I think China is getting envious of Russia, which has monopolized recent Olympics games to snatch territory from neighboring members of the international community.
So China warns South Korea and America to stay the heck out of North Korea if things go wrong there:
China declared a "red line" on North Korea on Saturday, saying that China will not permit chaos or war on the Korean peninsula, and that peace can only come through denuclearization. ...
"The Korean peninsula is right on China's doorstep. We have a red line, that is, we will not allow war or instability on the Korean peninsula," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters on the sidelines of China's annual largely rubber-stamp parliament.
Wang called upon all parties to "exercise restraint", adding that "genuine and lasting peace" on the peninsula was only possible with denuclearization.
A red line? They mean a real, actual red line. Not our rhetorical red lines merely meant to put off hard decisions by insisting that there is a trigger for automatic hard decisions. Nobody believes that, any more.
Specifically, China is saying that they--and they alone--reserve the right to move troops into North Korea to restore order if North Korea implodes or to deal with North Korea's nukes.
This total lack of respect for our power has little to do with our actual power, which remains dominant. It has everything to do with our leadership, which in 5 short years has gone from leadership to "leading from behind" to approaching the ideal of just watching others act.
Our leadeship appears to operate on the assumption that everyone thinks like our president does, and so diplomacy is just a way to convince everyone to talk about the win-win agreements we can forge in the 21st century, free from old thinking (and free of George W. Bush, of course) that speaks of conquest and zero-sum games. The problem--even with mullah-run, nuke-seeking Iran--was our failure to reach out:
The problem was Bush's refusal to negotiate. Speak emolliently, send greetings on Muslim holidays and ignore the Green Movement protesters, and Iranian leaders would see that it is in their interest to halt their nuclear weapons program.
Most Americans, conservative as well as liberal, would be delighted if Putin, the Palestinians and Ayatollah Khamenei believed and behaved as we would. They would be pleased to see an enlightened American leader bridge rhetorical differences and reach accommodations that left all sides content and at peace.
That, unhappily, is not the world we live in. Being on the lookout for common ground is sensible. Assuming common ground when none exists is foolish. And often has bad consequences.
But other countries don't see enemies or foes as just friends we haven't made yet. And others will act in ways we don't like to watch:
China's foreign minister on Saturday said his country would vigorously defend its sovereignty, declaring there was "no room for compromise" with Japan over territory or history.
"We will never bully smaller countries yet we will never accept unreasonable demands from smaller countries," Wang Yi told reporters.
"On issues of territory and sovereignty, China's position is firm and clear: We will not take anything that isn't ours, but we will defend every inch of territory that belongs to us."
How long before China's many dashed lines become solid red lines?
There might be a race in North Korea, should that instability take place.
