[quote=afx114][quote=dbapig]”Pyongyang has the ability to start a new Korean War, but not to survive one.”[/quote]
Yes, so what are our options then? Continue to “appease?” Start a war to kick him out? Covert operations? Exploding cigars? Sounds like we’re content to let the old man play with his toys and let him bask in his own little ego in his own little world for a little while longer until he expires. What then?
The other option? A lengthy, bloody war resulting in tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dead? Maybe a million? Is this the option that the anti-“appeasement” crowd would prefer?
At what point does pragmatism become appeasement, or vice versa?[/quote]
There isn’t really any good option. That’s why NK has survived as long as it has even though the other communist nations are gone, mostly.
No action can really be taken that will start a full scale war. No one’s content to let the situation simmer as it is but there simply isn’t any other option.
There is however one way out. And that way lies through a place called Beijing.
Very unfortunately, Beijing isn’t a very reliable partner in this situation. They’d much prefer to have NK stay as a satellite state and act as a buffer against US influence on the Asian continent. It’s BS that China doesn’t want NK to collapse to prevent the flood of hungry N Korea flooding China. China simply doesn’t want to lose a useful pawn in the game it’s playing with US. However it seems more and more that China’s calculation is coming back to bite itself. If you were leading China, which one would you want? A unified Korean peninsula stable/prosperous to trade with? Or a little brat that is N Korea that might give Japan the reason to arm up and possibly nukes?
Beijing has to realize it can’t have it both ways…
