Chekhov’s gun must never go off

Lee Ha-kyung

The author is a senior columnist of the JoongAng Ilbo.

China’s fast rise has deepened the worries of the United States as its strategy to isolate the second largest economy comes under growing challenges. America’s pitch on “decoupling” from China has been watered down to “derisking” after the European Union refused to share the divorce. In a visit to Beijing in June, Telsa CEO Elon Musk said he did not agree with decoupling as the U.S. and Chinese economies were “conjoined twins” with inseparable interests. The U.S. Semiconductor Industry Association urged Washington to refrain from further sanctions on exports to China as the “overly broad, ambiguous, and at times unilateral restrictions” risk diminishing the competitiveness of the U.S. industry’s competitiveness and disrupting supply chains.

In his book “America’s Greatest Challenge, Confronting the Chinese Community Party,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned ,“There is a grave danger that the U.S. and Western civilization will simply be overwhelmed and dominated by China’s communist totalitarian system long before the country ceases to be a dictatorship.”

Unification Minister nominee Kim Yung-ho, a hardliner on North Korea, answers questions from lawmakers during a confirmation hearing in the National Assembly, July 21. [KIM SEONG-RYONG]

The North Korean problem has also gotten complicated. Despite its prized nuclear weapons, economic and food shortage woes for the impoverished nation have deepened from lengthy sanctions. Yet North Korea has fired off missiles 16 times so far this year. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned about the possibility of the Korean Peninsula falling into a state of war soon.

Yet there has been a subtle change in the air from Pyongyang. Kim Yo-jong — the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un — warned that a strengthening of the extended deterrence will only push the North farther away from the negotiating table. Noteworthy here is the use of “negotiating table.” Pyongyang could leverage the negotiation on returning an American soldier, who had crossed into North Korea, to renew dialogue with the U.S. North Korea swiftly responded after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida proposed a summit with Kim Jong-un to discuss the return of Japanese abductees.

Is South Korea accurately reading the intentions and plans of Pyongyang and ready for them? The candidate to become the next unification minister under Yoon Suk Yeol’s presidency had been a hardline scholar who argued for the downing of the Kim Jong-un regime. Yoon’s nomination of such a hawkish figure as unification minister suggests his choice of sticks over carrots. The defense ministry must be readying a war against North Korea and the foreign ministry is required to deal with North Korea as a foreign state.

But the unification ministry’s role is to grasp even the slightest sign of hope for dialogue. The 1991 Basic Agreement between South and North Korea defined the bilateral relationship as a “special one being formed in the process of moving toward unification,” not as one between two separate states. If you dismiss the extraordinary feature of the inter-Korean relations, you will only be isolated from the negotiation process. The dichotomic distinction between friend or enemy by Carl Schmitt has gone out of fashion. It simply does not fit into this age, when the U.S. and China are tangled as conjoined twins even while fighting against one another.

Addressing China and North Korea with differing systems and regimes requires much greater deliberation. Singapore is openly friendly towards the U.S., and yet it maintains amicable relations with China. It mediates whenever ties between China and Taiwan worsen. Singapore’s longtime leader Lee Kuan Yew had been a mentor to Deng Xiaoping as he crafted China’s reform and opening policy. The city state was able to enjoy colossal economic rewards as it kept up friendly ties with China with its different system.

Legendary Russian playwright Anton Chekhov famously said, “If you say in the first chapter, there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.” But historian Yuval Harari thinks that mankind has broken the “Chekhov gun rule” over the past 70 years. Kings and emperors had been tempted to try out new weapons, but humankind learned how to resist the use since 1945. He concluded that the gun that appeared in the first act of the Cold War was never fired.

But the problem is the Korean peninsula, the venue of fierce geopolitics where the U.S. and China fought shortly after World War II. The Korean War has never ended and still remains in a ceasefire for seven decades. If the two superpowers go to war, the Korean Peninsula or Taiwan could be the next battleground. The war this time could turn into World War III involving nuclear weapons — unlike the earlier one in 1950-53.

The return of Donald Trump to the White House could make matters worse. He could act on his belief questioning why the U.S. has to go on defending South Korea, a “well-off country,” and withdraw troops from it. Can the South counter the North without nuclear weapons or American forces? Would the U.S. protect South Korean interests when it directly negotiates with North Korea? Preventing a war is as important as winning a war. To broaden the axis of peace, we need a unification ministry, which is willing to have dialogue, and a foreign ministry which would negotiate with the enemy.

As Greek philosopher Heraclitus declared 2,500 years ago, everything flows. We cannot return to the same dangerous river. The U.S., China, North Korea, and South Korea are not the same as before. If an internal conflict bordering in a civil war continues, the consequences could be fatal. All parties involved, conservative or liberal, must come to the minimum agreement for our existence. Chekhov’s gun must not go off.