Angry Koreas,nervous world

The latest crisis is,however,a more serious one than those triggered by North Koreas nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. The South avoided levelling instantaneous allegations at the communist North when the Cheonan went down in the Yellow Sea near disputed territorial waters in March but conducted a systematic probe into the causes of the disaster that cost 46 South Korean sailors lives. A joint investigation by the naval experts of South Korea,the US,Canada,Britain,Sweden and Australia concluded after a month-long inquiry that the Cheonan was torpedoed by a North Korean submarine.

Predictably,all hell broke loose after the findings were released. South Koreas conservative President Lee Myung-bak was anyway predisposed to taking a tough anti-North position that reversed the conciliatory turns of his liberal predecessors,Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. Lee had already terminated economic aid to the impoverished and famine-infested North and insisted that it would only resume if the heavily armed dictatorship of Kim Jong-il would denuclearise. The Cheonans splitting into two was the last straw on the camels back.

Lee addressed the South Korean public by reclassifying the North as principal enemy. Kim,who comes from a tradition of vituperative Marxist speech,hit back through a mouthpiece that there is no need to show any mercy or patience for such confrontation maniacs and that wartime law will now guide dealings with the South. The frequent mention of nuclear strikes and merciless usage of nuclear weapons in North Korean argot raises prospects of classic inter-state nuclear war (South Korea is shielded by a US nuke umbrella) that were assumed to have receded once the Cold War ended.

That the South-North faceoff is truly a global conflict with wider ramifications beyond the Korean peninsula came home yet again when Pyongyang slammed Seoul for warmongering with the US and Japan on its back. The fratricidal Korean confrontation,which has outlived the Cold War,is a victim of great power security manoeuvres that continue to keep East Asian politics volatile. The basic line-up of military alliances that frames the animosity on the peninsula pits the US,Japan and South Korea on one side and China and North Korea on the other. Washington has arrogated to itself the pivotal role of resident outside power in the region with the strategic goal of containing the military rise of China,especially in the naval sphere.

Without sounding reductionist about the mistrust and hard feelings between the two Koreas themselves,one can argue from a broader perspective that as long as the US and China compete against each other for ascendancy in East Asia,the pot will keep boiling. Washington claims that it is the ultimate strategic balancer in the region and that its huge military presence in South Korea and Japan,and state-of-the-art arms supplies to Taiwan,are necessary to protect its allies and their free market democracies.

But viewed from Beijing,the US is hemming in China on all sides (including from Southeast Asian bastions like Thailand and the Philippines) and hence the need to have North Korea as a problematic but indispensable instrument to project power against American domination. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarked hopefully in Beijing this week that we expect to be working together with China in responding to North Koreas provocative action,but the strategic realities have not altered to translate into genuine Sino-US cooperation.

Japans new government did refer in its initial months about rethinking six decades of overly pro-US foreign policies,and of stretching out a hand of partnership with China,but Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has since abandoned this shift. By reneging on his electoral promise to relocate the US military base from Okinawa,Hatoyama bowed to the logic of the entrenched array of alliance systems in East Asia.

He justified his about turn on Okinawa earlier this month by considering the current situation in the Korean peninsula and in Asia. The reference to Asia is a thinly disguised code for rapidly expanding Chinese economic and military power and the challenge it poses to rivals.

Notwithstanding the bluster from Seoul and Pyongyang,few indicators suggest all out war between the two Koreas. The US and China do lock horns for supremacy but wish to avoid being dragged into actual fisticuffs like in the 1950-53 war. Washington has already softened the South by promising to channel the latters rage into fresh UN Security Council sanctions on the North,a long-winded approach that could cool tempers in weeks to come. Stock markets will also likely rally as they absorb another ugly incident and its bitter aftermath. The Koreas have made an art out of living dangerously as neighbours and will keep doing so unless there is drastic regime change in the North and larger reconfiguration of the US-China equation.

The author is associate professor of world politics at the OP Jindal Global University