Two Rohingya men have been jailed for a week for protesting against a controversial plan to repatriate the persecuted minority back to Myanmar, Bangladesh police said Wednesday. Rohingya have erected banners, chanted slogans and staged angry rallies in crowded camps near the border in Cox's Bazar as tension mounts over the looming relocation of hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled a crackdown by the Myanmar military. Bangladesh insists the repatriation process will be voluntary but police have ramped up security in the camps. Abdul Jabbar and Ali Hossain, both in their 60s, were sentenced Tuesday after being charged with creating a public nuisance. Another man held for questioning at the protest was released Wednesday afternoon without charge on condition he will not "engage in any anti-government activities" or incite further protests, a police officer said. Bangladesh had been due to start repatriating hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees this week after agreeing to a two-year timeline with Myanmar. But it was delayed when Bangladesh said neither side was ready. Myanmar later blamed its neighbour for a lack of preparation, a charge Bangladesh has rejected. Nearly 690,000 Rohingya have fled a campaign of violence in Myanmar since August, and many of the displaced Muslims living in Bangladesh fear returning to their conflict-scarred homeland in Rakhine state. Police are also investigating the murder of two Rohingya representatives in the past week. Local media suggested one man was targeted for his support for the repatriation. Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion said two Rohingya had been arrested and a knife had been seized in raids on the camps where the men were murdered, a spokesman for the elite security forces said. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-5306737/Bangladesh-jail-two-Rohingya-protesting-repatriation.html (c) 2018 Daily Mail

What’s new? The threat of catastrophic war on the Korean peninsula is graver than at any time in recent history. North Korea’s neighbours – South Korea, China, Japan and Russia – are caught between Pyongyang’s sprint to expand its nuclear capability and Washington’s apparent determination to stop that dash at virtually any cost. Why does it matter? Strategic calculations in the region are evolving, prompted not only by the fear of North Korean weapons but also by the spectre of chaos provoked by U.S. military action. All of North Korea’s neighbours believe that the risks of U.S. strikes against Pyongyang far outweigh any potential benefit. What should be done? The window ahead of the Winter Olympics, thawing North Korea-South Korea relations and Pyongyang’s desire to shore up its economy provide an opportunity. A deal whereby Pyongyang freezes its most sensitive tests and Washington freezes some military exercises could help de-escalate the crisis and buy time for diplomacy. Executive Summary The threat of nightmarish war on the Korean peninsula is higher than at any time in recent history. As the pace of North Korea’s nuclear and missile testing increased throughout 2017, so too did the U.S.’ bellicosity. North Korea’s neighbours – South Korea, China, Japan and Russia – are caught between Pyongyang’s sprint to expand its nuclear capability and an administration in Washington apparently determined to stop that dash at virtually any cost. Strategic calculations in the region are evolving, due not only to fear of North Korean weapons but also to the spectre of chaos provoked by U.S. military action. Yet opportunities for de-escalation exist: North and South Korea have reopened diplomatic channels, while the more U.S. aggressive posture has added urgency to China’s efforts to find a way out of the crisis. The sense of peril owes much to confusion about why North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered his breakneck pace of nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests. There is good reason to believe that, like his predecessor, Kim is driven chiefly by worry that without such deterrence his country risks attack – and his regime risks ouster – by outside powers. He appears propelled by domestic dynamics as well. A greater nuclear capability shores up Kim’s internal support, burnishes his prestige and diverts attention from deep economic troubles. What keeps U.S. officials awake is the possibility that Kim might have a third motivation: that acquiring the means to strike major U.S. cities would allow North Korea to dictate an outcome to the crisis on the peninsula. Those scenarios range from the lifting of sanctions to U.S. withdrawal all the way to forced reunification of north and south. Washington fears that Pyongyang’s better ballistic missiles will inhibit its own freedom of action: the U.S. wants to deter not be deterred. Yet if there is unease about Pyongyang, so too is there puzzlement about Washington. The Trump administration veers from bombast to conciliation. It is squeezing the North Korean regime with a strategy of “maximum pressure”. This involves, first, sanctions and demands that China lean harder on Kim, despite pursuing a maximalist objective – denuclearisation – that no amount of pressure will achieve. More obviously, it involves the White House cultivating the impression it is ready to use force to slow Pyongyang’s weapons program, notwithstanding the catastrophic – indeed unthinkable – risks such action would entail. Then again, President Donald Trump at times broaches the option of diplomacy. The game of nerves and one-upmanship places North Korea’s neighbours in a bind. South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, supports harsh sanctions on Pyongyang but the last thing he or his citizens either want or can afford is military confrontation. Moon swiftly accepted Kim Jong-un’s 1 January 2018 offer of contact, which has since become a joint commitment to military-to-military as well as high-level political talks. As the pre-eminent regional power and North Korean economic lifeline, China will have to be an integral part of any solution. President Xi Jinping’s assertive leadership includes a tougher line with Pyongyang, which in turn has become ever pricklier at the exertions of Chinese influence. Xi has curtailed economic assistance and acquiesced to stricter sanctions. Still, and for now, Beijing’s core assumptions remain unchanged: it will not incur Pyongyang’s overt hostility by signing up to an American drive for denuclearisation at any cost. From Beijing’s perspective, a nuclear North Korea is a worry, but a manageable one, while a military conflict is a menace, and an uncontrollable one. China proposes to quell the immediate crisis with a freeze of North Korean nuclear and missile testing in exchange for a freeze of U.S. military exercises in the vicinity. But, thus far, it is confounded in that aim by Kim’s recklessness, on one hand, and Trump’s stubbornness, on the other. Japan and Russia play less central parts, but their proximity – and Russia’s historical ties – to North Korea give them important stakes in the crisis. Japan broadly tracks U.S. policy on North Korea, and Russia, Chinese policy. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been more supportive than other neighbours of the “maximum pressure” campaign, though in Tokyo, as elsewhere, there is disquiet at the danger of confrontation. Russia opposes North Korea’s nuclearisation but has little appetite for hostilities on the peninsula. It also is quick to seize any opportunity to cast the U.S. in a negative light and, on occasion, to offer Pyongyang support. For decades, Pyongyang’s nuclear program has shaped relations among major powers and regional states, as well as dynamics within the latter. While Kim’s accelerated weapons program and Trump’s combativeness are new, the fundamental challenge – how to restrain North Korea while addressing some of its core concerns – remains. So, too, does consensus among North Korea’s neighbours on core principles: the need to halt Pyongyang’s military nuclear drive; conviction that this objective is not worth risking war on the peninsula; belief that the costs of even limited military action outweigh any potential benefit; and certainty that a solution must be found through diplomacy. If top U.S. officials genuinely believe that military action is their best option – and it is hard to tell if such indications are tactical bluff or genuine intent – then they are on their own. Yet there may be (thin) silver linings to the dangerous turn the crisis has taken over the past year. U.S. belligerence has jangled the nerves of regional powers but also likely steeled their will to find an off-ramp. North Korea’s advances in its nuclear and missile program could make this moment propitious for diplomacy. Rekindled ties between Seoul and Pyongyang could defuse tensions in the short window ahead of the February 2018 Winter Olympics. Sober heads in Washington might convince the president to use this window to seek some form of de-escalatory deal. As laid out in a companion Crisis Group Report, The Korean Peninsula Crisis (II): From Fire and Fury to Freeze-for-Freeze, this deal would likely involve a freeze of North Korea’s nuclear tests and some of its missile tests in return for U.S. commitment to halt deployment of strategic assets to the region and its most provocative joint exercises with South Korea, combined with a new diplomatic process to find a more durable solution. Absent such an initiative, the period after the Olympics could bring fresh escalation and the risk of war on the peninsula could mount still further. Seoul/Beijing/Washington/New York/Brussels, 23 January 2018 I.Introduction The nuclear program of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) is more than six decades old. Over this period, the program has been influenced by and, in turn, helped shape the North Korean state’s economy, ideology and external posture; great power contestation in the region; and dynamics in and between all of the states in North East Asia. It has been critical to the development of the Kim family regime, and is vital to Kim Jong-un’s hold on power. Recent years have seen a marked evolution in the geopolitics surrounding the DPRK nuclear crisis, shaped by four successions: from Kim Jong-il to his son Kim Jong-un in North Korea in 2011 and from Barack Obama to Donald Trump in the U.S. in 2017; but also from Park Geun-hye to Moon Jae-in in South Korea, also in 2017; and from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping in China five years earlier. While there is considerable continuity in the four states’ policies and relations to one another, today’s leaders have taken actions, in part to distinguish themselves from their respective predecessors, that have sharpened the existing dynamics and helped provoke the present crisis. Pyongyang has made considerable technical progress since the 2009 missile and nuclear tests that sounded the death knell for the Six-Party Talks. That was the last forum to yield an agreement ostensibly committing North Korea to ending its nuclear program, the 2005 Joint Statement of the Fourth Round of the Six-Party Talks. Its long-range missile tests are more frequent and the results are more reliable – the projectiles are flying further. Since 2012, it has conducted more than 30 operational tests of short- and medium-range missiles from different locations. These dry runs included the visually spectacular simultaneous launch of three extended-range Scud missiles from a highway south of Pyongyang on 5 September 2016. Even more provocatively, in the last two years, North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests: one on 9 September 2016, and the other on 3 September 2017. Over the summer of 2017, it twice tested the Hwasong-14, a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with a longer reach and greater mobility than North Korea’s previous weapons, and tested two medium-range missiles over Japanese territory. It tested the Hwasong-15, yet another ICBM, but conspicuously larger and which appeared to have a more mobile and sophisticated launch mechanism, at the end of November. The latter can, in principle, strike anywhere on the U.S. mainland. Pyongyang reportedly cannot yet fit nuclear warheads onto missiles. Nor has it developed the technology to protect them during re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere. One expert argues the DPRK is several years from achieving either. Neither does consensus exist on how many nuclear devices it has in its stockpile. During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump suggested the U.S. should wash its hands of the North Korea dilemma, and that Tokyo and Seoul should acquire their own nuclear deterrents. He claimed he would be happy to talk to Kim Jong-un and called into question the need for the presence of U.S. troops on the Korean peninsula. Once in office, however, Trump dramatically changed his tune. He and his national security team concluded that the direct threat the DPRK posed to the U.S. necessitated a more robust approach than “strategic patience”, the Obama administration’s policy of eschewing direct dialogue with the DPRK until Pyongyang recommitted to its 2005 promise of denuclearisation. The new administration also ditched its predecessor’s preference for taking its cues from South Korea (Republic of Korea, ROK) on what relations with Pyongyang were possible. Trump’s rhetoric also changed from the moment he moved into the White House – and, indeed, never stopped changing after that. On 8 August 2017, he promised North Korea “fire, fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before” were it to threaten the U.S. At the UN General Assembly, he called Kim Jong-un “rocket man”; Kim retorted that Trump was “mentally deranged” and a “dotard”. At other times, however, Trump has suggested he was ready to meet Kim and that the two of them would get along. Amid the mudslinging, there also were signs of divergence within the U.S. administration on its approach to North Korea. While Secretary of State Rex Tillerson displayed openness to diplomacy, and even to unconditional talks, he was repeatedly contradicted by the White House and President Trump himself. And, amid the divergence, there emerged a clear sense that the administration was open to the prospect of war – whether because it truly believes war is an option or because it wants others to believe it believes that (and thus spur them into action the U.S. desires). Senator Lindsey Graham – known to be close to the White House on this matter – placed the odds of a U.S. attack on North Korea at 30 per cent, warning those chances would rise to 70 per cent should Pyongyang stage another nuclear test. U.S. officials float the idea of a narrow strike to sending a warning to Kim or damage his weapons program, while evincing confidence that an attack can be mounted in a manner that will not provoke retaliation. At the same time, the U.S. has pushed through increasingly onerous UN sanctions on North Korea, each bringing new and previously unsanctioned or lightly sanctioned economic sectors under the UN’s remit. It has also pressed China – the lynchpin of North Korea’s trade relations – to implement these sanctions rigorously. North Korea has communicated indirectly with the U.S. but, according to several sources, has resisted for now the option of direct, unconditional talks. In the early fall of 2017, amid rising tension with Washington, several high-profile U.S. journalists were permitted into the country.Track II talks have taken place, as have discussions through a channel involving U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy Joseph Yun, though Pyongyang reportedly questioned the value of such talks, saying that only Trump can speak for Trump. It subsequently used more formal channels, in December 2017 hosting a UN delegation, including the head of the UN’s political affairs department, a U.S. citizen, Jeffrey Feltman, who spent fifteen and a half hours in talks with North Korean diplomats, including Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho. Feltman became convinced that the regime hoped for “some kind of policy dialogue after not having had [one] for a long time”, but reportedly also that it was not yet ready for direct talks with the U.S. – possibly because Kim first wanted to make more progress on his nuclear program. Relations between Pyongyang and Seoul, which often serve to signal broader dynamics, also progressively thawed. Kim Jong-un announced in his 1 January 2018 New Year Address that the DPRK hoped to take part in the Winter Olympic Games and suggested that the two Koreas meet to discuss the topic, a proposal preceded by several informal contacts between officials from the two Koreas, including in Kunming, China, on 18 December. Seoul responded quickly to Kim’s address, offering high-level talks with the DPRK on 9 January, while Pyongyang reconnected an inter-Korean phone line, which had been out of action for almost two years, so as to help plan the meeting. In a joint statement afterwards, the two sides stated they were committed to the success of the Winter Games, and had agreed to military-to-military talks and a high-level conference, as part of a commitment to use talks to resolve issues. This report is one of two published simultaneously on the nuclear crisis. It examines the evolving geopolitics around the crisis, looking at perspectives from Pyongyang, Washington, Seoul, Beijing, Tokyo and Moscow. Notwithstanding leadership changes, familiar questions dominate debates in these capitals: whether diplomacy or isolation best pressures the North Korean leadership; whether a nuclear North Korea can be deterred; and how far efforts should go to achieve its denuclearisation. As always, each capital must balance a range of domestic considerations and constituencies. What is new, however, is alarm not only at Kim’s weapons tests, but at the U.S. government’s belligerence and the risk that unilateral U.S. action could provoke a North Korean response and a dangerous, uncontrollable military escalation. This confluence of events – accelerated North Korean missile and nuclear progress; ambient talk of U.S. military action; alongside signs of potential détente – make this juncture a particularly crucial one in the history of the peninsula’s nuclear crisis. It is a moment when international and regional actors should do everything possible to avert a calamitous war by building on mechanisms for de-escalation. This report sheds light on the evolving positions of the states involved and their implications for the crisis and how to resolve it. The second report examines the dangers in the current U.S. approach and offers an alternative path to de-escalating the crisis and restarting bilateral dialogue. II.Pyongyang’s Nuclear Motives North Korea’s push for nuclear weapons is partly motivated by fear of threats from abroad, namely U.S. military action, which Pyongyang believes a nuclear capability can deter. It claims to be pursuing a doctrine of “asymmetric escalation”, according to which it would use nuclear weapons only if attacked. As discussed below, U.S. officials suspect another, less innocent motive: to alter the strategic balance of power and thus give the regime a freer hand to pursue its ultimate goals, whether U.S. withdrawal from the peninsula or reunification with the South. Kim’s pursuit of nuclear weapons also is driven by domestic political dynamics. He believes that his regime’s legitimacy and ability to ward off internal challenges rest in good part on developing nuclear capability. Nurturing the image of an implacable foe that can be resisted only through a nuclear program also reinforces the regime’s domestic support while bolstering its control over society. Nuclear weapons serve to enhance both deterrence abroad and prestige at home. This imperative of self-protection is about more than Kim’s need to consolidate. Korean national identity – not just the DPRK’s – is alive to instances of lost sovereignty. A Korean proverb – “When whales fight, the shrimp’s back gets broken” – expresses a widespread sense of a small country at a geopolitical crossroads, surrounded by giant powers, that will be overwhelmed if it does not guard its autonomy. An additional reflex in the North Korean case is the collective memory of the Korean War, when millions died due to aggression North Koreans remember as being carried out almost exclusively by the U.S. To the sizeable DPRK political and military elite, the threat the U.S. poses to their way of life is perfectly real and a nuclear defence entirely logical. Finally, North Korea’s nuclear calculus is affected by economic factors. The regime’s “pyŏngjin line” commits it to the simultaneous pursuit of nuclear capability and economic development. Yet these two aims are in tension. As the 70th anniversary of North Korea’s founding approaches in 2018, Kim faces extra pressure to deliver on economic promises. Yet heavy military spending over recent years has hindered his ability to do so. As new sanctions bite, the regime doubtless will blame hostile external powers. But it knows it will need to defuse tensions and open up to diplomacy to obtain sanctions relief and to strengthen economic ties with the outside world. A.Strategic Goals and External Risks The primary objective of North Korea’s foreign and defence policy has always been to preserve the sovereignty of the state and the security of the Kim family regime. A close observer of the DPRK – based on recent discussions with senior North Korean “representatives and experts” – described