US Policy on the UN Command by Jeongho Nam

Author:Jeongho Nam
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789819921034
Publisher: Springer Nature Singapore

5.1.2 The Change of Chinese Position Toward the Armistice Regime

From the early 1970s, when the U.S.-China Détente was accelerated, to the end of the Ford administration, the U.S. pushed for the modification of the Armistice Regime for two to three years to dismantle the UNC. In the end, however, the U.S. gave up on its initial goal. This was because China had become passive in mediating between the U.S. and North Korea, so the U.S. could not help but abandon the hope that China would be a useful broker.

In the early days of Détente, China was worried about deteriorating its relationship with the U.S. So China actually prevented the issue of dismantling the UNC from being put on the agenda at the UN General Assembly in 1972 and 1973. It was rather natural for North Korea to feel that they were betrayed by China. Against this backdrop, North Korea got to know the U.S. proposal through China.

However, as time passed, China began to avoid getting involved in Korean issues, including the dismantling of the UNC. Concerning this issue, Richard Solomon of the NSC submitted the following report to Kissinger.

While Peking was decidedly helpful to us last fall in handling the Korean issue at the U.N., the unsettled state of China’s domestic political scene and the more strident tone of her recent foreign policy statements have injected some uncertainty into our estimate of what role Peking may be willing or able to play on the UNC issue over the coming month (U.S. NSC 1974a, 478).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.