Page 20 - Trilateral Korea Japan U.S. Cooperation

the Growing Strategic Linkages and North Korea’s Anti-
Unification Policy (Chapter Four). He agrees with Newsham
that one of the most important reasons for China to allow
North Korea to strengthen its military capabilities is a growing
linkage between security on the Korean Peninsula and across
the Taiwan Strait and worries that, in case of war over Taiwan,
China would likely encourage North Korea to create tension
on the Korean Peninsula to draw away U.S. and Japanese
forces. He also worries about increasing ties between Moscow
and Pyongyang, driven by Russia’s need for North Korean
missiles and ammunition. If North Korea is the primary
winner in this game, China is the secondary winner smiling
behind the scenes. He believes that North Korea is becoming
strategically defensive and tactically offensive, further arguing
that Kim Jong-Un is attempting to enhance the chance of his
regime’s survival by consolidating the division of the Korean
Peninsula.

In Chapter Five, David Maxwell, vice president of the Center
for Asia Pacific Security outlines the “Three No’s” Times Two:
China’s North and South Korea Policy. He argues that China
has two sets of “Three No’s” that drive its policy toward North
Korea. First, it wants no war, no instability or regime collapse,
and no nuclear weapons on the Peninsula. The second are the
“Three Nos” Xi demanded from the former South Korean
President in 2017: no more THAAD (Terminal High Altitude
Area Defense) deployment, no integrated missile defense, and
no trilateral South Korea-Japan-U.S. alliance. The question is,
can the PRC successfully achieve these policy goals, or will it
suffer the same fate as Mao and Stalin due to the long history
of the Kim family regime playing its major “allies” off against

Chapter One : Dealing with North Korea-China Challenges 19