US-China Dialogue Over Fall of Norks?

As noted by The Economist, the eventual fall of North Korea is coming, and it's time to start planning.

If China is wrong, however, and a meltdown does occur, the risks are enormous. North Korea’s GDP per head is about 6% that of South Korea’s (see chart), which is far lower than East Germany’s was compared with West Germany when the Berlin Wall collapsed. This means that unifying the two countries could be treacherous, with costs that the South Korean central bank has put as high as $900 billion over four decades. There could be arguments over which special forces—China’s or America’s—would secure the north’s nuclear weapons. And if a desperate North Korea started shooting missiles at its enemies in the region, how would America and China react?

It is for reasons like this that people are beginning to believe that it would be good for the countries involved to have talks at some level—albeit secret ones. Planning in advance should help to avoid potentially catastrophic misunderstandings. The outside world’s knowledge of the regime in Pyongyang is minimal and China may not want to offend an old ally. But sooner or later, Mr Kim will go, and that will mark a moment of immense tension in a country where his personality cult is about the only thing the people have left. No one needs a pair of binoculars to see that.

And yet strained ties between the US and China may be getting in the way of that discussion.

Strained ties between the U.S. and Chinese militaries are holding back a “more robust” discussion of how to plan for a possible collapse of the North Korean regime, U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman said.
“We could have a more robust discussion on this subject, without question, if we had mature military-to-military ties,” Huntsman said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Beijing today. “This is one reason why it would be good to have more military-to-military contact.”
Tensions between North and South Korea rose following the March 26 sinking of a South Korean warship and the conclusion by an international panel last month that a North Korean torpedo was to blame. The North, a totalitarian state with an economy less than one-20th the size of the South’s, depends on Chinese political and economic support. China shares a 1,415-kilometer (880 mile) border with North Korea and some of the North’s nuclear facilities are located near the Chinese border.

By: Brant