Good Luck With Trump’s Demand for China to Maintain a Secure Border With North Korea

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”

- Ancient Chinese Strategist Sun Tzu

According to the National Intelligence Council in Washington, what country in the world is expected to decisively overtake the United State’s economic leadership by the 2020s? Or which Asian economic juggernaut has had the most profound impact on this centuries global trade and financial markets? And what nation busses in thousands of workers from North Korea each day to labor in industry and manufacturing? If you said China you were right, specifically as it prioritizes an economic empire first and a military one second.

Economically, Borders Are Made to Be Broken
If it wasn’t so sad, then, it would’ve been funny when President Donald Trump issued an ultimatum to China to maintain a secure border with North Korea, pressing Beijing ahead of his now off-and-on-again meetings with Kim Jong Un aimed at denuclearization. But after decades of preparation, there’s no way China’s about to renege on its grand strategy for global power, a three-continent international and transcontinental infrastructure for economic integration.(1) North Korea, meanwhile, is scheduled to be a major component.

This is especially true as China, Russia, and South Korea continues to expand their Iron Silk Road deep into the heart of North Korea. Having found itself dependent from its near-total isolation, its also more than willing to go on exchanging imports and exports, along with loans and workers. To be sure, not only is China allowed to heavily invest in North Korea’s Kaesong Industrial Complex which employs some 50,000 workers, but it continues to buss across its borders North Korean workers and reservists as well.

Given that Geography guarantees North Korea will emerge as a supply chain node, by linking the best of two worlds-a large Asian land mass with the Pacific Ocean, China has moreover invested into railway links and port cities. Several delegations between the two nations have even studied and proposed tourist areas, like the Wonsan reserve featuring Yellow Sea beaches and nearby skiing. This includes mining operations that have already started and which taps into the North’s rare earth minerals for electronic gadgets.

“All Aboard!” The Iron Silk Road Express
Although China is in competition with other nations, such as Russia, South Korea, and even Singapore and Vietnam, it would like the entire Iron Silk Road supply chain. In fact, global consumers are already complicit in China’s extraction of the North’s minerals: In 2014, corporate filings required by the Dodd-Frank legislation revealed that IBM and Hewlett-Packard hardware contains North Korean mineral integrated by Chinese suppliers-something corporate management and shareholders knew.(2)

This also means that in addition to making an impossible ultimatum, President Trump and his administration will have a hard time enforcing the same ultimatum-economic sanctions and border security-within his/their own national boundaries-the U.S. Seen in isolation, U.S. trans-nationals won’t be denied their place in the Sun-or rather on the Korean Peninsula. They too will take advantage of the North’s baby steps in becoming a viable economy, specifically with mobile phones, internet services, and oil.

As mentioned earlier, China represents something new which threatens to overturn a geopolitical balance that’s shaped the world for the past five hundred years.(3) As the U.S.’s largest trading partner, with $500 billion in exports alone, China’s low-cost products will continue to devastate labor-intensive industries across America, causing unemployment to increase. China will also use its cash reserves to reach deep within the world Island of Eurasia with dozens of supply chains and infrastructure projects.

Only a Matter of Time
China’s dominion into adjacent territories-like Africa-is only a matter of time, especially as this international and transcontinental super connectivity integrates more nations such as North Korea. But laying down an elaborate and enormously expensive mesh of high-speed, high-volume, high volume railroads and petrochemical pipelines across a vast world island, which transports critical cargo-oil, minerals, and manufacturing goods that reach 6,500 miles from Shanghai to Madrid-is only the first phase of global control.(4)

The second phase is mobilizing military forces to surgically slice through Washington’s encircling containment. It’s no wonder then that the U.S. toned down its aggressive rhetoric of a preemptive strike against North Korea, specifically after China warned it would come to the North’s aid if preemptively attacked. Nor is it surprising that the U.S. and South Korea scaled back their military war games, or that President Trump noticed a change in tone after Kim Jong-un met with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Though it’s said that a nation is not a nation if it can’t secure it’s borders, for China it’s about “absolute” economic security. Absolute economic security that will define China’s borders which knows no limit. With 75 percent of the world’s population, 75 percent of known energy reserves, and 60 percent of its productivity, China’s Eurasia Silk Road will render those who don’t integrate insignificant. China’s two-fold geopolitical strategy to dominate the world may even render other continents geopolitically peripheral.(5)

Win First And Then Go To War Strategy
What’s more, it’s clearly a national economic strategy that’s winning against a defeated nation that for now goes to war first and then seeks to win.

Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John’s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.WN.com. You can read more of Dallas’ writings at www.beverlydarling.com and www.WN.com/dallasdarling.

(1) McCoy, Alfred W. In The Shadows Of The American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books, 2017., p. 194.
(2) Khanna, Parag. Connectivity: Mapping The Future of Global Civilization. New York, New York: Random House, 2016., p. 216.
(3) McCoy, Alfred W. In The Shadows Of The American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power., p. 193.
(4) Ibid., p. 194.
(5) Ibid., p. 195.