President Kim Jong-il's single-minded drive to acquire a nuclear armoury has exposed serious limitations to United States' policy on deterrence in East Asia. The country now with the most leverage to make the problem go away is China. Will China wish to use its leverage? How will it use it?

For a few days after a seismic event was detected on 9 October 2006, there was some doubt whether it was even a nuclear device. Monitors in South Korea and elsewhere reported that the yield was way below even 1 kiloton of TNT, where typically the first test by an emerging nuclear power would be an explosion in the region of several kilotons.

Some speculated that it was an eleborate bluff. Kim stacked a massive amount of conventional explosives to simulate a large explosion, they suggested. However, the US detected trace amounts of radioactive material in the atmosphere before the week was out, and now the consensus appears to be that it was indeed a nuclear device. It might not have been a successful test though; quite likely it failed to detonate fully, thus the smaller than expected explosion.

This was nonetheless enough for the UN Security Council to pass  Resolution 1718 unanimously, authorising inspection of North Korean shipments and some other sanctions, notably against supply and trade in weapons systems.

The US had wanted more robust inspection authorisation, as well as language opening the door to the use of force, but China blocked that. China, like many countries today, has no confidence that the US will not play cowboy and start shooting recklessly. China spoke against interdictions on the high seas, which they feel can lead to very unpredictable consequences. This is because North Korea has little means to react in a calibrated fashion, and it is quite possible that Kim may respond in an all-or-nothing way.

The US' position is extremely complicated. Its top 3 concerns coming out of Kim's bomb are South Korea, Japan and Iran.

A nuclear-armed North would be a threat of an entirely new order against South Korea, where the US has troops stationed. The tens of thousands of artillery massed barely 50 km north of Seoul are bad enough, but being able to lob a few nuclear-tipped short-range missiles would completely mess up the South's defence plan totally.

In the face of this new reality, the government of President Roh Moo-hyun in Seoul has been the most paralysed of all the countries involved. Despite the fact that nearly 90 percent of South Koreans think the previous "sunshine" policy of engagement with Pyongyang has failed to induce more responsible behaviour from the North, Roh is not expected to change course by much. The South Korean government is now acting as a brake on Washington's policy responses.

On the other hand, Japan is the most hawkish of the set, led by a new Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, who made his name highlighting his hard line against North Korea. The Japanese were stunned in 1998 when North Korea's Taepodong-1 missile overflew their island-nation without warning during a test launch. Now that they see Kim Jong-il working to equip his missiles with nuclear warheads, it is an intolerable situation for them. The possibility that Japan will modify its previously pacifist foreign policy is real.

Washington has moved to reassure Japan about its nuclear shield over the latter, but it is possible that Japan will still want to develop its own missile defence system and gradually pursue a more assertive naval policy in the region's waters to contain North Korea.

And of course if North Korea is allowed to get away with the bomb, Iran will be emboldened by it to press on with its own nuclear ambitions. This will be terribly destabilising to the entire Middle East, already bleeding from Arab-Israeli punch-ups and Sunni-Shi'a competition that sometimes turns violent.

Washington cannot afford to do nothing; it cannot acquiesce to North Korea becoming a nuclear power. Yet with no economic or diplomatic leverage on North Korea, and partly held back by its own ally, South Korea, Washington's options are extremely limited. It can interdict, quarantine, shoot and bomb, but not much else. And all these actions can easily lead to an uncontrolled conflagration.

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That leaves China. Kim's "brazen" act -- the word China used to condemn his bomb test -- has focussed Chinese minds as never before.

So far, most commentary on this crisis have tended to examine the issue from the American point of view, but since China is now the country with the most leverage, it is more important to try to discern what they may be thinking.

China supplies a lot of food aid and most consumer goods imported by North Korea. It is also reported to supply about 80% of Pyongyang's oil needs. If China wanted to, it is more can able to bring the small country of 23 million to its knees within a week.

But this too involves great risks. It would create a humanitarian crisis propelling a flood of refugees across its border, stretching China's resources to breaking point. Within North Korea, things would likely be even worse, because the Kim regime may either impede relief efforts, or partially collapse. Infighting, putsch and counter-putsch, lawlessness and banditry may well ensue. Should China then have to send in troops? Would it be a military quagmire? Would South Korea, an important economic partner to China, be all worked up if Chinese troops entered North Korea to take charge?

If China does not send in troops, would the US? If so, then American troops would come right up to the Chinese border.

Yet, China cannot afford to be soft on Pyongyang now. The fall-out from Kim's behaviour would lead to a more assertive Japan and a US that might want to act unilaterally. It is not in China's strategic interest to have a militarily active Japan, nor to see a US behaving like a bull in a china shop in China's own front yard.

In any case, China's credibility is at stake. Beijing had apparently told Pyongyang in no uncertain terms not to carry out the test, yet it still went ahead. If Kim Jong-il dared to do this, what makes anyone think he won't turn his artillery and missiles on Beijing to extort economic sustenance from the bigger neighbour, if desperate enough? Having nuclear missiles aimed at Dalien, Shenyang and Harbin is going to seriously undermine the Chinese people's trust in their own government.

President Hu Jintao cannot permit matters to take their own course.

If you were sitting in Beijing, trying to calculate China's interests and response, what would cross your mind?

So far, much of Beijing's foreign policy with regard to the region has been something of playing the spoiler against the US, in an attempt to check American backing for Taiwan, and its influence over Southeast and Central Asia.

However, with North Korea, the last few years has seen China undertake a more positive role in hosting the six-nation talks (which Pyongyang has refused to attend since 2004). Now with US impotence over the issue showing up, there is not much left for China to spoil, other than checking its shoot-from-the-hip instincts. The spoiler approach has become meaningless.

North Korea is useful for Beijing as a buffer state; China would naturally prefer that it remain a client state within its sphere of influence. You don't see any Chinese enthusiasm for Korean re-unification.

The problem of course is that Kim Jong-il is not behaving as a client should. A client should not work against its patron's larger interests, and should certainly not pose a nuclear threat. The best and most peaceful way of disarming a nuclear state is for the country's government itself to decide against keeping nuclear weapons. Kim is very unlikely to do that. He is much more likely to continue provoking the US in an attempt to get recognition and economic aid, flouting China's wishes if he has to.

This leads inexorably to the cold calculation that Kim has to go, and China's intelligence and diplomatic services have to learn to effect "regime change", perhaps in the form of a military coup or an assassination. It will take them a while. In the meantime, Beijing is likely to start tapping on its economic brakes to bring Kim to heel, without entertaining much hope of success.

But when the Chinese, through trial and error perhaps, have learnt the art of installing client regimes, they will have acquired an essential skill of a great power, and that skill can be deployed elsewhere should need or strategic desire require. More importantly, they will have broken a psychological barrier: from a country that sees itself as a champion of non-interference, standing up to "imperial" powers like the US, to become an interferer itself, justified by its own notion of "stability".

When Kim Jong-il metaphorically pushed the button to detonate his test bomb, he may have pushed the 'start' button for the beginning of a Pax Sinica.

© Yawning Bread