Pyongyang’s policy goals as follows: Strategic parity with the U.S. by creating a credible nuclear deterrent and compelling opponents to conclude a peace treaty with the North, recognise the sovereignty and independence of the DPRK, and provide security guarantees to enable the country’s further economic development. In the eyes of the Kim regime, it must grapple with hard and soft external threats. It fears the U.S. could seek to topple it using military means; Pyongyang’s wariness of U.S. intervention long predates but probably was accentuated by the overthrow of dictatorships in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011 (both of which at one point pursued, but never obtained, a nuclear weapon). The regime is likewise anxious about overdependence on the behemoth on its border: Chinese firms dominate the North Korean economy and suck up limited reserves of foreign exchange. Politically, South Korea – far more prosperous as well as more socially and culturally dynamic – offers a dangerous point of comparison for how other Koreans live. Nuclear weapons chiefly serve to counteract the hardest of these perceived threats. Pyongyang has espoused an asymmetric escalation strategy, whereby it claims it would use nuclear weapons to respond to an attack, whether conventional or nuclear, by a nuclear weapons state or non-nuclear states allied with a nuclear state. In the DPRK’s view, this latter stipulation makes South Korea and Japan legitimate targets of retaliation for a U.S. strike, whether actual or perceived as imminent. The relevant language in Article 4 of North Korea’s 2013 Law on Consolidating Possession of Nuclear Weapons State for Self-Defence states: “The DPRK shall neither use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states nor threaten them with those weapons unless they join a hostile nuclear weapons state in its invasion and attack on the DPRK”. The law was adopted in April 2013 by the Supreme People’s Assembly. No one less than Kim himself reiterated the legislation’s stance at the May 2016 Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) Congress, saying the country “will not use a nuclear weapon unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nukes”. Pyongyang is also keen to present itself as a responsible nuclear power, in keeping with its goal of gaining international acceptance as a nuclear state. Domestic television reports about the 3 September 2017 nuclear test, for example, emphasised the role of consensual decision-making – as opposed to unilateral, and thus fallible, dictatorial fiat – in deciding whether to conduct a test. Whether such statements of intent can be trusted is another matter. Sceptics – who include senior officials in the Trump administration – cite a history of irresponsible belligerency and brinkmanship on North Korea’s part, including the injury of two South Korean troops with a landmine along the demilitarised zone (DMZ) in 2015, the sinking of a South Korean navy vessel and shelling of a South Korean island in 2010, multiple naval battles in the 1990s and 2000s, back to the bombing of KAL Flight 858 in 1987 and the downing of U.S. spy planes and attempts to assassinate South Korean leaders in the 1960s. They also adduce North Korea’s history of duplicity and broken pledges – running a secret highly enriched uranium program for the duration of the Agreed Framework (1994-2002), reneging on the 2005 Six-Party Talks commitment to denuclearisation, and abrogating the 2012 Leap Day Agreement in a matter of days. Recent visitors to North Korea emerged from meetings with the impression that officials themselves were unclear about the country’s nuclear doctrine and precise end goals. It would be foolhardy to presume to know under what conditions precisely the regime might use or threaten to use its nuclear arsenal. It would be equally ill advised to forecast how Kim or a successor might respond to different scenarios, especially direct threats to the regime. Balanced against such legitimate concerns, however, is the fact – hardly ignored by Pyongyang – that a North Korean first strike almost certainly would precipitate the end of the regime and possibly the destruction of the country. Indeed, given the current atmosphere, even a non-nuclear act of aggression might result in an uncontrollable escalation endangering the regime. In November 2017, Foreign Ministry officials reportedly: … expressed bewilderment over why the political establishment in the U.S. is unwilling to ask itself a very simple question: even if North Korea does develop the capability to target the continental U.S. with nuclear weapons, why would it launch such weapons if it would result in the destruction of North Korea? Most close observers, including analysts and officials from the U.S. and the region, believe Kim himself understands this reality: rash perhaps he is, suicidal he almost certainly is not. But while the DPRK might not be so imprudent as to launch a nuclear strike, U.S. officials worry that it could use the threat of such a strike to pursue other goals, as detailed below. Such fears are partly grounded in statements by North Korean leaders who, at times, have claimed that nuclear weapons would put them in a position to achieve unification with South Korea, the holy grail of North Korean statecraft since the Korean War ended in 1953. In the same spirit, Pyongyang could regard either gaining international acceptance as a nuclear state or compelling the removal of U.S. forces from the Korean peninsula – whether through a bilateral peace treaty or rupture of the U.S.-ROK alliance – as beneficial to its unification goal. That said, and for the time being at least, any aspiration for reunification seems far removed from practical regime thinking given in particular the challenge of merging the DPRK’s sclerotic autocracy with South Korea’s dynamic, democratic and free-market society. B.Challenges at Home Pyongyang’s assessment of threats from abroad overlaps with concerns about threats from within, with the latter arguably playing at least as important a role in Kim’s nuclear calculations. Despite the regime’s firm grip, Kim must contend with members of the country’s elite, some of whom he has alienated by assembling a ruling coalition that diverges from his father’s. Other sources of potential instability or discontent include the tightly controlled but ultimately unpredictable marketisation of the economy, as well as difficulty in controlling information flows, notably from foreign media. For Kim, completing his father’s and grandfather’s mission of developing a robust nuclear capacity is a key legitimising narrative, of which he enjoys precious few. Kim Jong-un came to power in 2011 with no soldier’s pedigree in a heavily militarised state and with no political accomplishments to his name. Until then largely invisible and unknown to the North Korean elite and society in general, he – and parts of the regime that supported him – had to expand his inherited coercive power quickly into a relatively more legitimate political authority. According to a former official who defected, Thae Yong-ho, Kim sees the nuclearisation project as key to his ability to cement his regime in the face of mounting domestic challenges. The current expansion of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities can be understood partly in this light. Weighing against these interests are the country’s economic woes. In 2013, the state adopted the pyŏngjin (parallel development) line of simultaneous nuclear and economic development, replacing the sŏn’gun (military-first) line of the Kim Jong-il era. Kim Jong-un’s legitimacy is thus explicitly tied to two efforts it is virtually impossible to pursue at the same time. Pyongyang’s weapons programs are heavily constrained by deleterious economic circumstances; in turn, those programs hinder the regime’s ability to prime the pump economically. Indeed, the regime claims that a nuclear weapons program would save it money, by sparing it the expense of its vast standing army. This friction between military and development spending compels the regime to operate cyclically: since the first nuclear test, it has twice splurged on spending on nuclear and missile research, development and testing (2006-2009, 2013-present), periods of high tension separated by a lull during which trade grew with the outside world, predominantly China (2009-2013). The total size of the North Korean economy is estimated at a mere $40 billion at purchasing power parity with the 2015 U.S. dollar. Its per capita GDP is paltry compared to South Korea’s: South Korea’s Bank of Korea estimates this figure in the North at 1.46 million Korean Won (KRW) ($1,360) for 2016 and at 31.98 million KRW ($30,000) in the South.Meanwhile, North Korea increasingly is losing income from exports of labour and goods due to deteriorating terms of trade for its natural resources, which accounted for 52 per cent of exports in 2016. New sanctions almost inevitably will lead to further painful losses. The DPRK has not borrowed internationally since it defaulted on its debt obligations in the 1980s. It is unwilling to undertake the structural reforms that would make it creditworthy, and in any case its radical views on economic sovereignty sit uncomfortably with receiving international loans. It would rather receive unconditional infusions of investment capital – hard to come by, given the banking sanctions and North Korea’s inability to guarantee the security of investments. The government must cover expenditures and finance capital infrastructure investments – including its nuclear and missile programs – with income from the increasingly sanctioned exports of natural resources and labour, light manufacturing, illicit activities including traffic in illegal weapons and production of drugs and fake currency, as well as taxes collected from private market actors. With Kim Jong-un’s legitimacy partly hinging on economic development, he is likely to see 2018, when the DPRK will mark its 70th anniversary, as a critical year for demonstrating success. Yet, over the past several years, high military spending has emptied the regime’s coffers of needed investment capital. The regime knows its funds will dwindle further with UN and other sanctions, and it clearly wishes to reduce those pressures. The upshot is not, as some in Washington might believe, that Pyongyang will sacrifice a nuclear program it views as essential to its survival. Rather, it is that – after a period of binge spending on weapons – the regime might be nudged toward diplomatic engagement aimed at a realistic outcome. Sanctions can help, in other words, but only if married to a viable aim, not the utopian goal of immediate denuclearisation. III.Sabre Rattling from Washington The Trump administration has responded to North Korea’s race to achieve greater nuclear capability with a campaign of “maximum pressure”. This initiative involves a combination of economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure on states with ties to North Korea and, most visibly, pugnacious rhetoric that, together with increasingly aggressive military exercises, overflights and posturing, is meant to signal Washington’s preparedness to take military action. The White House even appears ready for measures that would risk unthinkable loss of life, South Korean and American, not just North Korean. Within the administration views appear to vary somewhat. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster is perceived widely as inhabiting the more hawkish end of the spectrum, with the secretaries of defence and state, James Mattis and Rex Tillerson, respectively, believed to be more cautious. Mattis, for his part, said in August 2016 that war with North Korea would be “catastrophic”. He is not thought to have changed his mind, though he has authorised stepped-up contingency planning for various types of military action. In giving those orders, the defence secretary may be inoculating himself against charges of disloyalty to Trump’s agenda.Overall, the effect has been to project a willingness to use force that, while falling far short of a public relations campaign to prepare Americans for war, has shifted the national conversation about how far the administration might go to achieve its objectives. The sabre rattling could be sincere, reflecting conviction that the U.S. cannot live with the strategic shift brought about by North Korea’s ability to strike the North American continent with a nuclear device. It could be a bluff, aimed at persuading China to exert greater pressure on Pyongyang, and at getting Pyongyang to moderate its stance. Or it could be a combination of both. Regardless, the mere prospect that the U.S. is contemplating pre-emptive military action has altered the playing field, raising the likelihood of a war born of the two sides’ fear of a surprise attack, with each misreading the other’s intent. A. Undeterrable North Korea and a U.S. That Hates Being Deterred In the eyes of senior U.S. officials, Kim Jong-un covets the ability to strike major U.S. urban centres so as to change the strategic picture to North Korea’s permanent advantage. According to this view, the regime will not negotiate – certainly not in good faith – until it has reached that goal. At that point, it theoretically could use its nuclear capability as leverage to renegotiate the 1953 armistice, demand U.S. troop withdrawals from South Korea and possibly Japan, roll back sanctions and seek reparations for the economic damage they have done. Some officials argue that the regime might go so far as to press for reunification of the Korean peninsula on North Korean terms. Most U.S. officials concede that, following traditional deterrence doctrine, Pyongyang likely would not use its nuclear capacity against the U.S. unless faced with imminent demise, since a strike would simply hasten that fate. They argue, however, that the mere ability to reach the U.S. with a nuclear-tipped missile effectively would create a security umbrella under which North Korea could use conventional and non-nuclear unconventional weapons to bully South Korea and Japan with relative impunity. Another concern – this one widely shared among other governments – is the risk to the global non-proliferation regime, whether emanating from the DPRK’s growing capability or from sales of advanced nuclear and missile technology to other state or non-state actors. By raising serious questions about U.S. deterrence – would the U.S. step in to defend its allies if the price to pay were a potential nuclear strike on the continent? – these developments could prompt South Korea or Japan to develop their own nuclear capability. Fundamental to White House thinking, it follows, is that Pyongyang cannot be permitted to threaten the U.S. directly and thus inhibit Washington’s own freedom of action. Stated differently, Washington wants to deter, not be deterred. To that end, Pyongyang’s nuclear program must be halted and the DPRK denuclearised, for the Trump administration does not believe the regime will abide by a commitment to cap its program. This line of thinking sharply contrasts with the perception that had gained some currency within the Obama administration: that denuclearisation was a “lost cause”. It clashes as well with the belief in China and South Korea that classic deterrence logic will prevail in North Korea’s thinking, so long as U.S. extended deterrence assurances are solid. B.“All Options on the Table” The administration is pursuing its desired denuclearisation outcome along two different tracks. One is through punishing economic sanctions aimed at forcing the DPRK to yield. Accordingly, the U.S. has gradually tightened the economic noose around North Korea, banking on other capitals’ fears that war is an idea Washington is entertaining. U.S. officials argue that China only agreed to harsher sanctions in December 2017 because it is eager to avert a war and the ensuing disruption of the regional strategic balance, and because it believes Trump might not be blowing smoke. Hence, the argument goes, its willingness to antagonise and isolate Pyongyang. At the same time, U.S. officials concede this scheme is a gamble, and that Kim likely will be able to move the nuclear program forward faster than the sanctions can hurt or threaten him. Sanctions and economic pressure alone, they acknowledge, are highly unlikely to alter Pyongyang’s basic calculations and persuade it to negotiate away its nuclear capacity. Hence the administration’s assertion that it is pursuing, on a parallel track, a variety of military options. Among these options is the “bloody nose” scenario under which the U.S. would conduct a limited, targeted strike, for example on a launch site prior to a missile test or on command and control centres or nuclear facilities. Alternatively, some administration officials describe military action short of full-scale attack that would target the country’s missile production and staging facilities so as to damage the North Korean leadership’s confidence in the viability of its nuclear capability. What these options supposedly have in common is the belief among several senior officials that they could be carried out without North Korean reprisal, provided the strike were accompanied by a dual message: that the goal was not regime change, and that any military response would be met by a far larger, devastating attack. What the plans also have in common, however, is recklessness: they are premised on the almost certainly mistaken notion that the North Korean regime would not respond. A third option – diplomacy – at times has been treated by the administration as a dirty word, and at others as a genuine possibility. It remains nebulous whether and, if so, how the U.S. might have conveyed its openness to unconditional talks with Pyongyang. When Secretary of State Tillerson suggested the idea, he was quickly contradicted by the White House; privately, U.S. officials and unofficial intermediaries claim the offer was made and that North Korea rejected it unless and until “hostile U.S. policy were to halt”, a standard vague enough to suggest that Kim does not believe the time for direct talks is ripe. The U.S. insistence that the purpose of talks be North Korea’s denuclearisation – a goal the regime has flatly rebuffed – also might stand in the way of dialogue. In the wake of the announcement of inter-Korean talks, Trump spoke directly to President Moon Jae-in and, according to South Korea’s readout of the conversation, offered reassurance that a Wall Street Journal report suggesting that he was contemplating a military strike was “completely wrong”. Nor did Washington object to the talks. Instead, seemingly caught off guard, it merely informed South Korea that in the future it would appreciate greater coordination. This acquiescence, together with other clashing messages from Washington, kept Pyongyang and the rest of the world guessing once again. IV.Seoul’s Shifting Calculations For the administration of Moon Jae-in, North Korea’s nuclear threat can be managed only through diplomatic means, though these overtures should be backed by harsh sanctions to ensure the DPRK negotiates in good faith. This balancing act mirrors complex South Korean dynamics: anger at North Korea for its aggressive and often violent comportment; sympathy for the suffering of fellow Koreans across the border; disquiet at U.S. belligerence; and dread at the prospect of a confrontation that could result in untold South Korean fatalities. Seoul does not share Washington’s confidence that Pyongyang will not respond militarily to a “bloody nose” attack. A.No Sunshine 2.0 Historically, South Koreans have held widely diverging opinions on how to deal with their neighbour to the north. The “sunshine policy” – a ten-year project of engagement with North Korea launched by Kim Dae-jung, a former dissident who became president in 1998 – still enjoys some support, notably among older self-declared progressive voters.Conversely, older conservative voters tend to see North Korea through the hostile, anti-communist lens that was state doctrine during the South’s authoritarian period prior to 1987. The North Korea question does not mould the political views of younger voters, no matter where they fall on the spectrum, to nearly the same extent. President Moon Jae-in’s background – notably his position as chief of staff to left-wing President Roh Moo-hyun in 2003-2008 – led international observers to conclude he would adopt a policy of engagement comparable to Kim Dae-jung’s. That prediction misinterpreted the 2017 election. The North Korean nuclear program and possible engagement of Pyongyang were not the salient campaign issues; rather, disdain for the preceding administration as well as pocketbook concerns carried the day.Tellingly, significant numbers of conservative, security-conscious citizens ended up voting for Moon because they valued his reputation as an honest leader and were looking for a change after his predecessor, Park Geun-hye, had been impeached on charges of extortion, bribery, abuse of power and leaking state secrets, and her party had collapsed. That means some of Moon’s voters support a tough posture toward the DPRK. Moon is in fact an ardent sceptic on North Korea and more hawkish on national security than most on the left of South Korean politics. His position derives in part from personal experience: his parents were evacuated out of North Korea by the U.S. in the Korean War, and as a soldier, he was deployed in the DMZ at a time of high tensions in 1976.His defence minister, Song Young-moo, is a former admiral; upon his cabinet appointment, he was directed to establish “unwavering national security”. Pyongyang’s provocative nuclear and missile tests after Moon’s election have helped South Koreans from across the political spectrum coalesce around certain core principles. Broadly speaking, public opinion in the South favours engagement in the humanitarian and cultural spheres and disfavours major economic assistance. In the latter category would be reopening the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which South Korea shut down in February 2016 due to charges that its income was funding the DPRK’s nuclear and missile programs. In recent months, Pyongyang has – as it often does – manipulated the complex feelings of South Koreans for the North, first spurning and even slapping away President Moon’s extended hand, then suddenly reaching out. Some 20 per cent of Kim Jong-un’s 1 January 2018 New Year address was dedicated to relations with the South, prompting hopes for improvement in bilateral ties. In making the Olympics and other overtures, the DPRK most likely wanted to alert the outside world that it was open to diplomatic engagement when the U.S. was not. The regime likely also is seeking to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul.The approach seems to have borne fruit: following unofficial talks with the North in November and December, South Korea deferred its joint military exercises with the U.S. until after the Olympics and Paralympics.Beyond the games, the regime seeks to tap ethnic solidarity among South Koreans in order to secure assistance and access to the global economy amid the prospect of stricter sanctions. In light of these developments, Moon’s North Korea policy – limited outreach coupled with support for economic and other forms of pressure – presently enjoys strong public backing as the expression of the middle ground in the South. But should inter-Korean talks continue and deepen, Moon could be drawn toward diluting the coercive element, which might expose cracks in his electoral coalition, draw criticism from the right and create a rift with the U.S. B.Not Masters of Their Own Fate Because their country would suffer the most devastating fallout from any conflagration on the peninsula, and because their future is at stake, South Koreans long have resented efforts to sideline Seoul on peninsula issues. Circumventing Korea – an approach known in South Korea as “Korea passing” – has an unhappy history dating back to Japanese colonialism and, immediately thereafter, the U.S.