Chinese President Xi Jinping seems interested in embracing the role of global steward -- champion of the liberal political and economic order the U.S. administration seems uninterested in promoting. Now is his moment to prove he’s serious.

China’s erstwhile client North Korea has become an urgent threat to stability -- Xi’s stated top priority -- from one end of Asia to the other. Japan’s military is now on its highest state of alert, after the North’s latest round of missile tests landed in Japanese waters. The first elements of a powerful U.S. missile defense system, known as Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), have landed in South Korea; the system, which China fiercely opposes, could be operational by next month. In Malaysia, meanwhile, North Korean agents allegedly used a banned nerve agent to assassinate dictator Kim Jong Un’s half-brother, who had reportedly been under Chinese protection. Kim’s regime is now holding Malaysians in North Korea hostage, while Malaysia is preventing North Korean diplomats from leaving the country.

After the assassination, China cut off any further coal imports from North Korea this year. But the impact of the move remains uncertain. And, as a recent United Nations report makes clear, North Korean agents are continuing to use Chinese middlemen to fund the regime’s illicit missile and nuclear programs.

Wednesday’s proposal from Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi for North Korea and the U.S. to back down simultaneously -- the former by halting nuclear and missile tests, the latter by suspending joint military exercises with South Korea-- is constructive. But it’s been raised before and has little chance now: The U.S. has already ruled out any actions that might reward Kim for bad behavior.

China may have legitimate reasons for not wanting to go further and risk destabilizing the Pyongyang regime. The mainland would bear the brunt of any refugee exodus from the North and faces the unsettling prospect of a unified Korea -- and U.S. troops -- along its border. Chinese leaders may also be right that the U.S. needs to find a way to sit down and negotiate with North Korea, even if talks don’t lead to the elimination of its nuclear arsenal. Left unchecked, the North could within a few years deploy a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. If talks can halt its progress before then, they are worth pursuing.

David Fuller's view

While regional conflicts remain, a serious international war has been a declining risk since Fidel Castro invited Nikita Khrushchev to turn Cuba into a nuclear missile base in 1962.  I remember it well because I was in the 101^st Airborne Division at the time and we thought we might be parachuted into Cuba.  Fortunately, Khrushchev and President Kennedy backed down from that very tense situation.

I reckon that was the closest we have ever been to WW3.  Subsequently the risk of another World War declined, not least because it would have been an act of mutual self-destruction. 

Needless to say, that reality is far greater today.  If most of the nuclear weapons currently on the planet were detonated in conflict, it would most likely cause the end of human civilisation.  Hopefully, WW3 remains a tiny risk but it has increased somewhat.

The prospect of mutual self-destruction would presumably deter any leader other than a madman from launching a first nuclear strike from China, Russia or the United States.  However, that could more readily happen in a small rogue state, if it had the capability. 

There have always been a number of rogue states but few had either the capability or the protection to start a nuclear war.  North Korea does not quite have the capability but it certainly is a rogue state and it has long been protected by China.  Moreover, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is clearly obsessed with developing nuclear weapons and the long-distance missiles to launch them.      

China could solve the North Korean problem very quickly and effectively, in the interests of most North Koreans and everyone else.  Xi Jinping is China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, but does he have the character to halt North Korea’s nuclear programme?

(See also: US Ambassador to UN: Kim Jong Un ‘Is not rational’, from CNN Politics)