including spare parts for old-model MiGs dating from the Soviet era.

China too, figures into the equation. China, Russia and North Korea are all on the same side in the confrontation of power against the U.S. and its Japanese and Korean allies, but there are differences. North Korea would rather not be quite so dependent on China, the source of most of its oil and half its food. By seeing Putin, Kim is telling China's President Xi Jinping he's got other friends and does not always have to follow China's bidding.

Those summits, though, are not the only tete-a-tetes among potentates. South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol has been in Jakarta this week talking to leaders of the nations banded together in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). His message has been simple: don't cooperate with Russia.

And that's not all. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi this weekend is hosting the G20 ― 19 nations plus the European Union. Neither Putin nor Xi will be joining them in New Delhi. Xi is sending Premier Li Qiang while Putin is counting on his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, who stood in for him at last year's G20 on Bali, to defend Russia from demands to stop the war in Ukraine and stop dealing with North Korea. Biden will be seeing Modi before flying to Hanoi.

Modi and Xi saw enough of each other in Johannesburg at the recent gathering of the leaders of BRICS ― Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Modi is not going to persuade Xi to pull his troops from Indian territory in the Himalayas any more than Xi is going to stop claiming Taiwan or the South China Sea. In the game of summitry, there are limits to what all the talking can do.

Donald Kirk (www.donaldkirk.com) writes from Seoul and Washington about the confrontation of forces in Asia.