-Soviet division of the peninsula. Yet South Korean leaders also recognise they have only limited control over their fate. Caught between far more powerful actors with their own conflicting agendas, they have little room to manoeuvre. A senior South Korean official said: U.S.-China relations overshadow inter-Korean relations, and unless there is cooperation between these countries there is not much that a medium power such as South Korea can do to change the situation. Moreover, the Korean peninsula is where the strategic national interests of the four great powers – China, Japan, Russia, U.S. – meet, so it would be tough for any government to take charge of South Korea’s policy and to take the initiative under these circumstances. Hence, the mixed reactions to the Trump administration’s new posture. On the one hand, there is widespread support for a significant tightening of the screws on North Korea. As early as August 2017 – before the contours of Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign became clear – South Korean officials suggested they wanted China to shut off the oil pipeline that runs into North Korea under the Yalu River “for a couple of months” before the winter, to see if fuel shortages would be enough to bring North Korea back to negotiations. (The U.S. long has pushed China to cut off this oil supply, likely for similar reasons.) On the other hand, Seoul is opposed to U.S. – or any other – military action against the DPRK. Another aspect of the Trump administration’s posture has sown a sense of deep foreboding in Seoul. U.S. feelings that North Korea’s development of ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland would be a game changer feed South Korean anxiety that – should the U.S. come within North Korean striking range – the extended deterrence Seoul enjoys as part of its alliance with the U.S. would crumble. Put bluntly, South Koreans fear the U.S. would not risk San Francisco for the sake of saving Seoul. South Korea’s policy also must take account of China. Relations with Beijing significantly soured in 2016, following then-President Park’s agreement to deploy the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (or THAAD) on the peninsula. Washington argued this step was needed to bolster protection against North Korean ballistic missiles. But China saw it differently: the radar system associated with THAAD, in its eyes, would significantly degrade its own second-strike ability against the U.S. and thus fundamentally undermine China’s strategic deterrent. In mid-2016, Moon said the strategic costs of THAAD deployment outweighed its benefits, and urged then President Park Geun-hye to reconsider the decision. Once in office, and in the context of North Korean provocations and support for THAAD across the South’s political spectrum, he shifted course. Installation of the missile defence system was completed in September. Throughout 2016 and 2017, South Korea bore the brunt of China’s anti-THAAD campaign: Beijing informally sanctioned several South Korean conglomerates, ejecting them from the Chinese market, blocked access to popular South Korean music and television shows, and halted Chinese tourism to South Korea. Foreign Minister Wang Yi made veiled threats to the effect that deploying THAAD would make South Korea less secure. As U.S.-DPRK tensions escalated, though, Seoul and Beijing agreed to disagree on THAAD, leaving the issue to one side, for now, and improving diplomatic and economic ties. South Korea found further common cause with China in opposition to U.S. military action. At a December 2017 summit, Presidents Xi and Moon announced four common principles for dealing with North Korea: (1) no war on the Korean peninsula; (2) denuclearisation of the peninsula; (3) peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue; and (4) improvement in inter-Korean relations. In view of this rapprochement, it would be to Washington’s strategic detriment to indulge once more in “Korea passing”, as it has recently appeared willing to do. V.Extent and Limits of Chinese Influence No solution to the North Korean crisis is conceivable without China’s assent and proactive support. Its global and regional clout, the lifeline it represents for the regime in Pyongyang, and its ability to loosen or tighten North Korea’s access to critical imports and exports lend it outsize influence. Pyongyang and Washington are reacting accordingly, with the Kim regime chafing whenever it appears that China is not its champion, and the Trump administration trying hard to bring Beijing to its side through a mixture of pressure and inducements. In reality, Beijing’s interests do not align perfectly with either Pyongyang’s or Washington’s, and its sway over both sides is limited. China’s core interests lie in avoiding chaos or instability on its border; preventing unpredictable changes to the strategic balance; and expanding its influence in North East Asia while restricting Washington’s. None of these prerogatives is served by the bluster and provocation Beijing sees emanating from Pyongyang and Washington. With a North Korean leader it cannot control and a U.S. president it struggles to predict, China says both sides are at fault. As a senior Chinese official put it, “we are caught between hardliners in Pyongyang and in Washington. And both are driving us toward war”. As a result, China has called upon the two sides to end the diatribes and engage in dialogue. So far, it has seen only trifling results. Beijing’s channels of communication to Washington remain open, and relations between Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump are superficially positive, if uncertain. But the gap between Beijing and Washington, in terms of both the desired end result and the means of achieving it, remains wide. Even as it espouses denuclearisation of the peninsula as a longer-term objective, China is unwilling to push for that goal now; instead, it is seeking Pyongyang’s assent to a halt to nuclear testing in exchange for a freeze of U.S. military manoeuvres. And while Beijing has proved willing to ratchet up economic pressure on North Korea, it will only go so far, and remains adamantly opposed to any form of military action. The most striking deterioration has been in relations with Pyongyang, whose missiles and nuclear tests China sees as risking the conflict it fears, as well as justifying a heavier U.S. military presence in the region. Accordingly, China has agreed to impose unprecedented sanctions on its smaller neighbour and enforce them more strictly than ever before. Still, there are limits to what Beijing is prepared to do, Washington’s pressure and Pyongyang’s truculence notwithstanding. China’s posture has earned it occasional outbursts from Washington – with Trump lashing out at Beijing after reports surfaced that Chinese ships had transferred oil to North Korean vessels at sea. From Pyongyang, China has gotten a cold shoulder: the foreign ministry’s lead official on the Korean peninsula, Vice Minister Kong Xuanyou, reportedly is unwelcome in the North Korean capital, and, in November 2017, the Communist Party’s envoy, Song Tao, was denied an audience with Kim Jong-un. For all the benefits of its historical closeness to China, the DPRK long has resented what it deems to be the arrogance and chauvinism of its giant patron, which it views as far too willing to exploit North Korean economic weakness. A.Three Nos, and Then Some For the past decade, Beijing’s policy on the Korean peninsula has sought to balance “three nos”: no nuclear weapons, no war and no chaos. Some analysts privately add an unofficial fourth: no unification, out of concern that this eventuality would set up a U.S.-aligned Korean state on China’s north-eastern border. With Sino-DPRK relations at a historical nadir and regional tensions on the rise, the challenge for China is how to reconcile these often-contradictory objectives. Since the DPRK’s first successful nuclear test in 2006, China has seen denuclearisation as a long-term goal to be achieved through economic cooperation with the North, internal North Korean governance reforms and diplomatic engagement to alleviate Pyongyang’s security concerns. Beijing’s approach grows from the conviction that Kim will not forsake his nuclear arsenal in the foreseeable future, persuaded as he is that having the bomb is critical for regime survival. A senior Chinese official said: What North Korea wants is a guarantee, a protection. It sees that South Korea has an American nuclear umbrella and that China will not give it one, so it has concluded that it must build its own. Having set an unrealistic objective, the U.S. has, in China’s view, offered North Korea no viable way out, fuelling rather than discouraging its nuclear aspirations. “For Pyongyang, the current situation is like a tunnel with no exit. Instead of giving it one, the U.S. has decided to beat the driver. The problem with U.S. policy is that it continues to head down a path it should know cannot work”. Nor does China believe that the goal of a nuclear-free peninsula is worth the risk of either war or regime change, both of which would have unpredictable consequences – mass refugee flows, loose weapons of mass destruction, a U.S. military presence north of the 38th parallel or a hostile regime in Pyongyang, to name a few. Senior officials at times express dismay at the Trump administration’s careless talk of war, and are quick to draw parallels to U.S. military misadventures abroad: “Look at what happened in Iraq in 2003. We have learned through history that a people that is attacked has many ways to defend itself and more motivation to do so”. Any course of action provoking chaos also could disrupt the regional trade and investment critical for China’s economic growth and social stability. Pending eventual denuclearisation, Chinese officials believe a nuclear-armed North Korea can be deterred and the risks of nuclear blackmail and proliferation managed. A senior foreign policy official said: “[The DPRK] will only use its nuclear weapon if it fears death. It won’t commit suicide, unless the alternative is to be killed”. For China, therefore, the immediate goal ought to be to defuse tensions through incremental steps. That means Kim halting his worst provocations, and the U.S. adopting a more realistic stance that could offer a viable exit ramp. B.How Far Can Beijing Go? President Trump’s mercurial policymaking and broad hints of military action unquestionably have gotten China’s attention. To that extent, as U.S. officials are quick to point out, they have worked, spurring China to demonstrate it is doing more to bring Kim Jong-un to heel. But beyond these official positions lies a growing and increasingly intense debate among Chinese officials and experts over Korean peninsula policy. More traditionalist and nationalist voices continue to view the U.S. as the greatest geostrategic threat. Deeply suspicious of Washington’s intentions, they blame it for stoking tensions on the peninsula, attributing its hawkish attitude to domestic political considerations or to the goal of justifying a continued U.S. military presence and alliance system aimed at containing China. The Obama administration’s so-called pivot to Asia, the Trump administration’s “America First” doctrine and the deployment of the THAAD missile defence system to South Korea have only deepened this mistrust. Should China acquiesce in U.S. demands for heightened pressure on North Korea, the traditionalists argue, it could pay a steep price, in the form of either the regime’s hostility or collapse. Some also fear that Kim at some point could strike a separate deal with Washington, particularly if relations with Beijing worsen, leaving China out in the cold. In this view, absent a new grand bargain on the balance of power in East Asia, China cannot risk surrendering a valuable bargaining chip. At the other end of the spectrum, more and more Chinese strategists are vocally calling for Beijing to take a harder line toward a North Korean regime that – they contend – no longer respects or advances China’s interests. Pyongyang’s accelerated series of nuclear and missile tests, some of them provocatively coinciding with high-level summits China was hosting, coupled with its hardening political posture (including the 2013 execution of China’s key North Korean interlocutor Jang Song-thaek) gave further impetus to this school of thought. Its proponents have begun to question the benefits of an alliance with a regime that is raising the risk of conflict, chaos and accidental nuclear contamination and whose deeds serve as justification for a larger U.S. military footprint in North East Asia. These thinkers worry that the increasing reach of North Korea’s ICBMs could encourage South Korea and Japan to develop their own nuclear weapons and conventional capabilities, provoking a regional arms race that could threaten China’s ambitions and unsettle the balance of power in North East Asia. According to this line of thought, China’s need to maintain functional relations with the U.S., its growing global status and expectations of global leadership, and the costs of its alliance with Pyongyang outweigh the value of historical ties to its smaller neighbour. China’s policy of economic incentives has failed, these strategists say, and must now be complemented by far harsher punishment and pressure, greater efforts to kick-start negotiations and engagement with the U.S. on contingency plans should efforts at a diplomatic resolution fail, when the risks of conflagration could be high and China’s need to secure its borders urgent. While the precise impact on Chinese policymaking of strategic thinkers less sympathetic to Pyongyang is unclear, President Xi Jinping indisputably has brought – alongside a more assertive approach to governing – a harder line toward North Korea. He has presided over a virtual end to economic cooperation initiatives and been willing to accept successive waves of tighter sanctions. The approach reflects increasingly negative public views of North Korea and anger at Kim Jong-un, as well as anxiety that Pyongyang’s actions could produce outcomes contrary to Chinese interests. It also arguably reflects growing confidence that the People’s Liberation Army and other Chinese security forces are better prepared than in the past to manage a crisis on the peninsula. But none of these shifts should be interpreted as signalling alignment between Xi and Trump regarding how far China will go in pressing its neighbour. The disagreement over ends, discussed above, extends to divergence over means. To begin, Chinese officials make clear their influence over Pyongyang is limited. As one senior official remarked: The U.S. is calling on China to use its leverage. Fine. But China cannot order North Korea to do things it refuses to do and expect to see results any more than it can influence the U.S. Besides, pressure won’t work in the way the U.S. believes. Indeed, why ask China to increase pressure on North Korea when the U.S. has done so much already to press them and it hasn’t succeeded either? More broadly, “the problem of North Korea is a problem made in the U.S. The U.S. should take responsibility to solve it”. In addition, Beijing worries that pushing the DPRK too hard could turn it into an inveterate enemy as opposed to the current fractious yet dependent neighbour with which it has experienced repeated cycles of friction and reconciliation. Indeed, Pyongyang grew significantly warier of China’s role throughout 2017, as Beijing agreed to ever harsher UN Security Council resolutions. Some visitors to the DPRK assess that internal propaganda there is laying the groundwork for increasing hostility toward Beijing. Many analysts fear the depth of North Korea’s resentment, with one reporting that North Korean officials have said “their missiles can fly in any direction”. Intensified pressure could prove counterproductive in other ways. Cutting off the flow of fuel through the pipeline under the Yalu River – a pointed U.S. request – could precipitate a humanitarian catastrophe in North Korea while harming Pyongyang-Beijing relations possibly to the point of rupture. In short, even a leader as powerful as Xi can only do so much. With each round of Security Council sanctions, his room for manoeuvre shrinks. A steady stream of information, documented in media accounts and reports of the UN Panel of Experts, offers evidence of Chinese violations.China has gone further in 2017 than ever before in terms of exerting pressure on the DPRK. But it has stopped short of measures and levels of enforcement that it believes might tip the DPRK into enemy status, war or disintegration, any of which could upset the regional strategic balance in ways that China lacks confidence it could predict, let alone shape to its advantage. The ceiling almost certainly will stay in place. Beijing is loath to sacrifice a familiar status quo for the sake of a plunge into the unknown. VI.Where Japan and Russia Stand Although they play far less central roles, Japan and Russia nevertheless have significant interests in what happens on the Korean peninsula that shape their approach. Alone among regional powers, Japan’s conservative government has strongly backed the U.S.’ “maximum pressure” strategy, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe offering particularly vocal support. While this concord is driven partly by Abe’s desire to ensure relations with Washington are as close as possible and partly by his domestic agenda of enhancing Japanese military power, it also reflects Japan’s fatigue and frustration after decades living in the shadow of North Korea’s threats. Politicians in Tokyo say that dialogue today must discuss denuclearisation to be credible. That said, Tokyo appears to understand the risks of such pressure, including the seeming lack of a diplomatic off-ramp. A senior Japanese official said he was not sure the squeeze would loosen in the event that North Korea froze weapons and missile development. The same official noted escalation of the crisis could compel Japan to stage a mass evacuation of its citizens from harm’s way – some 60,000 of them are present in South Korea on any given day. Russia, which, like China and South Korea, shares a land border with North Korea, is animated by a different set of interests. Open hostilities in the northern half of the Korean peninsula would threaten the stability necessary for economic development of the Russian far east. Vladivostok and other regional cities host tens of thousands of North Korean labourers, and a longstanding agreement covers North Koreans working in Russian logging camps. A Russia-DPRK joint venture company founded in 2008, RasonConTrans, operates a $300 million railway link between the Russian town of Khasan and Rason port in North Korea, offering year-round ice-free access to the Sea of Japan/East Sea for the export of coal and other goods. The project is exempted from the UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea. Two million tons of cargo, mostly coal, were transported via this route in the first ten months of 2017. Russia’s interests also are advanced by thwarting or limiting U.S. influence in East Asia. As a result, Moscow appears content to offer, in some instances, political cover to North Korea as well as economic openings. Moscow also is likely to seize any opportunity to portray itself as responsible global power. Russia has supported, alongside Beijing, the concept of “freeze-for-freeze”, pursuant to which North Korea would halt its nuclear and missile tests in return for the U.S. halting military exercises with, and the deployment of strategic assets to, South Korea. VII.Conclusion North Korean weapons testing and U.S. bellicosity have raised tensions on the Korean peninsula to a level not seen in decades. They also have prompted some North East Asian states to revisit basic assumptions, as the crisis has injected uncertainty into what had been a gradual recalibration of geostrategic relations among North East Asia powers prompted by China’s expanding influence. Core assumptions about the DPRK’s weapons program remain unchanged however, and here the U.S. is to a significant extent out of step with the region. While all of North Korea’s neighbours worry about its nuclear capability and share with the U.S. the objective of its denuclearisation, none believe that the threat it poses is worth risking a preventive military strike that could itself provoke an escalation potentially leading to nuclear confrontation. After a dangerous last half of 2017, tensions have subsided since the beginning of this year. Despite their bluster, both Pyongyang and Washington have taken steps – albeit for now only temporarily – that largely mirror China’s freeze-for-freeze proposal. Kim’s pledge that North Korea will compete jointly with the South in the Winter Olympics and the recent thaw in North-South relations suggest further North Korean tests are unlikely before the Games. Presidents Trump and Moon have deferred joint military exercises until after the Paralympics, which follow the Olympics and run until mid-March. As described in Crisis Group’s companion report, The Korean Peninsula Crisis (II): From Fire and Fury to Freeze-for-Freeze, the priority now is for the U.S. to seek to use the window ahead of the Winter Games to lay the groundwork for a more formal freeze-for-freeze deal and wider diplomatic talks. China, which first proposed the plan and is now the major power in the region, and South Korea, the thaw in whose relations with Pyongyang provides an opening for diplomacy, should redouble efforts to convince Washington to do so. Without such an initiative, however, the respite before the Olympics will likely end shortly afterwards. April, the anniversary of Kim’s grandfather’s birthday, is a month when Pyongyang frequently tests weapons. Joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises could restart around the same time. Given the Trump administration’s repeated threats, any provocation by Pyongyang would leave Washington with a nasty dilemma: back down and risk seeing its threats turn to bluster; or act, potentially eliciting a North Korean response and a perilous escalation. Miss the opportunity before the Olympics, in other words, and the risk of a war with potentially hideous consequences for the region and its people will only increase. https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/north-east-asia/korean-peninsula/293-korean-peninsula-crisis-i-line-fire-and-fury (c) 2018 International Crisis Group

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday that the plight of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar was even worse than media portrayals. More than 688,000 Muslim Rohingya and a few hundred Hindu Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25 last year after the Myanmar military cracked down in the northern part of Rakhine state, amid witness reports of killings, looting and rape, in response to militant attacks on security forces. “This is a tragedy that’s worse than anything that CNN or BBC has been able to portray about what has happened to these people,” Mattis said, speaking to reporters during a trip to Indonesia. “And the United States has been engaged vigorously in the diplomatic realm trying to resolve this, engaged with humanitarian aid, a lot of money going into humanitarian aid.” Many in Buddhist-majority Myanmar regard the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The United Nations described Myanmar’s crackdown as ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, which Myanmar denies. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-usa-mattis/u-s-defense-chief-says-rohingya-plight-even-worse-than-media-portrayals-idUSKBN1FC1NF (c) 2018 Reuters

Myanmar says it's ready for a gradual repatriation of Muslim Rohingya refugees chased out by the Buddhist-majority country's military. Bangladesh says it's preparing for the transfer, but it might need more time. And the refugees themselves? In interviews in recent weeks with dozens of the nearly 700,000 Rohingya who've poured into Bangladesh since August in what's become the world's worst refugee crisis, The Associated Press has found deep skepticism, if not outright terror, about returning to a place where they say their homes were burned, their wives, sisters and mothers raped, and their friends and neighbors slaughtered. The two nations' border seemed calm Tuesday, despite some sense, in Myanmar, at least, that the proposed transfer of refugees might still go forward. "No matter what, from our side, Myanmar is ready to start the process, but Bangladesh may have difficulties, causing a delay in sending refugees back," said Win Myat Aye, Myanmar's social welfare minister. If the desires of the refugees themselves are considered, it won't happen any time soon. In the sprawling camps that cover the hills south of Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, along the border with Myanmar, the Rohingya say they want to return to their burned villages, but only with strong outside monitoring of their safety and living conditions. "How can we go back to Myanmar without anyone guaranteeing our security," said Alam, a Rohingya in the Bulakhali refugee camp in Bangladesh, who, like many Rohingya, goes only by one name. "If we would be given homes in our villages that were burned, then we will go back." More than 680,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh to escape a crackdown by Myanmar's military that began following attacks by a Rohingya militant group on Aug. 25. The United Nations and the United States have described the crackdown as "ethnic cleansing." The U.N. human rights chief has also suggested that it may be genocide. The two countries have agreed to a two-year repatriation process set to begin Tuesday. But officials in Bangladesh on Monday said a number of issues remained unresolved, in particular worries that refugees were being forced to return. Abul Kalam, a Bangladesh relief official, said by phone from Cox's Bazar that officials are preparing lists of potential returnees. "We are doing our work. This is a human process, and it needs the preparing of lists, proper verification, coordination with Myanmar and other departments and agencies here," he said. "Both sides have agreed to execute it and the process has started. I don't see any problem in implementing the deal." There's little sign of that, however, at the border. A local government official, Khaleda Begum, called the border calm. She told the AP that she saw two men and one woman with their belongings enter Bangladesh in the morning from Myanmar. "I asked them who they are," she said. "They told me they were coming from Myanmar to get to Kutupalong (refugee) camp." Win Myat Aye said Myanmar has provided Bangladesh with a list of 700 Rohingya and 400 Hindu refugees who have been verified as eligible for repatriation. Only refugees with identity documents — which most Rohingya lack — will be allowed back into Myanmar. Many in Myanmar see Rohingya as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, although many families have lived in Myanmar for generations. They have been denied citizenship, freedom of movement and other basic rights. Though a total of more than 1 million Rohingya Muslims are living in refugee camps in Bangladesh, international aid workers, local officials and the refugees themselves say preparations for repatriation are far from complete. Myanmar Union Minister Thaung Tun told reporters Tuesday that his country is "ready to receive those who will be coming across the border." Thaung Tun said Myanmar is currently prepared to receive 300 returnees a day and "the number could increase based on the progress of the first batch that will be coming across." The two countries have signed an agreement to begin sending people home in "safety, security and dignity," but rights groups have expressed worry about Rohingya returning to villages they left only months ago in terror. According to the U.N. refugee agency and other rights groups, Rohingya are still fleeing across the border into Bangladesh, although the numbers are smaller than in previous months. "As of today, the necessary safeguards for potential returnees are absent, and there are continued restrictions on access for aid agencies, the media and other independent observers," UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said in Geneva on Tuesday. https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2018-01-23/myanmar-says-its-ready-to-begin-rohingya-repatriation (c) 2018 US News

Holocaust survivors have joined MPs to back a move to open an atrocity prevention centre at the new national Holocaust Memorial being built in Westminster. At an event attended by the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, on Monday, Martin Stern, a Terezin camp survivor, stressed the need to for the new memorial in the shadow of Parliament to commemorate modern-day atrocities such as those in Rwanda and Bosnia, as well recording the slaughter of six million Jews in the Shoah. “There are people who feel that the Holocaust is unique and should not be used for any other purposes - I strongly disagree,” said Dr Stern. “The whole point of putting a Holocaust Memorial right next to the Houses of Parliament is to teach a lesson and if that lesson is not applied in the future it invalidates the Holocaust Memorial. “Nobody can bring back the six million who were killed – all we can do is work upon the future.” A short film, made by the Aegis Trust, was shown at the event and featured survivors Agnes Kaposi, Steven Frank, Hanneke Dye and Simon Winston arguing the case for an atrocity prevention centre. Addressing the meeting, which took place in the run-up to Holocaust Memorial Day, the Home Secretary said: “It was very important to be here today. “I know what an important week this is -remembering the Holocaust and having the opportunity to think about genocide, what happens then, and how we stop it happening in the future. “It is not enough for us to read about it in history books or to see it in films, the stories of survivors are so powerful.” Recalling her own visit to Auschwitz, Ms Rudd praised the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust, before adding:” We know this sort of terrible genocide doesn’t take place in a vacuum. “It takes place after the build-up of hate, of antisemitism, of the type of violence that we still see around the world.” Also speaking at the event, which was hosted by Labour MP Alison McGovern and Tom Tugendhat MP, co-chairs of the the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for the Prevention of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, were Lord Alf Dubs, Sir Peter Bazalgette, chair of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, and Philippe Sands QC. Lords Dubs spoke of his “guilt” at visiting refugee camps in Bangladesh during the 1980s and then failing to take any action to help. He said: “I took people to these camps and what did I do? I said a few things. That’s an example of what we should not be doing – looking and then walking away from it. “The purpose of what we are doing here today is trying to influence policy so that we can intervene before genocide happens.” Sir Peter stressed how important he felt the learning centre would be for the Westminster Holocaust Memorial. He said 112 survivors accounts had been filmed for use at the learning centre in what he called “future-proof video”. He said: “In my opinion Holocaust denial in the digital world we live in is going to increase rather than decrease. It is my greatest fear. “When we did those interviews we had a young person aged 18 physically witness them. And we had passports and the personal address details of survivors as well. “We wanted young people to witness something that was real and can’t be denied.” Dr James Smith, president of the National Holocaust Centre and chief executive of the Aegis Trust, added: “No memorial can begin to represent the enormity of the destruction of the Jews under the Nazis, but the proposed UK Holocaust Memorial right next to the mother of parliaments can be a powerful statement in our country’s response to the legacy of the Holocaust. “However, challenges both at home and abroad of white supremacism and violence based on identity demand that the UK Holocaust Memorial be more than a statement. I welcome the intention of the UK memorial to work with established Holocaust organisations. Together we must find ways to better understand how hatred, atrocities and genocide can be prevented.” https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/survivors-back-bid-to-include-modern-day-genocides-in-national-holocaust-memorial-1.457275 (c) 2018 The Jewish Chronicle

At one time Britain ruled Sudan as a colony (under so-called “Condominium Rule” with Egypt, 1898 – 1956); now Britain is engaged in a despicable campaign of rapprochement with the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party (NIF/NCP) regime in Khartoum despite its unrelenting barbarism, its support for radical Islam and terrorism, and its serial genocidal counter-insurgencies against the people of Sudan’s peripheries. In the interest of securing Khartoum’s assistance in controlling African migration to the European continent, Britain is willing to say and do almost anything to secure good relations with a regime that for the past 28 years has ruled only by means of the most brutal tyranny—a tyranny now on daily display in confronting popular demonstrations over the consequences of NIF/NCP destruction of the Sudanese economy, producing among other things a catastrophic rate of inflation with its 2018 budget. Britain once seemed eager to halt genocide in Darfur, one of several sites where the NIF/NCP has waged its genocidal counter-insurgency wars. Britain’s representatives at a September 2004 meeting of the Parliament of the European Union were among those, in an overwhelming vote (566 – 6), who declared Khartoum’s violent targeting of non-Arab/African villages and peoples was “tantamount to genocide.” That was then; Britain today seems more interested in giving way to European xenophobic impulses. With the last major military resistance in Darfur overcome by means of the extraordinarily cruel and ruthless Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, Khartoum has turned its sights not to ending violence against the non-Arab/African, but to a “disarmament campaign” run chiefly by the same RSF that wrought such terrible destruction from 2013 to the present, and continues to be central in ongoing violence against civilians (see below). The results have been predictable, and the victims continue to be the very non-Arab/African civilians supposedly protected by this spurious and hopelessly ineffective “disarmament campaign,” which in September entered its “compulsory,” i.e., “forcible,” phase. But the fact that violence and consequent insecurity in Darfur continues at an extremely high levels, with those responsible for disarmament also responsible for most of the violence, seemed not to trouble the UK’s special envoy to Sudan and South Sudan, Chris Trott, in his celebration of Khartoum’s “disarmament campaign”: British envoy hails Darfur disarmament campaign, Sudan Tribune, January 22, 2018 (KHARTOUM) The United Kingdom special envoy to Sudan and South Sudan Chris Trott has praised the role of the government disarmament campaign in improving the security situation in Darfur. On Monday, Trott met with the chairman of the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM) Tijani Sissi in the presence of the British Ambassador to Sudan, Michael Aron. The LJM political and information officer Ahmed Fadl Abdallah told the official news agency SUNA, the meeting discussed Sudan’s peace process and in particular Darfur talks as well as the disarmament campaign. According to Abdallah, Trott hailed the LJM efforts to achieve peace and stability in the country, praising the government decision to collect the illicit weapons in Darfur. Last August, the Sudanese authorities launched a six-month disarmament campaign to eliminate illegal weapons in the conflict-affected areas in Sudan, particularly in Darfur region. The Sudanese authorities say the spread of weapons among the rival tribes in the region is one of the main causes of Darfur’s instability. There are several notable features of this loathsomely disingenuous praising: The so-called “Liberation and Justice Movement” (LJM) is not and never has been a representative Darfuri body: it was the 2011 creation of former Libyan strongman Muamar Gadhafi and former, wholly incompetent U.S. special envoy for Sudan, Scott Gration (a retired air force general who was President Obama’s first of three special envoys, all determined to betray the people of Darfur). The LJM was a cobbled together affair of rebel fragments and disaffected former rebel members, and in no way represented—then or now—Darfuri civil society or the major armed rebel movements. Its sole purpose was to serve as signatory to the July 2011 “Doha Document for Peace in Darfur” (DDPD) a diplomatic “dead letter” from the moment it was signed—yet promptly endorsed by the UK and others. Notably, there was no meaningful representation of Darfuri civil society in Doha, and the talks were boycotted by all major groups. Britain and others expediently accepted the DDPD as viable for an unconscionably long time, even as it did not nothing to address the primary issues in need of resolution for peace to come to Darfur—primarily a clear plan for restitution of farmlands to those who had lost them to Sudan Armed Forces and Arab militia (“janjaweed”) predations during the previous years of the genocide—and would continue to lose them following the signing of the DDPD. See | • “Men With No Mercy: Rapid Support Forces Attacks against Civilians in Darfur, Sudan,” Human Rights Watch, September 2015 | https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/sudan0915_insert_lowres_with_cover.pdf • “Changing the Demography”: Violent Expropriation and Destruction of Farmlands in Darfur, November 2014 – November 2015,” Eric Reeves, author | Maya Baca, research and editing, December 1, 2015 | http://wp.me/p45rOG-1P4 The office of the U.S. special envoy for the Sudans in the U.S. State Department will now privately acknowledge what has long been clear: that there is no way to make the DDPD a basis for a just peace in Darfur; and yet some European countries—including the UK—continued to flog the DDPD as a viable roadmap for peace, on the model of the previously failed peace attempt (2009) by Thabo Mbeki as head of the “African Union High-Level Panel for Peace in Darfur.” The latter is a wholly worthless body, with no diplomatic success to its credit, that continues to march aimlessly along and thus make other diplomatic initiatives more difficult—and giving excuses to those who have no intention of offering the substantial diplomatic resources that would be required to bring real energy and possibility to the Darfur peace process. Going even further back, we see both British and U.S. support for the disastrous Darfur Peace Agreement of May 2006 (Abuja, Nigeria), signed by only one of the major rebel groups (and that under extraordinary diplomatic duress, chiefly engineered by the U.S.). The upshot is that Britain no longer really cares what happens to the people of Darfur or the negotiation of a just peace that includes those who have suffered most during fifteen long years of genocidal violence. Britain no longer cares about the viciously repressive measures used by the Khartoum regime. Indeed, for those who follow closely UK Home Office asylum policies for Sudanese, including non-Arab/African Darfuris, it is clear that the former colonial ruler is perfectly happy to repatriate forcibly any Sudanese who don’t meet increasingly impossible standards for political asylum and protection from ethnic targeting in Sudan. All the UK really cares about is helping the U.S. secure counter-terrorism intelligence from Khartoum, and keeping Africans out of the European continent. Here we should recall the remarkable revelations by Der Spiegel in May 2016 of a March 2016 secret meeting (the UK was at the time, of course, still part of the EU and the “Brexit” vote had not occurred). It does more than anything to explain Envoy Trott’s praise of Khartoum yesterday: “Questionable Deal: EU to Work with [Sudan’s] Despot to Keep Refugees Out,” Der Spiegel (May 13, 2016) by Jürgen Daklamp and Maximilian Poll | http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/eu-to-work-with-despot-in-sudan-to-keep-refugees-out-a-1092328.html