North Korea is threatening nuclear war against South Korea. North Korea has been supplying dangerous regimes like Iran with equipment for building nuclear weapons and missile systems to deliver them. North Korea is an economic basket case sustained largely by whatever it can extort from free countries and commerce with China (North Korean labor is even cheaper than Chinese labor). With governments of free countries finally cutting back on extortion payments, China wields the biggest influence over North Korea of any government because of the financial support it provides and the military protection it extends. It is unlikely that anything of international consequence is done by North Korea without at least tacit Chinese approval.
The recent artillery attacks by North Korea are just the latest provocation to test the will of South Korea and the United States. The US and South Korea have conducted joint military exercises in response, but they did not include a punishing reprisal of any kind. If the penalty for aggression is just being forced to watch enemy ships sailing in the vicinity of your country and enemy aircraft flying near your country, then you are not being forced to pay a significant price for aggressive, murderous acts. Unless some North Korean Navy submarines were secretly sunk or some other significant military action has been successfully carried out in secret, the US and South Korea failed the test. Such failure only enhances China's influence in the region and weakens US influence. China lets loose its berserker, the crazy, belligerent North Korean military, to test, and ultimately weaken, the United States.
North Korea, if left to its own devices, would economically implode and starve itself to death. No military action would be necessary to neutralize it except to contain it as it considered military action as a last desperate option to gain some wealth from South Korea and stave off imminent collapse. However, China provides enough for North Korea to subsist on as long as it proves useful as a source of cheap labor and, more importantly, a painful thorn in the side of the United States.
I hate to say I told you so, but I did.
The recent artillery attacks by North Korea are just the latest provocation to test the will of South Korea and the United States. The US and South Korea have conducted joint military exercises in response, but they did not include a punishing reprisal of any kind. If the penalty for aggression is just being forced to watch enemy ships sailing in the vicinity of your country and enemy aircraft flying near your country, then you are not being forced to pay a significant price for aggressive, murderous acts. Unless some North Korean Navy submarines were secretly sunk or some other significant military action has been successfully carried out in secret, the US and South Korea failed the test. Such failure only enhances China's influence in the region and weakens US influence. China lets loose its berserker, the crazy, belligerent North Korean military, to test, and ultimately weaken, the United States.
North Korea, if left to its own devices, would economically implode and starve itself to death. No military action would be necessary to neutralize it except to contain it as it considered military action as a last desperate option to gain some wealth from South Korea and stave off imminent collapse. However, China provides enough for North Korea to subsist on as long as it proves useful as a source of cheap labor and, more importantly, a painful thorn in the side of the United States.
I hate to say I told you so, but I did.
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