The Korean Crisis: China Maneuvers behind the Scenes
03-12-2003
By Tom Knowlton
History teaches us that small wars are invariable precursors to much larger conflicts. The path to the cataclysmic First and Second World Wars can be found in the smaller Boer War, Russo-Japanese War, Spanish Civil War, and Italian-Ethiopian War.
It is a credit to the governments of the United States and the former Soviet Union that none of the post-Second World War conflicts erupted into a full-blown conflagration between the two superpowers.
The dangers posed by Iraq and the saber-rattling North Korea likely herald the beginning rather than an end to new cycle of warfare. While the arsenals and maniacal leaders of both nations pose a global threat, neither nation can be construed as a global power.
The same, however, cannot be said for the nation that has been operating behind the scenes as a macabre puppet master instigating the brinkmanship of both Iraq and North Korea communist China.
China has long believed that it possessed a manifest destiny to establish a political and economic hegemony over all of eastern Asia. In the mind of many Chinese policymakers, China's "rightful place" as overlord of Asia has been hindered by foreign powers dating back to the 19th century, when Japan, the United States and the Western colonial powers divided China into "spheres of influence" and later crushed the nationalist Boxer Rebellion in 1900.
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