In an effort to help keep refugees from Africa at bay, the EU is planning to deliver personal registration equipment to Sudan, whose president is wanted on war crimes charges. Germany is leading the way. The ambassadors of the 28 European Union member states had agreed to secrecy. “Under no circumstances” should the public learn what was said at the talks that took place on March 23rd, the European Commission warned during the meeting of the Permanent Representatives Committee. A staff member of EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini even warned that Europe’s reputation could be at stake. [See especially last paragraph of this extraordinary dispatch: The German concentration camps of World War II were “closed camps,” and we may be sure that the closed camps Germany builds in Sudan will again be used to “concentrate” people on an ethnic and possibly religious basis. The plans are tailor-made for the needs of Khartoum’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS)—full article appears below—ER] If Germany was leading the way in providing registration and surveillance equipment and creating “closed camps” (effectively, concentration camps), Britain offered no resistance. The same cynicism is evident in yesterday’s comments by UK special envoy Chris Trott.Trott is either deliberately refusing to acknowledge, or is simply ignorant of, the continuing violence in Darfur, primarily by the RSF who are responsible for the disarmament campaign. Some recommended reading for Mr. Trott: • RSF commander accused of abductions in South Darfur | Radio Dabanga, January 16, 2018 | EL SALAM, SOUTH DARFUR • Violent Central Darfur weapons search continues | Radio Dabanga, January 12, 2018 | NIERTETI • Three people wounded in Central Darfur weapons search | Radio Dabanga, January 11, 2018 | NIERTETI / TUR • Darfur Military Intelligence continues detention campaign in Nierteti | Radio Dabanga, January 10, 2018 | NIERTETI • RSF force Darfur merchants to set food prices | Radio Dabanga, January 23, 2018 | GARSILA, Central Darfur • Death toll in Central Darfur camp shootings rises to five | Radio Dabanga, January 23, 2018 | ZALINGEI • ‘Four shot dead in Central Darfur camp protests’: Coordinator | Radio Dabanga, January 22, 2018 | ZALINGEI • Two women raped during Darfur attack, UNAMID confirms | Radio Dabanga, January 19, 2018 | ZALINGEI • Autopsy confirms death by torture of Darfur detainee | Radio Dabanga, January 19, 2018 | GIREIDA • Eight Nierteti detainees transferred to Central Darfur capital | Radio Dabanga, January 18, 2018 | ZALINGEI • Released Darfur detainees ‘forced to report daily’ | Radio Dabanga, January 16, 2018 | NIERTETI • Sudan: Reports of torture in South Darfur, South Kordofan | Radio Dabanga, January 15, 2018 | GIREIDA / DELLING • Omda of Nierteti, three others held by Military Intelligence in Central Darfur | Radio Dabanga, January 14, 2018 | NIERTETI COMPENDIA OF RECENT VIOLENCE IN DARFUR • Unrelenting Violence in Darfur: Recent Reporting by Radio Dabanga, January 11, 2018 | https://wp.me/s45rOG-8415 • Unrelenting Violence in Darfur: Recent Reporting by Radio Dabanga, December 28, 2017 | https://wp.me/p45rOG-2b4 • Ominous Signs in Khartoum’s “Disarmament” Campaign in Darfur, December 12, 2017 | https://wp.me/p45rOG-2aM • Rape as a Weapon of War Continues Unchecked in Darfur, December 18, 2017 | https://wp.me/p45rOG-2aA • As UNAMID deploys out of Darfur: ethnically-targeted violence continues on a wide scale | A bi-weekly compendium, No. 5, December 4, 2017 | http://wp.me/p45rOG-29s • As UNAMID deploys out of Darfur: ethnically-targeted violence continues on a wide scale | A bi-weekly compendium, No. 4, November 18, 2017 | http://wp.me/p45rOG-28a [ Three other biweekly compendia of violence in recent months precede these…see www.sudanreeves.org ] APPENDIX: Der Spiegel (May 13, 2016), “Questionable Deal: EU to Work with [Sudan’s] Despot to Keep Refugees Out” by Jürgen Daklamp and Maximilian Poll | http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/eu-to-work-with-despot-in-sudan-to-keep-refugees-out-a-1092328.html In an effort to help keep refugees from Africa at bay, the EU is planning to deliver personal registration equipment to Sudan, whose president is wanted on war crimes charges. Germany is leading the way. [See especially last paragraph of this extraordinary dispatch: The German concentration camps of World War II were “closed camps,” and we may be sure that the closed camps Germany builds in Sudan will again be used to “concentrate” people on an ethnic and possibly religious basis. The plans are tailor-made for the needs of Khartoum’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS)—ER] The ambassadors of the 28 European Union member states had agreed to secrecy. “Under no circumstances” should the public learn what was said at the talks that took place on March 23rd, the European Commission warned during the meeting of the Permanent Representatives Committee. A staff member of EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini even warned that Europe’s reputation could be at stake. Under the heading “TOP 37: Country fiches,” the leading diplomats that day discussed a plan that the EU member states had agreed to: They would work together with dictatorships around the Horn of Africa in order to stop the refugee flows to Europe — under Germany’s leadership. When it comes to taking action to counter the root causes of flight in the region, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said, “I strongly believe that we must improve peoples’ living conditions.” The EU’s new action plan for the Horn of Africa provides the first concrete outlines: For three years, $40 million ($45 million) is to be paid out to eight African countries from the Emergency Trust Fund, including Sudan. Minutes from the March 23 meetings and additional classified documents obtained by SPIEGEL and the German public television station ARD show “Report Mainz” show that the focus of the project is border protection. To that end, equipment is to be provided to the countries in question. War Crimes and Torture The International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges relating to his alleged role in genocide and crimes against humanity in the Darfur conflict. Amnesty International also claims that the Sudanese secret service has tortured members of the opposition. And the United States accuses the country of providing financial support to terrorists. Nevertheless, documents relating to the project indicate that Europe want to send cameras, scanners and servers for registering refugees to the Sudanese regime in addition to training their border police and assisting with the construction of two camps with detention rooms for migrants. The German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development has confirmed that action plan is binding, although no concrete decisions have yet been made regarding its implementation. The German development agency GIZ is expected to coordinate the project. The organization, which is a government enterprise, has experience working with authoritarian countries. In Saudi Arabia, for example, German federal police are providing their Saudi colleagues with training in German high-tech border installations. The money for the training comes not directly from the federal budget but rather from GIZ. When it comes to questions of finance, the organization has become a vehicle the government can use to be less transparent, a government official confirms. Important Route An important refugee route runs through Sudan, Africa’s third largest country. Migrants from Eritrea, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic all seek to make their way via Khartoum to Libya, where they catch boats to Europe. The United Nations says that there are currently 4 million people in flight in the area. In recent years, Europe has delegated responsibility for those seeking protection to third countries, like Morocco, Ukraine and, more recently, Turkey. Now, with al-Bashir, the job of controlling migration is being turned over to a suspected war criminal. “A regime that destabilized the region and drove hundreds of thousands of people to flee is now supposed to stem the refugee problem for the EU,” criticizes Marina Peter, an expert on the Horn of Africa region at the German relief organization Bread for the World. The plan is also controversial within the EU. The “risks” listed in the action plan includes the fact that equipment financed by the Emergency Trust Fund could be abused by repressive regimes and used in the oppression of the civilian population. A general with Sudan’s Interior Ministry told SPIEGEL and ARD that technology would not just be used to register refugees, but also all Sudanese. The regime’s goal appears to be the absolute surveillance of its people. Can Sudan Be a Serious Partner? Experts like Peter also express doubts about whether Sudanese leader al-Bashir is prepared to take serious action against migrant smugglers. Human Rights Watch has claimed in reports that the Sudanese regime itself works together with criminal networks. The report alleges that the police and military have sold refugees to human traffickers. The European Commission, meanwhile, has warned EU ambassadors in a classified memo that Sudan is primarily interested in polishing its image abroad. Germany and the other EU member states nevertheless seem determined to push ahead with their pact with the despot. Sudanese authorities say there have been numerous visitors from Germany in recent weeks who were there to discuss the construction of [NB] closed camps. When questioned about its role, Germany’s GIZ issued a written reply that there were no concrete plans in the country yet. (c) 2018 SUDAN Research, Analysis, and Advocacy

What’s new? The U.S. has responded to North Korean weapons tests with a campaign of “maximum pressure”, involving economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure on states with ties to North Korea and, most visibly, bellicose rhetoric that, together with military exercises, overflights and posturing, aims to signal Washington’s willingness to take preventive military action. Why does it matter? Even the harshest sanctions will not, in themselves, prompt Pyongyang to slow its weapons program within a reasonable timeframe, and they could do enormous harm to its people. By threatening or, worse, carrying out military strikes, the U.S. risks provoking a war with disastrous humanitarian, economic and geopolitical repercussions. What should be done? The U.S., working with regional powers, notably China, should explore a resumption of U.S.-North Korean talks and a deal whereby Pyongyang freezes its most sensitive tests and Washington freezes some military exercises and deployments, while fudging the issue of Pyongyang’s nuclear status. This could presage negotiations toward a durable resolution. Executive Summary The risk of catastrophic war on the Korean peninsula is higher than at any time in recent history. The “maximum pressure” strategy the U.S. has pursued in response to North Korea’s weapons tests could badly backfire. Its first track, economic pressure through sanctions, will not, on its own, prompt Pyongyang to slow down its weapons program within a reasonable timeframe, and could cause considerable harm to its people. The second, threatening or, worse, carrying out military action, risks uncontrolled escalation. Both tracks are hobbled by Washington’s objective – North Korea’s denuclearisation – which, while desirable, is unrealistic for the foreseeable future. Instead, the U.S. should use the reprieve provided by the February 2018 Winter Olympics, as well as Pyongyang’s need to improve the economy in 2018, North Korea’s 70th anniversary year, to explore resuming bilateral U.S.-North Korean talks. These would seek a more sustainable de-escalatory deal, whereby North Korea freezes its most sensitive tests and the U.S. some military exercises and deployments, while fudging the issue of Pyongyang’s nuclear status. This could presage negotiations aimed at a more durable solution. All of this requires the U.S. and regional powers, chiefly China, to work closely together. Since 2016, the quickening pace of North Korea’s nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests has confirmed both its determination to achieve nuclear deterrence and significant advances in its arsenal. A new missile, tested in November 2017, in principle could strike U.S. cities, though most credible estimates say Pyongyang will not perfect the missiles’ re-entry systems or master the technology to reliably deliver nuclear warheads atop those missiles until one to five years from now. Top U.S. officials fear Pyongyang’s progress will shift the strategic balance in North Korea’s favour and limit U.S. options. Determined to prevent that, Washington has adopted a “maximum pressure” strategy, involving economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure on states with ties to North Korea and, most visibly, combative rhetoric that, together with military exercises, overflights and posturing, aims to signal Washington’s willingness to take preventive military action. U.S. officials cite China’s acceptance of harsher sanctions as evidence the strategy is working. Maybe so, but maximum pressure is unlikely to bring much more than that and could provoke much worse. Sanctions have limited effect and will take time to bite, as U.S. officials themselves recognise. Recent UN sanctions – the Security Council’s toughest yet – will seriously hurt the North Korean populace long before they threaten the regime and are unlikely to keep pace with its weapons tests. More importantly, even the harshest sanctions will not induce North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to surrender a nuclear program he views as critical to his survival. If economic pressure has limits, bellicosity carries considerable risk. Some U.S. officials float a “bloody nose” theory: a targeted U.S. strike, they argue, could curb the regime’s nuclear ambitions or set back its program without prompting retaliation. They might well be wrong, and that would be an error with incalculable consequence. Kim could decide to hit back: to signal that the U.S. cannot strike at will, to avoid seeming weak to his generals or because he believes that his retaliation, in turn, would not elicit a U.S. response. Even an asymmetric counter-strike would force the U.S. to either back off and nurse its own bloody nose, thus eroding its deterrence, or respond to Kim’s response and spark an unpredictable and uncontrollable escalation. Even if belligerence is a bluff, designed to spook China to exert greater pressure on North Korea, or to push North Korea to change its own calculations, it is a dangerous one. Raising the temperature risks either side mistaking a test or exercise for the real thing. Brinkmanship has a shelf life: the longer threats are followed by inaction, the hollower they seem and the greater the pressure to make good on them. North Korea will participate in the Winter Olympics, but – absent an understanding with the U.S. – after those Games, its tests will likely resume, perhaps coinciding with joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises and putting pressure on the U.S. to respond. That is a terrifying prospect. Estimating precise costs of war on the Korean peninsula is impossible, but even conservative projections are staggering. A conventional North Korean attack on Seoul could kill hundreds of thousands in days. Add to that the risk that the regime fires missiles at heavily populated Japanese cities or launches a chemical, biological or even – were it to sense its demise – nuclear attack. Displacement would be massive. Reconstruction would take a generation. Any conflict could draw in China. Even if a war damaging the world’s largest economies did not prompt a global economic crisis, its effects would reverberate for years. North East Asia would be hit hardest, but the U.S. would not be spared: tens of thousands of civilians endangered, the military stretched, coffers emptied, commerce disrupted, credibility shattered and influence diminished. Thus far, the Trump administration has not prepared the country for such a war, and the U.S. people appear broadly unaware of both risks and costs. The limits of sanctions, perils of bellicosity and horrific toll of confrontation are compelling reasons for all parties to seek an off-ramp. An opportunity exists: the forthcoming Winter Games have prompted both sides toward parallel de-escalation. This window should be used to enable the U.S and North Korea to resume bilateral talks aimed at prolonging and formalising a freeze-for-freeze understanding. The following sequence could be used to achieve that goal and pave the way for a more ambitious bilateral diplomatic process: An informal halt to provocations: The thaw in Pyongyang’s relations with Seoul suggests more weapons tests are unlikely before or during the Olympics. U.S. President Donald Trump and his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in already have suspended joint military exercises until after the Games. This first step requires only that both sides stick to the script, refraining from provocative acts and muting belligerent rhetoric. Developing a “freeze-for-freeze” deal: Meanwhile, the U.S. and regional parties – notably China and South Korea, but also optimally Japan and Russia – would coordinate their positions on a formal U.S.-North Korean understanding expanding upon the informal one. This arrangement likely would include North Korea freezing all nuclear tests and intercontinental and intermediate-range missile tests that extend their capability of striking the mainland U.S. and U.S. territories in the Pacific, as well as desisting from overflying other countries’ airspace. For its part, the U.S. would redesign its joint exercises with South Korea: freezing those that particularly rankle Pyongyang (such as “decapitation drills” aimed at Kim and exercises whose timing Pyongyang finds particularly insulting, such as during national days, planting or harvest seasons); and scaling back some regular exercises; while freezing the deployment of some strategic assets to South Korea. A role for China: Beijing, which has mooted a freeze-for-freeze since last summer, will have to play an important facilitation role, despite its reluctance to do so. As a regional and global power, and North Korea’s economic lynchpin, it could sweeten the proposed deal for Pyongyang and Washington, offering the former incentives for accepting it and promising the latter to hold the Kim regime accountable for any rejection or violation. Here Beijing could work with Moscow (which largely shares its view of the crisis): Pyongyang’s relations with Beijing have soured but it still needs China and welcomes Russian diplomats. Launch of formal bilateral talks: After the Olympics, the informal freeze would continue and formal U.S.