Forty Years of the Sino-North Korean Alliance: Beijing`s Declining Credibility and Pyongyang`s Bandwagoning with Washington

Abstract

This paper centers on elaborating a sequence path of the forty years of the Sino-North Korean alliance by employing several standards that explain why alliances endure or collapse. The sequence path began when China’s threat perceptions began changing in the early 1970s. The next stage witnessed significant decline in China’s credibility as an alliance partner As a result, the third stage showed North Korea’s increasing secondary alliance dilemma that was further stimulated by the collapse of the communist world and the end of the Cold War As a solution, North Korea bandwagoned with the United States. The final picture of this ongoing sequence path has appeared with North Korea’s maneuvering between Washington and Beijing, as well as China’s attempts to preserve its traditional sphere of influence against encroachment by the United States. This paper concludes that the alliance is being transformed from an ideological military alliance to a new triangular security relationship between North Korea, China, and the United States. In accordance, North Korea is becoming increasingly autonomous in its alliance with China. In so doing, Pyongyang is attempting to play one superpower off against the others much as it succeeded in doing with the former Soviet Union and China. China, in turn, is compelled to defend its traditional sphere of geopolitical influence. North Korea will be involved in the coming conflict between China and the United States during the twenty-first century.