Physically, THAAD serves as an Iron Curtain to intercept incoming missiles from North Korea. Separate national security interests have supplanted Cold War ideology, but THAAD could influence competing alliances and block cooperation among the countries involved in the “Six Party Talks.”

Given the domestic pressures faced by the major players, especially the US, in the near future, we can only expect an extension of the current dilemma.

Washington’s hawkish posturing is not likely to induce Beijing to incur the risks of greatly increasing its pressure on the North Korean regime. The first step would be to meet Beijing’s longstanding call for Washington to engage Pyongyang in serious, bilateral negotiations.

A new crisis is brewing on the Korean Peninsula. In mid-February, North Korea conducted an intermediate-range ballistic missile test. On March 1, the United States and South Korea began a joint military exercise that is unprecedented in scale and intensity.

Ironically, in launching its economic campaign to protest South Korean deployment of the THAAD anti-missile system, Beijing is effectively doing Washington’s bidding. U.S. policymakers long have worried about the PRC’s economic draw on the South. As China voluntarily curbs those ties, American officials couldn’t be happier.

The decision to deploy a Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in the Republic of Korea (ROK) by the ROK and the United States caused strong diplomatic reactions from China. Further negative interactions between the ROK and China may develop if the two countries cannot find a solution.

The recent Lotte crisis is a recurring incident in East Asia’s power dynamic: one country wields economic weapons to score geopolitical goals against another. In a region where China and U.S. lack strategic trust and security cooperation, everyone stands to lose when economics and geopolitics get tangled. Keeping the two in separate dimensions and preventing risks from one realm spilling over into the other are imperative.

Participants in the Six Party Talks can take four paths to progress: Make denuclearization of the Peninsula their collective top priority; make a military strike an option as talks resume; initiate peace treaty talks concurrently; and take confidence-building steps to make negotiations more inviting.

In light of this unexpected focus on the role of nuclear weapons and the prospect of continued U.S.-Chinese competition, it’s worth understanding more about the two countries’ nuclear policies and capabilities. Unlike the United States, China does not acknowledge a potential role for tactical nuclear weapons in fighting or winning a limited conflict, and is thought to maintain only a strategic nuclear arsenal exclusively to deter nuclear coercion or threat from another country.