-North Korean talks commence. These talks would first seek to reach agreement on the freeze-for-freeze deal described above before moving to broader issues concerning the nuclear program and its safety. In entering these talks, the U.S. would stand by its position that the ultimate outcome must be denuclearisation of the peninsula, a view with which North Korea would disagree. Such a deal would be imperfect. All sides would sacrifice something. But they would gain, too. Kim would stop tests, but could claim to have achieved his goals and pivot to fulfilling economic pledges equally critical for his legitimacy at home. President Trump could claim he had significantly slowed development of nuclear-tipped missiles able to hit the U.S. homeland – arguably a better score sheet than his predecessor, all the more so if subsequent negotiations succeed. For South Korea, Japan and Russia, de-escalation would reduce the risks inherent to both U.S. military action and Pyongyang’s tests. Beijing risks further fuelling Pyongyang’s hostility but gets to de-escalate the crisis, preserve a status quo that works to its benefit and burnish its claims of global leadership. All would lower the threat of a war that could devastate the region and its people and provoke dreadful geopolitical upheaval. Seoul/Beijing/Washington/New York/Brussels, 23 January 2018 I.Introduction The threat of war on the Korean peninsula is higher than at any time in recent history, due to the combination of nuclear and missile testing by the Democratic Republic of North Korea (DPRK) and the increasing bellicosity of the U.S. Since 2016, Pyongyang has conducted two nuclear tests, one on 9 September 2016, the other on 3 September 2017. In the summer of 2017, it twice tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the Hwasong-14. In November, it tested another, the Hwasong-15, which was noticeably larger and appeared to have a more mobile and sophisticated launch mechanism. In principle, the latter could strike any locale in the continental U.S., a possibility that some in the U.S. see as a strategic game changer. Pyongyang does not yet appear to be capable of fitting nuclear warheads onto missiles or to have mastered technology that protects those warheads during re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere; one well-informed observer argues that it is several years from being able to do either. Also debated is the number of nuclear devices in North Korea’s stockpile. The U.S. has responded to North Korean weapons testing with a campaign of “maximum pressure”: economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure on states with ties to North Korea and, most visibly, bellicose rhetoric. On 8 August 2017, Trump vowed that, were North Korea to threaten the U.S., he would respond with “fire, fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before”. Soon thereafter, his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, warned that the U.S. “cannot tolerate, will not tolerate, a threat to the United States from North Korea involving nuclear weapons”. After meeting White House officials, Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that the U.S. is “closer to a nuclear war with North Korea” than ever before. U.S. officials speak of a narrow strike aimed at either sending a message of deterrence to Kim or damaging his nuclear program. Within the administration, views on North Korea policy appear to vary, with McMaster widely perceived as more hawkish and the secretaries of state and defence, Rex Tillerson and James Mattis, respectively, believed to be more cautious. The administration’s signals on diplomacy have been mixed. Tillerson at one point suggested direct and unconditional talks with Pyongyang but was quickly countermanded by the White House.Trump has punctuated his insults of Kim with sporadic suggestions he would be willing to meet the North Korean leader; in one case, he said he expected the two of them would get along well. Privately, U.S. officials and unofficial intermediaries claim an offer for direct, unconditional talks was made and that North Korea rejected it. Nor is it clear whether threats of military action are sincere, reflecting conviction that the U.S. cannot live with the strategic shift that North Korea’s capability to strike the continent with a nuclear device would bring; a bluff, aimed at persuading China to exert greater pressure on Pyongyang, and at getting Pyongyang to curb its nuclear ambitions; or a combination of both. Overall, though, the net effect of the threats has been to project a readiness to use force that, while falling far short of a public relations campaign to prepare the country for war, has shifted the national conversation about how far the administration might go to achieve its objectives. In North East Asian capitals, Pyongyang’s weapons tests, along with alarm that a preventive U.S. strike might provoke North Korean retaliation and an uncontrollable escalation, have set in motion an evolving geostrategic recalibration. For its part, Pyongyang, whether out of fear of U.S. military action, or as part of a longer-term divide-and-conquer strategy, has opened indirect channels of communication with the U.S., while apparently rejecting direct talks. It began by permitting a number of high-profile U.S. journalists into the country as tensions peaked in the early fall of 2017. Track II talks and discussions through a channel involving the U.S. special representative for North Korea Policy, Joseph Y. Yun, also have taken place, although Pyongyang questioned the value of these talks on the grounds that only Trump can speak for Trump. After several months of growing tension, North Korea used more formal routes to disseminate its mixed message. UN Political Affairs Chief Jeffrey Feltman, a U.S. citizen and the highest-ranking UN official to visit Pyongyang since 2011, held fifteen and a half hours of talks with North Korean diplomats including Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho in Pyongyang in early December. Feltman came away convinced that North Korea wanted “some kind of policy dialogue after not having had [one] for a long time”. But he reportedly concluded that Pyongyang was not yet ready for direct talks with the U.S. – possibly because Kim first wanted to make more progress on his nuclear program. Over the past month, relations between North and South Korea, often a bellwether for dynamics between the U.S. and North Korea, have thawed. The South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, responded quickly and positively to Kim Jong-un’s announcement in his 1 January 2018 New Year Address that North Korea was willing to participate in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games, hosted in the South Korean city of Pyeongchang. Moon also welcomed Kim’s suggestion that the two Koreas meet to discuss the Games. Kim’s proposal was preceded by several informal contacts between officials from the two Koreas; around the same time, South Korea announced it would delay joint military exercises with the U.S. until after the Olympics and subsequent Paralympics. The day after Kim’s address, Moon offered to hold high-level talks with North Korea on 9 January; in order to plan the meeting, Pyongyang reconnec­ted an inter-Korean phone line that had been out of use for 23 months. In a joint statement after the 9 January meeting, the two sides stated they were committed to the success of the Winter Games, had agreed to military-to-military talks to ease tensions and wished to resolve issues through negotiations, including a high-level meeting. The Trump administration, which has welcomed the inter-Korean dialogue and agreed to postpone joint exercises, now faces a dilemma: continue with maximum pressure, including by escalating, presumably after the Winter Games, its belligerent rhetoric; or use the short window ahead of the Games to seek a way out of the crisis. This report, one of two published simultaneously on the Korean crisis, examines that choice and what it means for the crisis, for states in North East Asia and for the U.S. itself. It looks at the gains, limits and dangers of the administration’s maximum pressure strategy, sketches the potential toll of a war on the Korean peninsula and offers a path to dialling down the tension. Its companion, The Korean Peninsula Crisis (I): In the Line of Fire and Fury, provides background, examining perspectives from Pyongyang, Washington, Seoul and Beijing, as well as Tokyo and Moscow. II.Limits of Economic Pressure The first track of maximum pressure has succeeded in tightening the economic noose around North Korea’s neck. Over the latter half of 2017, the U.S. shepherded through the UN Security Council the toughest sanctions yet, leaving precious little of the North Korean economy untouched. These measures would sanction an estimated 90 per cent of the routes by which the impoverished nation earns its hard currency. In concert, the U.S. has applied increasing pressure on China, the lynchpin of North Korea’s economy, to enforce the UN sanctions strictly. Secondary U.S. sanctions on Chinese entities aim to curtail trade with North Korea and, together with U.S. diplomatic pressure and fear of U.S. military action, have pushed Beijing to do as Washington wished. Economic strangulation, the administration hopes – albeit not with great conviction – will leave Pyongyang sucking so much wind it will temper its nuclear aspirations. Sanctions have their limits, however, as U.S. officials themselves recognise. First, the noose will take time to tighten, and the civilian population will be gasping for air long before the regime, which has a track record of withstanding its people’s suffering. The effects of sanctions, in other words, are unlikely to keep pace with the regime’s weapons development. Second, sanctions almost certainly will not bite as hard as the U.S. would like, given China’s reluctance to enforce them fully. Partly Beijing fears the humanitarian repercussions of doing so. Mostly, though, it wants to avoid precipitating the regime’s collapse or incurring its enmity, or otherwise upsetting the regional strategic balance. True, Chinese President Xi Jinping has brought an indisputably harder line toward North Korea. Beijing’s patience with Pyongyang’s missiles and nuclear tests is wearing thin; Chinese officials view these efforts as adventurism. Combined with U.S. pressure, Beijing’s annoyance has led it to curtail economic cooperation initiatives and enforce sanctions more rigorously than ever before. But Xi will only go so far; Beijing’s perceptions of its core strategic interests are unlikely to change. Even as China insists that it is “comprehensively, accurately, faithfully and strictly implementing the Security Council’s DPRK-related resolutions”, reports by journalists and the UN Panel of Experts say otherwise. More importantly, even the toughest sanctions will not persuade the Kim regime itself to surrender a weapons program it regards as critical to its own survival. Alone, no sanctions can change that calculation, all the more so if inconsistent Chinese enforcement takes the edge off. Severe sanctions bring still another potential pitfall: they will induce further deprivation among a population already ravaged by it. While famine remains unlikely, the humanitarian situation is dire: in 2016, 41 per cent of the population was estimated to be undernourished; infant mortality, under-five mortality and maternal mortality rates were well above the global average; and rates of tuberculosis infection were among the world’s highest. Over time, even sanctions that carefully target the regime have dangerous negative effects on the health and livelihoods of ordinary people. State control over health care, for example, means that sanctions curtailing the state’s power supplies leave hospitals without electricity. Ordinary people pay the price. Sanctions on the textiles sector introduced in September will likely have a direct impact on the livelihoods of thousands of workers in that sector. Sanctions should be part of the world response to the DPRK’s nuclear crisis. On some issues, trade restrictions can serve as leverage. North Korea’s economy desperately needs cash. Kim’s “pyŏngjin line” promises both nuclear and economic development. The Kim regime needs to deliver on its economic pledges, especially with the 70th anniversary of North Korea’s founding around the corner in September 2018. Yet binge spending on weapons tests over the past few years has sapped its efforts to revive the economy. Sanctions thus obstruct the regime’s economic plans and ability to shore up domestic legitimacy over and above the project of nuclear deterrence. They must, however, be carefully calibrated to avoid worsening the plight of North Koreans. And, alone, sanctions will not change the regime’s core calculations about its nuclear program. III.Dangers of Belligerence The limits of sanctions enhance the attractions to U.S. officials of a second track in the “maximum pressure” strategy: bellicose rhetoric designed to signal a readiness to take military action. That North Korea’s most sensitive installations are dispersed and some hidden underground means the wholesale destruction of its nuclear and missile capability almost certainly is out of the question; an attack of that scale would likely destroy not only weapons, but also the country itself. But U.S. officials envision a lesser strike that would target facilities of missile production and staging, as well as command and control and communications. Giving the regime what U.S. officials refer to as “a bloody nose” would set back its weapons program, they calculate, and lead Pyongyang to question the viability of nuclearisation. Some within the administration appear to believe they could launch such an attack without provoking retaliation, provided it were accompanied by messaging that any military response would be met by a far larger attack and that the U.S. was not pursuing regime change. Flaws in this theory are manifold. It presupposes that Kim would not himself believe he could attempt a counter-strike of his own without facing retaliation. It overlooks that he might feel the need to react so as to signal to the U.S. that it cannot strike him at will. It assumes he would trust Washington’s assurances that his regime was safe even as the U.S. targeted weapons programs he views as essential to regime survival. It also misreads the regime, whose military strategy traditionally has placed no value on restraint in the face of aggression. In fact, the regime’s publicly stated ideology would likely not permit it to back down. While it might, perhaps, conceal a U.S. strike from the North Korean populace, it could not hide the attack from the military brass, in whose eyes the failure to respond would undermine Kim’s credibility as leader. At a stretch, Kim could assert internally that he can afford to show restraint on the grounds that, as a nuclear-armed state, North Korea need no longer respond to every provocation. But given that Kim’s principal weakness at home is his lack of military experience, banking on him to stand up to his generals, and thus jeopardise his perch atop the heavily militarised state, would be an enormous gamble. Far more probable is some form of North Korean retaliation. That might not entail a direct response against the U.S. mainland, unless the leadership was already gripped by existential fear (in which case the “bloody nose” plan – which hinges on Kim remaining confident in his grip on power – would anyway have failed). The regime would likely respond asymmetrically, with an attack on a soft South Korean target; a strike against U.S. assets on or around the peninsula; or crippling cyber-attacks. That would leave the U.S. with the options of backing down, and thus losing face; or responding to North Korea’s response. The latter would set off a conventional or non-conventional escalatory dynamic endangering major cities in South Korea and Japan, as well as U.S. troops in the region. The administration’s threats could, of course, be a feint aimed at changing calculations in Beijing and Pyongyang. Indeed, some officials argue – with some justification – that Washington’s more aggressive stand has moved the needle in the region, in particular prompting China to assume its own tougher stance toward Pyongyang. But even bluffing entails enormous risk. The mere prospect of the U.S. contemplating preventive military action raises the likelihood of war, with each of the two sides fearing surprise attack from the other. Most obviously, either side could mistake a test or exercise for the real thing and react as though attacked. The dangers are all the graver given that intrinsic to the administration’s approach is its desire to keep Pyongyang guessing; its strategy thus allows little room for clarity on red lines. Between President Trump’s erratic tweets and statements, and his top officials’ frequent attempts to temper them, the administration’s messages have repeatedly been mixed.What conclusion should Pyongyang draw? That missile tests, as the most visible manifestation of its weapons development, risk provoking a military response; that Washington’s reaction would hinge on the reach or path of the launched missile and, if so, what reach and what path; or that bellicosity is simply bluster? Moreover, brinksmanship has a limited shelf life: indeed, if sanctions kick in only with time, threats of military action face the opposite constraint. The longer the stalemate continues, the more the administration’s implicit threats of coercion will be at odds with its actions, further clouding Pyongyang’s view of its signals. Plus, if the U.S. continues with its aggressive rhetoric without taking military action, its warnings lose credibility, while pressure on it to act increases. A fresh round of North Korean weapons testing after the Winter Olympics risks putting this track of the U.S. maximum pressure strategy to the test. According to one former senior U.S. military official: President Trump might be borrowing a page from Nixon’s playbook by creating the impression that he could do something unthinkable, like attack North Korea. But the madman theory works only if the other side is deterred by your madness. If it isn’t – and in this case, Kim might not be – all bets are off. In reality, the U.S. would struggle to prepare military action without Pyongyang noticing. Even if top officials believe they can deter a response, they would be unlikely – and irresponsible – to chance leaving large numbers of U.S. civilians in harm’s way. It would be hard to avoid giving advance warning to allies in Seoul and Tokyo, one of which publicly opposes military action and the other almost certainly harbours grave misgivings. Those two allies would need time to alert their militaries and take measures to protect citizens. This reality inevitably undercuts the credibility of threats of military action unaccompanied by noticeable preparations. It also means that were the administration to enact such measures as part of a feint, it would risk Pyongyang perceiving the subterfuge as sufficiently threatening to warrant its own pre-emptive strike. IV.The Costs of War The potential toll of war on the Korean peninsula makes the brinkmanship all the more alarming. Estimating costs is an inexact science, given the difficulty of predicting the trajectory and nature of such a war. Variables include whether confrontation would involve the Kim regime limiting its actions to artillery strikes on Seoul, hitting Japan with ballistic missiles or using chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons; whether the North Korean army would assault South Korea; whether U.S. and South Korean forces would resort to airpower only or deploy infantry and armour north and with what purpose; and whether China or even Russia would get involved; among others. But even conservative estimates project a staggering price – for the region and for the U.S. First come the humanitarian costs. An escalatory cycle leading to a conventional North Korean artillery attack on South Korea would leave at least tens, and more likely hundreds, of thousands dead in the first days of fighting, given the capability of Pyongyang’s weapons pointed at Seoul.These calculations leave aside the all too plausible scenario that North Korean forces target not only South Korea, but also densely populated Japanese cities with ballistic missiles. They also leave aside the risk of chemical and biological weapons. Were Kim to believe his regime’s grip on power endangered, it is fair to assume at least a possibility he would use his nuclear weapons, which could kill millions and wreak irreparable environmental destruction. Any sustained confrontation would almost certainly trigger massive displacement from the Korean peninsula into China and, if the border between North and South Korea were opened, potentially from north to south, too. The sheer number of people affected would likely force relief efforts in North East Asia outstripping anything seen in recent decades, including the many humanitarian disasters caused by other conflicts today. Second would be geopolitical repercussions. A conflict provoked by a U.S. preventive strike, particularly after warnings by allies and rivals alike about the dangers of such a strike, would not only leave U.S. credibility in tatters but also jeopardise U.S. alliances, given the potential for catastrophic fallout in South Korea and Japan. Such a war would imperil a core strategic concern of Beijing: North Korea’s survival in its current form. There are indications of preliminary, tentative steps toward understandings between the U.S. and China on de-conflicting forces and jointly securing and destroying Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons in the event of instability or collapse; others suggest that Chinese forces might secure the China-North Korea border to manage refugee flows in a manner that does not obstruct U.S. ends. But these scenarios ignore both the messiness of war and the strong incentive Beijing would have to protect other core interests. To prevent or stall the loss of a critical strategic asset, it could directly intervene in North Korea – an option to which some U.S. officials seemed at least not hostile, provided it rid Pyongyang of its current leadership, though senior Chinese officials dismiss it out of hand, noting its unpredictable consequences. Alternatively, China might seize the opportunity of a distracted and thinly spread U.S. to advance other strategic interests, with Taiwan or in the South China Sea. Any conflict would carry risks of a deliberate or accidental face-off between Chinese and U.S. forces. Russia’s interests in North Korea are less immediate, but it could nonetheless be drawn in – overtly or covertly – given its renewed relationship with Pyongyang and shared determination with Beijing to limit U.S. influence. Few military analysts would give North Korea’s 1.3 million-strong but ill-trained and ill-equipped army a chance to withstand an assault by U.S. and South Korean forces. Nonetheless, those forces, were they to deploy north, would face an adversary with sophisticated air defences, tanks, infantry, naval power and cyberweapons in a theatre complicated by the presence of weapons of mass destruction. The reported anxiety of top U.S. military officials is easy to fathom: the challenge would supersede anything they have faced over the past decade and a half in South Asia or the Middle East. Even without direct Chinese or Russian involvement, some form of insurgency would follow the regime’s defeat. Reconstruction of a state whose institutions and social fabric has been decimated would take a generation, as would its integration into a unified Korean peninsula. Enduring mistrust among regional powers would hardly make things easier. The U.S., already committed elsewhere, could find itself stretched across multiple fronts: engaging North Korean forces while attempting to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and secure Kim’s most dangerous weapons; protecting allies South Korea and Japan; feeling pressure to assist Taiwan; all the while seeking to maintain its strategic posture in the South