Observers often attribute China’s reluctance to place increasingly severe sanctions on North Korea to fear that putting too much pressure on Pyongyang could cause the regime to collapse. The government in Beijing worries that U.S. and South Korean forces might occupy part or all of North Korea, effectively bringing the United States and its allies to China’s Yalu River border.  U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently assured North Korea and China that “We do not seek an excuse to send our military north of the 38th parallel.” Even if the North Korean regime were to collapse and the United States conducted raids to try to secure North Korea’s nuclear weapons, American forces would leave as soon as the task was completed.

A useful additional step in the same direction would be for the United States to propose (perhaps privately) to the Chinese government that the countries on North Korea’s periphery prepare a contingency plan, agreeing that in the event of a North Korean collapse its neighbors would multilaterally act to neutralize and stabilize North Korea. The major countries active in Northeast Asia – China, Russia, South Korea, Japan, and the United States — are in the situation that has classically led to multilaterally-imposed neutralization in the past: none of them needs to dominate North Korea, but each of them needs to assure that none of the others dominate it. The neutralization of Belgium by international treaty in 1839 is a case in point. (Neutralization is not the same as neutrality – the former is decided on by outside powers for their convenience, whereas neutrality is a policy adopted by a country which hopes thereby to stay out of a fight among other powers. For example, Switzerland during World War II and Finland during the Cold War adopted neutrality by their own choice.)

Joint action undertaken to neutralize a post-Kim dynasty North Korea could be done through an ad hoc “concert of Northeast Asia” analogous to the Concert of Europe that kept peace in Europe after the Napoleonic wars. The formation of such a concert requires that all the parties be basically satisfied the with the power relations prevailing in a region. They then act jointly to maintain that power status quo. If one member of the concert power begins an expansionist effort, the other members will together attempt to contain it. Because all of North Korea’s neighbors would have a common interest in keeping North Korea neutralized, as would the major ally of Japan and South Korea, the United States, the condition necessary for concerted action would be present.

In addition to assuaging China’s fears that South Korea and the United States might move into the power vacuum created by collapse of the Kim regime, a contingency plan for   neutralization could also reduce another Chinese concern: that China might end up with the full economic burden of resuscitating and reforming North Korea’s shaky economy. The combination of both security and economic fears explains why China has long resisted the inclusion of substantial reduction on oil shipments to North Korea in U.N. sanctions. In negotiations for a neutralization plan, China could insist that other countries commit to sharing the burden of rehabilitating the North Korean economy. Japan and the United States in particular have such strong security concerns about North Korean’s nuclear build-up that they would likely make such commitments in order to get China’s support for further strengthening of sanctions on North Korea.

A plan to provide troops to maintain order in North Korea would be crucial to the contingency agreement. It would be equally essential to avoid a tragic replay of the division of Korea in 1945, when boots on the ground determined into whose sphere of influence each part of Korea would be incorporated. Consideration should be given to interspersing units from the surrounding countries’ armed forces in a polka-dot pattern across North Korea, with no contingent located on the border of its own country. U.N. peacekeepers could also serve a crucial role in places which none of the powers would want to see occupied by any of the others.  

The goal for whatever military arrangements might be agreed upon by North Korea’s neighbors would be to implement the neutralization of North Korea. Such an arrangement would contribute greatly to the stability of power relations in Northeast Asia as a whole. If successful, it could provide a precedent for a concert among the countries bordering on the South China Sea to assure mutual freedom of navigation through its waters. For China, satisfying its maritime security interests in such a way would improve its relations with Southeast Asian nations, rather than antagonizing them, as does its present assertion of sovereignty over most of the Sea.      

Regardless of whether the Chinese government took an interest in negotiating such a contingency plan for neutralizing North Korea, for the United States to propose it would add credibility to American assurances that the United States does not seek to dominate North Korea in the event of regime collapse. Such assurances would go a long way towards convincing the Chinese to support additional tightening of the sanctions screws on Pyongyang.

William A. Douglas is professorial lecturer at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Developing Democracy and Promoting Democracy, among other publications. He was the Fei Yiming Visiting Professor of Politics at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in 2009-2011.