China Sea and Western Pacific. No serious “day-after” plan appears to exist that lays out how Washington would manage a protracted war, relief and reconstruction efforts, or wider geopolitical upheaval. The challenges the U.S. faced – indeed still faces – in Afghanistan and Iraq and the deleterious effects of those campaigns upon its global influence give scant reason to believe such a scenario would serve U.S. interests. Then there are financial repercussions. Any war in North Korea is likely to be mes­sier, costlier and more militarily damaging to the U.S. than those in Iraq and Afghanistan (the total costs of which a U.S. Congressional Budget Office put at $2.4 trillion). Add to the direct costs of war drops in trade and the risk of economic downturn. The three states (bar North Korea) that would bear the brunt of any conflict – South Korea, China and Japan – are among the world’s largest economies: some estimates suggest that war on the Korean peninsula would knock half a percentage point, or $350 billion, off world GDP. South Korea, the world’s eleventh biggest economy, would be hit particularly hard. China and Japan, the world’s second and third biggest economies, could face major disruption. With China topping the list of U.S. trading partners, Japan at number four and South Korea at number six, U.S. commerce would suffer directly as well as through slumps in the global economy. Such a war would raise the U.S. federal debt. Even if it did not provoke a global economic crisis, the impact would reverberate worldwide for at least several years. In this light, the strong consensus across North East Asian capitals against preventive U.S. action should come as no surprise. Nor is there any indication the U.S. public is ready for such a conflict. Unlike ahead of the Iraq War, the narrative of a war on North Korea thus far has gained little traction; indeed, President Trump partly owes his election victory to pledges he would avoid such entanglements. The region would suffer most, but costs to the U.S. in terms of lives lost, military spending and repair, humanitarian and reconstruction efforts, and squandered geostrategic influence, plus the toll on its commerce and economy, would be vast. If the administration plans on heading down this path, it will need to prepare the country in order to ensure public support. Yet, the more ordinary U.S. citizens and member of Congress become aware of the price tag and the risks entailed, the harder it will become to enlist their backing. V.A Way Out The limits and dangers of maximum pressure and potential horrors of a war on the Korean peninsula all offer strong reasons for the U.S. to seek to leverage those gains its strategy has delivered into some form of de-escalatory deal that buys time for renewed diplomacy. Today’s perilous standoff requires at least a temporary fix, but one that should lay the groundwork for efforts to find a more durable solution. Without this prospect, today’s dynamics – the Kim regime close to developing the capability to strike the mainland U.S. with a nuclear warhead and top U.S. officials openly contemplating military action to stop that from happening – would remain just below the surface, keeping the region on a knife’s edge and risking a nuclear confrontation for the sake of avoiding one. The good news is that the Winter Olympics and subsequent Paralympics (which end on 18 March) offer an opportunity. Regardless of Kim’s motives, his outreach to Seoul, together with North Korea’s participation in the Winter Olympics, the thaw in North-South relations, and Presidents Trump’s and Moon’s suspension of military drills suggest all sides intend to show restraint (while not ruling out flare-ups) until then. The bad news is that the months afterwards are likely to be fraught. For Pyongyang, April is prime time for missile tests. The anniversary of the birthday of North Korea’s first leader and Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung, on 15 April, is the country’s most celebrated national holiday. It is commonly an occasion for the regime to show off military prowess; three missiles were tested in April 2017. Deferred U.S.-South Korean military exercises are likely to restart at about the same time. The period after the Olympics thus could bring joint ground and naval manoeuvres, just as North Korean launches test the credibility of the bellicose track of the U.S. maximum pressure strategy. Washington’s failure to act after its repeated implicit threats would risk leaving those threats shorn of credibility and likely signal the end of that strategy. The Olympics offer breathing room, but – absent further steps – only as far as mid-March. The most viable and realistic, if unsatisfactory, option for de-escalation remains some form of “freeze-for-freeze”, a deal along the lines mooted by China and, sometimes, Russia, since July 2017. Precise details would be fleshed out in talks, but such a deal would likely include: North Korea, at a minimum, freezing all nuclear tests, as well as any test of a missile with a greater range than that it already has or that allows it to progress toward its goal of threatening the mainland U.S.; and, potentially, refraining from overflying other countries’ territory and airspace; The U.S. redesigning its joint exercises with South Korea, including by freezing those that are most provocative to the North Koreans, such as “decapitation drills” and exercises whose timing Pyongyang finds particularly insulting, such as during national days, spring planting or autumn harvest seasons; scaling back some of its regular exercises; and pledging not to send strategic assets (like B-1 bombers, aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines) to the Korean peninsula. In principle, both Pyongyang and Washington reject such a deal and prospects for direct talks more broadly. The Kim regime asserts that the Trump administration’s maximum pressure approach creates an atmosphere that is not conducive to dialogue. While one senior North Korean official told Crisis Group that his country was open to direct, unconditional bilateral talks with the U.S., other credible reports suggest Pyongyang rejected several such U.S. offers conveyed directly and indirectly, insisting instead as a prerequisite on a halt to “hostile U.S. policy”. That standard is vague enough to suggest that at least at the time Kim did not believe the omens for direct talks were good, and was awaiting either greater progress in his missile and nuclear tests or a greater wedge between Washington and Seoul. As for the concept of freeze-for-freeze, Pyongyang’s position remains murky. Officially, the regime has rejected it, and U.S. officials believe that Pyongyang would resist such a deal. Yet a North Korean official offered a different perspective: given that Pyongyang had mooted this option in the past, only to be rebuffed by the Obama administration, the onus of offering a reciprocal freeze now should fall on the U.S. This is all the truer in his eyes since Washington responded to what Pyongyang says it regards as its last freeze – 60 test-free days in October and November – by redesignating the country a state sponsor of terror. He claimed that, if a third party told North Korea that the U.S. had agreed to a freeze-for-freeze subject to the regime’s acceptance, Pyongyang would study the proposal “positively”. The U.S. position has been at times equally confusing. The back-and-forth between President Trump and his secretary of state left it unclear whether the U.S. would agree to unconditional talks, or whether those talks could only take place if Pyongyang committed to denuclearisation or took other steps. Officials rejected the Chinese-Russian proposal days after it was floated and have regularly dismissed the notion of freeze-for-freeze ever since. Tillerson expressly rejected the idea at a 16 January 2018 meeting of foreign ministers of twenty countries, including South Korea, as well as European and other Asian U.S. allies, in Vancouver. A principal objection is that of equivalence: why should the U.S. refrain from exercising its sovereign rights in return for North Korea stopping activities that are illegal? Some officials believe a freeze-for-freeze simply would not help; according to one, for example, suspending joint exercises would matter little to Pyongyang, while it would matter enormously to the U.S. military, which needs to keep its planning and readiness fresh.Others argue that a freeze-for-freeze would not address North Korea’s nuclearisation and would be used by the regime to advance other elements of its weapons program; they also point out that previous attempts at resolving the issue through diplomacy have failed: We don’t want to go back to defunct policies, compromises and mistakes of the past – whether under Presidents Clinton or Bush. Both tried some form of compromise that would kick the can down the road. Both failed. If we freeze the missile tests, and take the pressure off, the regime still develops its nuclear weapons and can quickly break out. We’ve fallen for that before. This time we need to resolve the issue once and for all. Others question whether the regime would act in good faith. They recall the collapse of a similar deal in the 1990s under the Agreed Framework – though that deal held for eight years, which some would count as at least somewhat successful. Notwithstanding sporadic offers of diplomacy – including by President Trump himself – officials assert that opening a door to negotiations with the North Koreans now, before inflicting greater economic pain, would be a mistake. The two issues – willingness to hold unconditional talks and freeze-for-freeze – are intertwined. Neither side seems open to accepting conditions placed by the other for a resumption of negotiations. But both could agree that such talks would be hard, if not impossible to sustain if either engaged in provocative behaviour. In other words, a mutual freeze of some sort – not as a precondition per se, but as a trust-building gesture – is the best way to maximise chances of a constructive dialogue. Neither the U.S. nor North Korea should view such a deal as a concession. A freeze-for-freeze has strong arguments in its favour. First, aspects of such a deal in practice already exist, at least for the next few weeks, and could be prolonged and formalised once official talks begin. Given Kim’s outreach to Seoul and North Korean participation in the Olympics, further tests before then appear unlikely. Joint U.S.-South Korean exercises are already deferred until at least the third week of March. Building on these mutual and reciprocal steps, talks could begin soon after the Winter Games. Those conversations could then aim to formalise a more precise understanding on the types of tests that would be frozen, and the types of military exercises that would be stopped – likely along the lines outlined above. Most importantly, while a freeze-for-freeze would fall well short of giving either side everything they demand, it would still offer everybody something. Despite U.S. officials’ assertions otherwise, the joint exercises with South Korea and the U.S. deployment of strategic assets to the peninsula matter to Pyongyang. While the DPRK may not interpret those exercises as directly threatening, it does view some as humiliating; Kim referred to the deployment of assets in his New Year Address; North Korean officials frequently express the regime’s anger at the “decapitation drills” aimed at Kim. The U.S. would risk little in putting some exercises and assets on hold, provided it enjoys its allies’ confidence while doing so. It could still maintain its military readiness by conducting less provocative exercises. It could put the ball in Kim’s court by offering a concession that he himself floated in his January address. Notwithstanding Kim’s apparent rejection of talks in the past, his January speech and outreach to South Korea, added to the necessity of delivering on economic pledges, might make him now more open to such a deal, and to subsequent diplomacy, than he was some months ago. For South Korea – and for that matter Japan and even Russia – the deal brings the obvious benefit of lowering the risks that either U.S. military action or Pyongyang’s missile tests will provoke a dangerous escalation. While U.S. officials argue that a freeze-for-freeze could undercut South Korean security, in reality Washington’s reiteration of its commitment to extended deterrence matters much more to Seoul. For the U.S. itself, the freeze on tests would not halt Pyongyang’s weapons program, given that its research and development could continue. But it would significantly slow its progress in developing technology able to deliver nuclear weapons to the U.S. mainland and buy time for negotiations on a broader deal. Much as U.S. rhetoric – and some top officials – focus on the imperative of denuclearisation, others have made statements suggesting that, for now at least, what matters most to the administration are those aspects of Pyongyang’s ballistic missile program that could allow it to deter the U.S. and to pursue other goals in North East Asia. The scenarios and forms of North Korean deterrence that the administration seems set on preventing all involve its capability to strike U.S. cities with nuclear weapons. The Trump administration also could claim that its maximum pressure strategy has paid dividends, winning genuine concessions from Pyongyang, slowing its nuclear weapons program and opening a door for diplomacy – arguably more than what the Obama administration achieved. China’s role in both helping to broker a freeze-for-freeze deal and sustaining it while the U.S. and North Korea begin direct negotiations would be critical. Despite protestations that it lacks leverage over Pyongyang short of cutting off the oil supply – and thus risking severe humanitarian harm and possibly regime collapse – Beijing could consider more incremental measures that would both pressure Pyongyang and alleviate distrust in Washington. For example, it could commit to the U.S. that it would more thoroughly and transparently implement existing Security Council resolutions should North Korea balk at or violate the freeze-for-freeze deal; conversely, it could communicate to Pyongyang that, if the freeze holds, it will block any U.S. attempt to list Kim and other regime elites by name in future sanctions or to suspend the DPRK’s UN membership. Implicit for the U.S. would be the understanding that if Washington violated the deal, Beijing’s enforcement of sanctions would further slacken. In addition, to bolster U.S. confidence, China could agree to further discussions with the U.S. and South Korea on contingency planning, starting with less politically fraught topics such as coordinated regional responses to nuclear accidents on the peninsula. Russia might join these conversations, given its probable knowledge of the vulnerability of Pyongyang’s nuclear program. Finally, China has multiple economic benefits it could proffer North Korea in return for cooperation; the challenge will be to identify those that are both attractive to Pyongyang and compliant with sanctions. Given North Korea’s aversion to economic dependence on China, some incentives could be diplomatic, such as offering to restore and expand cultural and educational exchanges, and facilitating further talks like those with South Korea held in Kunming in December. Reciprocal steps from Washington would at a minimum include pledging to Beijing that, public statements notwithstanding, it will not insist on immediate denuclearisation or pursue a de facto regime change policy; agreeing to work with China on interim measures that combine de-escalation (as per freeze-for-freeze); crafting sharper sanctions together in the event they are necessary; and committing to unconditional bilateral talks. If the contours and potential benefits of a freeze-for-freeze deal are clear, the question becomes how to get there quickly and in a form that best guarantees success. The Six-Party format is defunct. Nevertheless, the five states that joined North Korea in that group remain the ones either most affected by the crisis or most influential in Pyongyang. And notwithstanding the complicated, in some cases hostile, relations among the five, and their oft-competing interests, they share an interest in averting war. A deal backed by all five would signal unity to Pyongyang. As a result, those countries – though chiefly the U.S., China and South Korea – should use the window opened by the Winter Olympics to consult and reach broad consensus on parameters of the freeze-for-freeze deal to be presented to Pyongyang. In the wake of the Olympics, bilateral U.S.-North Korean talks would commence with the goal of agreeing to and formalising the understanding. Messaging to the Kim regime about the deal should be clear: while it hinges on Pyongyang’s and Washington’s restraint and direct actions, it is the common property of all six states; it does not constitute or foreshadow a change in the legal status of North Korea’s nuclear program; and – ideally – it is a precursor to talks about a more lasting resolution of the crisis and broader talks about East Asia’s future security architecture. As for the talks themselves, a recurring issue has been whether they would aim at North Korea’s denuclearisation – a goal on which Washington insists and to which Pyongyang objects. While this disagreement will need to be resolved at some point, it need not and should not stand in the way of resumed talks. The U.S. – and North Korea’s neighbours – could retain their stated goal of denuclearisation, even while pursuing more immediate measures to de-escalate the crisis. North Korea could claim, particularly at home, that it has already achieved nuclear status and is being treated by foreign powers accordingly, while similarly consenting to de-escalatory steps. As a senior Chinese official put it: What is needed are negotiations. We know the U.S. cannot accept the premise of a nuclear-armed North Korea, just as we know North Korea will not agree to denuclearisation as a goal. So let’s fudge the issue. Washington can say it is the goal, Pyongyang that it is not, but at least proceed with talks and a freeze in hostile action by both sides. VI.Conclusion Ahead of the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, President Trump’s administration can continue with its maximum pressure strategy, dialling up economic pressure and, after the Games, its implied threats of military strikes. Or, alternatively, it can use the window ahead of the Games to seek a way to dial down the crisis. At its core, the choice is between further high-stakes brinkmanship on the Korean peninsula and an effort to achieve some form of de-escalation that presages a broader diplomatic process with Kim Jong-un’s regime. Talks with the Kim regime, which believes many of its core interests directly contradict those of the U.S. and its neighbours, would hardly be a cakewalk. Nor is the final outcome evident, given it would have to balance U.S. and wider international concerns about what Pyongyang would do with advanced nuclear capacity against the regime’s fear of what might happen to it without that, all the while keeping both the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a delicate regional strategic balance intact. But diplomacy remains the better option. While maximum pressure has paid some dividends – injecting new urgency into other states’ North Korea policies and contributing to a tougher Chinese stand against North Korea that Beijing’s already strained relations with Pyongyang had precipitated – it has come at a cost. As outlined in Crisis Group’s companion report, evolving strategic calculations in North East Asia, among allies and rivals alike, owe as much to fears that U.S. belligerence could spark an escalation as they do to Pyongyang’s sprint to acquire nuclear weapons. More gravely, while sanctions will take time to kick in, the expiration date of U.S. bellicosity is likely near. Kim’s next round of weapons testing could leave Washington with an awful choice: show restraint and chance that its threats are perceived as bluster; or strike and risk catastrophic war. De-escalating now, while both tests and military exercises appear to be on hold and inter-Korean lines of communication are open, remains the most viable way to avoid that decision. A freeze-for-freeze along the lines China has proposed is far from ideal, but it does provide the U.S. with an off-ramp that preserves its credibility – particularly if Beijing commits to help broker and enforce such a deal – while buying time to negotiate a more durable solution for the North Korean nuclear crisis. Washington’s insistence on denuclearisation is understandable, given the nature of the Kim regime; indeed, it is an objective shared in principle by most other states. But however worthy the goal, for now it is delusional: Pyongyang will not pledge to a step it perceives as akin to signing its own death warrant. Holding out in the hope it does so hinders the ability of the U.S., and that of its allies, to cope with the grave risks that Pyongyang’s nuclear capability already poses. https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/north-east-asia/korean-peninsula/294-korean-peninsula-crisis-ii-fire-and-fury-freeze-freeze (c) 2018 International Crisis Group

Myanmar and Bangladesh should ensure the repatriation of Rohingya refugees takes place through a voluntary, safe, and dignified process and only when Myanmar authorities have restored the rights of Rohingya, said Fortify Rights today. A new film released today by Fortify Rights focuses on the plan to repatriate Rohingya to Myanmar. “You can throw us into the sea, but please don’t send us back,” said a Rohingya refugee woman in Bangladesh who fled recent Myanmar military-led atrocities in Rakhine State’s Buthidaung Township. “We will not go back to Myanmar.” A Rohingya refugee girl, 16, also from Buthidaung Township, waited in desperation on the banks of the Naf River for one month before she and her family were able to cross to Bangladesh on November 11, 2017. “If we were willing to go back to Myanmar,” she told Fortify Rights, “we would not have stayed at the border for one month.” The new film, entitled “No Man’s Land,” is based on interviews with dozens of newly arrived Rohingya refugees and others in Bangladesh, including a Rohingya boat owner who makes a living transporting refugees from Myanmar to Bangladesh, and an ethnic-Rakhine Buddhist monk in Bangladesh who preaches inter-ethnic peace. In November, the governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar announced a plan to repatriate Rohingya back to Myanmar, later clarifying it would take place during the next two years. The governments did not consult Rohingya or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees about the plan. The repatriation is scheduled to begin tomorrow, January 23. None of the recently arrived Rohingya in Bangladesh told Fortify Rights they were interested to return to Myanmar under the current conditions. In November, Fortify Rights and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum published the findings ofa yearlong investigation into alleged violations in Rakhine State, finding “mounting evidence” of the crime of genocide. The report was based on hundreds of interviews with Rohingya eyewitnesses and survivors of Myanmar Army-led massacres, mass gang-rapes, and arson attacks against Rohingya. “Any repatriation now would be premature and dangerous,” said Matthew Smith, Chief Executive Officer at Fortify Rights. “Repatriation should be safe, truly voluntary, and dignified, but the current situation fails to come close to this standard.” As early as September 19, 2017, State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi declared that Myanmar would repatriate Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh, claiming in a major speech that the Myanmar Army had carried out “no clearance operations” in northern Rakhine State since September 5. In November 2017, a senior official with the Border Guards Bangladesh provided Fortify Rights with an internal intelligence report detailing daily Myanmar military activity near the shared border. The report includes dates, times, and geographic coordinates of automatic weapon fire on the Myanmar side of the border. The senior Bangladesh official told Fortify Rights the gunfire was by the Myanmar military. “There were confirmed gunfire shots in the last two weeks that we heard,” the official told Fortify Rights. “Every night we were hearing the firing, seeing villages burning, and we were getting dead bodies also.” Less than two weeks later, on November 23, while thousands of Rohingya continued to flee to Bangladesh on a weekly basis, the governments of Myanmar and Bangladesh signed their first pact to repatriate Rohingya refugees. Fortify Rights confirmed that Rohingya refugees are continuing to cross the border in search of safety in Bangladesh. “The Myanmar Army is committing genocide against an ethnic group in their country,” said Progganonda Vikko, an ethic-Rakhine Buddhist monk in Cox’s Bazar District, Bangladesh. “This isn’t right. It’s unjust and inhumane. It must be stopped.” In Myanmar, the Government continues to confine more than 120,000 internally displaced Rohingya to more than 35 internment camps in eight townships of Rakhine State, depriving many of adequate humanitarian aid and lifesaving assistance. Rohingya throughout the country are also denied equal access to citizenship and face restrictions on their right to freedom of movement and other basic rights. The conditions for potential returnees would likely be no different. The Government of Myanmar is planning to house returnees in “transit camps” rather than allowing them to return to their original places. The United Kingdom’s International Development Committee expressed its concern about repatriation following Fortify Rights and other groups’ submissions to its inquiry into the Rohingya crisis. The Government of Myanmar has further refused to cooperate with a United Nations Fact-Finding Mission, established in March 2017 to look into the situation of human rights in Rakhine State and elsewhere in the country. “There are no indications that Myanmar authorities plan to dismantle existing internment camps, lift restrictions on movement and aid, or provide much-needed protection,” said Matthew Smith. “The very idea of repatriations now is a farce. There must be genuine changes for Rohingya in Myanmar before there can be any serious discussions of repatriation.” For more information, please contact: Matthew Smith, Chief Executive Officer, Fortify Rights (in Thailand), +66.85.028.0044,matthew.smith@fortifyrights.org; Twitter: @matthewfsmith Kate Vigneswaran, Legal Director, Fortify Rights (in Thailand), +66.94.940.8057,kate.vigneswaran@fortifyrights.org; Twitter: @KateVigneswaran (c) 2018 Fortify Rights International

Myanmar authorities should conduct an impartial investigation into a deadly crackdown on ethnic Rakhine protesters by the Myanmar Police Force in Rakhine State last week and hold perpetrators accountable, Fortify Rights said today. Police gunned down and beat unarmed protesters on January 16 in Mrauk-U Township, killing seven protesters and injuring at least a dozen others. Fortify Rights spoke to four eyewitnesses and survivors who witnessed the shootings, three of whom were wounded during the incident. “The Government must ensure these killings are properly investigated and that responsible police officers are prosecuted without delay,” said Matthew Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Fortify Rights. “The victims and survivors, their families, and the people of Rakhine State deserve swift justice. Impunity in this case could easily enflame ethnic tensions.” On January 16, several thousand ethnic Rakhine civilians gathered at the Mrauk-U District Administration Office to protest the government’s attempt to shut down an annual event that marked the anniversary of the fall of the Rakhine Kingdom to Burmese forces in 1784. Police officers opened fire on the crowd, shooting victims in the head, chest, and extremities. “Khaing Htwe,” 27, described how the police shot him in the back while he was running away: "When we entered the District Administration Office area, police shot in the air three times, and some people started to run away. At the same time, four or five police officers shot at us from a distance . . . I was shot in my back. I fell down, and friends helped me run away. I saw two people die on the spot." Another protester, “Kyaw Htun,” 19, was shot in the knee. He told Fortify Rights: "I saw two people die on the spot from gunshots. Five people were left there, but they were alive. One person was shot in the head, and the second person was shot in the chest, but the rest were shot on lower parts of their bodies, and they were alive. Police sent three dead bodies to the hospital that night, and they sent others the next morning." Police shot “Aung Kyaw,” 31, four times in the left leg while he was on the frontline of the protest. He told Fortify Rights: "The sound was like a rifle or machine gun. I don’t know how many police officers shot us. The guns sounded like there were more than three or four officers [shooting]. I didn’t see or hear any warning from the police before they shot us. They shot in the air and shot us after that. After I was shot, I ran away and I didn’t look back." “Aung Soe,” a Rakhine organizer of the event, told Fortify Rights: "I saw the police shoot in the air, but there was not even a minute gap, and then they shot into the crowd . . . There didn’t shoot any rubber bullets. They shot in the air, and then they started shooting at the people . . . There was no warning before the shooting. The police weren’t using loudspeakers to make announcements. They just started shooting . . . When they shot into the crowd, it wasn’t one-by-one but was continuous gunfire." Survivors also described how police beat unarmed protesters. “Aung Soe” told Fortify Rights: “Some police grabbed some people and beat them with the butts of their guns. Some [police] kicked [protesters] as they lay on the ground, and they stepped on their chests or backs.” “Aung Soe” also told Fortify Rights that he saw in the hospital the bodies of those killed. He said the bodies not only had “bullet injuries, but they had also been beaten or had wounds on their face and body.” “At least 10 or 15 police officers were involved in the beatings,” “Aung Soe” said, adding that, “Some police were using their rifle butts [to beat protesters], so I saw some people defending themselves, but they weren’t attacking [the police].” On January 17, State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi pledged to investigate the incident and take action against those who violated the law. “It’s imperative that the government ensure this investigation is not another whitewash,” said Matthew Smith. “The government needs to show that no one is above the law, whether they wear a uniform or not.” On the evening of January 16, hundreds of ethnic Rakhine protesters marched from Nandawyar, the site of the former Arakan (Rakhine) King’s palace in Mrauk-U, Rakhine State to the Mrauk-U District General Administration Office after local authorities cut electricity to an event marking the 233rd anniversary of the fall of the Rakhine Kingdom, effectively stopping the event. Within a few hours the number of protesters increased to several thousand. The Myanmar Police Force reportedly claimed that the protesters threw stones and bricks at police officers, destroyed property and police vehicles at the office compound, and attempted to seize weapons from two police officers. Police also claimed that they tried to disperse the crowd by using batons and shields and by firing rubber bullets and warning shots before firing 10 gunshots of live ammunition into the crowd. The bodies of the deceased and most of those injured during the police crackdown remain in Mrauk-U hospital in Rakhine state. Since the incident on January 16, police have restricted access to the hospital to victims’ families only. According to the government, 20 police officers were injured during the incident. Under international law, it is lawful for police to use lethal force only when absolutely necessary to prevent the loss of life or serious injury to themselves or others. The United Nations Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials and the U.N. Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials limit state security officials to using force that is proportional to the threat at hand and only as a measure of last resort. Ongoing human rights violations against Rakhine Buddhists in Rakhine State have been largely overshadowed by mass atrocity crimes against the Rohingya Muslim population. In 2016, Fortify Rights documented the Myanmar Army’s use of Rakhine civilians as forced porters during episodes of armed conflict against the Arakan Army, a non-state ethnic army comprising ethnic Rakhine fighters. In October 2017, Myanmar authorities sentenced Rakhine human rights defender Khaing Myo Htun to 18 months in prison for his alleged role in producing a statement in April 2016 claiming that the Myanmar Army used forced labor and committed other violations against civilians in Rakhine State in early 2016. Ethnic-Rakhine farmers have also reportedly dealt with unlawful land confiscation for many years. “Rakhine State has been shattered by conflict and human rights violations for too long,” said Matthew Smith. “Peace in Rakhine and elsewhere in the country is not going to come from the barrel of a gun. The government’s response to this situation will influence the course of events in Rakhine State and much is at stake.” For More Information, Please Contact: Matthew Smith, Chief Executive Officer, Fortify Rights, +1.202.503.8032 (in the U.S.), matthew.smith@fortifyrights.org; Twitter: @matthewfsmith, @FortifyRights David Baulk, Myanmar Human Rights Specialist, Fortify Rights, +95.979.311.1685 (in Myanmar), david.baulk@fortifyrights.org; Twitter: @davidbaulk, @FortifyRights (c) 2018 Fortify Rights International

There are increasing concerns over a plan to send a group of Rohingya refugees back to Myanmar beginning this week. A deal was reached between Myanmar and Bangladesh, where more than 600,000 refugees fled. Yet United Nations and humanitarian groups say the move is premature and that the conditions that led to ethnic cleansing still exist. Joining me in the studio is Eric Schwartz, president of Refugees International and a former assistant secretary of state. Welcome to the program, sir. ERIC SCHWARTZ: Pleasure to be here. GARCIA-NAVARRO: So the Rohingya have faced rape, forcible displacement, other atrocities in Myanmar, which is what forced them to flee to Bangladesh in the first place. In the past few days, Rohingya Muslims have continued, though, to pour across the border into Bangladesh. Why are the two countries talking about returning refugees to Myanmar if people are still fleeing violence? SCHWARTZ: Why they're talking about it is because they feel they have to talk about it. The government of Bangladesh wants the bulk of these people to return. They also would be feeling some domestic pressures in this area, as well. And the government of Burma, I think, is feeling some of the pressure from the international community and feels some need to be responsive. But the real story here is this is horrifying, this discussion, to be taking place right now, given the complete absence of measures in place to ensure safety and security upon return. GARCIA-NAVARRO: As I understand it, the Rohingya, according to this agreement, will be moved from the camps in Bangladesh to a camp in Myanmar where there could be security concerns. SCHWARTZ: Oh yeah, there are no safeguards in place. There - been no serious discussion of safeguards for return. You have to realize that we're talking about one of the greatest crimes in recent memory - massive abuses, forced relocation of hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of weeks. GARCIA-NAVARRO: There's problems, obviously, with monitoring the situation. The government won't let - of Myanmar - won't let international monitors in. And, in fact, the top U.N. official responsible for human rights was barred from the country. Is that right? SCHWARTZ: Yanghee Lee, the U.N.'s special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, has been denied entry. A U.N. fact-finding mission has been denied entry. If there was going to be a return - and this is premature - but if there was going to be a return, there would have to be some sort of international monitoring in place. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Myanmar sees most of the Rohingya as illegal migrants who originally came from Bangladesh generations ago. Bangladesh does not want them either. We're seeing a new generation growing up in refugee camps. In many ways, they are stateless people. Bangladesh is not giving newborns, for example, documents to show that they have any status at all in the country. So what is the way forward? SCHWARTZ: The bottom line is they - Rohingya have been in Myanmar for centuries. They have legitimate claims to citizenship there. And the notion that they're stateless or somehow they are kind of an alien people is nonsense. It is nonsense. It is a myth perpetrated by the authorities in Myanmar. So yeah, the government of Bangladesh should have policies that are tolerant and willing to take care of the Rohingya for as long as they need to be taken care of. But the culprit here is the government and the military in Myanmar. The government of Bangladesh needs to do what it is doing, and it needs to do more. And the international community needs to assist the government of Bangladesh. But ultimately, the solution for these people should be a solution in Myanmar. Until that's possible, the international community and the government of Bangladesh have a responsibility to provide these people with the refuge they deserve. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Eric Schwartz is president of Refugees International. Thank you so much. SCHWARTZ: Thank you. https://www.npr.org/2018/01/21/579500332/the-future-of-myanmars-rohingya-refugees (c) 2018 NPR

Tensions mounted on Sunday at refugee camps in Bangladesh holding hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims over an operation to send them back to Myanmar, from where they have fled following a military crackdown. Dozens of refugees stood holding cloth banners opposing their transfer as United Nations Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee visited camps along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border over the weekend. Some refugee leaders said Bangladesh military officials had threatened to seize their food ration cards if they did not return. Under an agreement signed last week, Myanmar is set to receive Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh at two reception centers and a temporary camp near their common border starting on Tuesday and continuing over the next two years. The refugees refuse to go back unless their safety can be guaranteed and Myanmars grant their demands to be given citizenship and inclusion in a list of recognized ethnic minorities. They are also asking that their homes, mosques and schools that were burned down or damaged in the military operation be rebuilt. Over 655,500 Muslim Rohingya fled to Bangladesh after the Myanmar military cracked down in the northern part of Rakhine state in response to militant attacks on security forces on Aug. 25. The United Nations described the operation as ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, which Myanmar denies. Rohingya elders told Reuters that Bangladeshi army officials have called or met them over the last two days, asking them to prepare lists of families from their camps for repatriation. Four of them said they were among more than 70 camp leaders – representing thousands of refugees – who met army officers at the Gungdum camp on Saturday. “When we said we cannot provide the lists because people are not ready to return, they asked us to bring their WP cards,” said Musa, a leader at the Gungdum camp, referring to relief cards provided by the UN’s World Food Programme. Rashedul Hasan, a spokesman for the Bangladesh army, said he was not aware of army men threatening to take away food cards. Slideshow (2 Images) Hundreds of refugees queue up at relief centers across the camps each morning to collect food using the cards. These centers are managed by the Bangladesh army. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has repeatedly said Rohingya returns need to be voluntary. “UNHCR has not been part of discussions (on repatriation) to date, but has offered support to engage in the process to ensure that the voices of refugees are heard,” Caroline Gluck, a senior protection officer for the agency, said by email on Saturday. “The pace of returns should be determined by the refugees themselves.” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-repatriation/tensions-mount-in-rohingya-camps-ahead-of-planned-relocation-to-myanmar-idUSKBN1FA0EJ (c) 2018 Reuters

The World Food Program warns food shortages and undernutrition in Myanmar's Rakhine State are seriously affecting the health of women and children. More than one million Rohingyas lived in Myanmar's Rakhine State before a brutal military crackdown against the civilian population began in late August. Since then, more than 655,000 refugees have fled to Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Myanmar authorities have cut off access by the U.N. and other international organizations to Rakhine State. But local aid workers are allowed to distribute a limited amount of aid to the Rohingyas. Before the mass exodus, the World Food Program provided aid for some 250,000 people across Rakhine State. WFP spokeswoman, Bettina Luescher, said that number has gone down. But, with the help of local staff on the ground, WFP is succeeding in gradually reaching more people. "In December, we reached 63,600 people in Northern Rakhine, twice as many as in November. And in Central Rakhine… we assisted 114,000 people. We are working with local NGO's and government authorities to distribute the food and we are coordinating with the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] so we do not overlap. And, food is given to vulnerable people from all communities based on needs irrespective of ethnicity and religion," she said. WFP reports child malnutrition rates in northern Rakhine State already were above emergency thresholds before the recent violence. It says the violence and displacement have likely made this situation worse. In a welcome move, Luescher said the Myanmar Government has asked WFP and the Food and Agriculture Organization to conduct a Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission in Rakhine State to assess the food situation on the ground. She said no date has yet been set for the start of the mission. https://www.voanews.com/a/hunger-grips-myanmar-rakhine-state/4217322.html (c) 2018 VOA News