And with similar respect, your argument is mostly total bullshit. Whatever the outcome of the present situation, China will never permit South Korea to have nukes. And Japan's constitution does not permit it. But your scenario does throw up one interesting little factoid that has been more or less missing from the discussion.Joachim wrote:With all due respect , it is a total bullshit.
Like it or not, the USA elected - without pressure from any other country as far as I am aware - to protect South Korea, Japan and most of the rest of Asia with its nuclear umbrella. There are firm, fully ratified treaties in place to that effect. But now that there is talk about Kim 3's inter-ballisitc missiles being able to hit the USA sooner rather than later, suddenly the desire to fulfil its treaty obligations seems to be wavering. China gave no such assurances, Russia gave no such assurances. The USA did. If the USA under Trump is now regarded internationally as a bit of a laughing stock, unilateral abrogation of those treaties would make it an international pariah.
Firecat69 is totally correct. China is not going to lift more than a little finger to help solve the problem. It will do what it is in China's interest to do. And having a unified Korean peninsula with American defences is way off Beijing's agenda. Kim's missiles will not be pointed at Beijing or Shanghai. If the USA does not like that fact, what is it going to do? Sanctions against China? What sanctions? What retaliation? China holds roughly $1.3 trillion of US debt. That can cushion some sanctions. It can also create more than a bit of turmoil on foreign exchange and stock markets if dropped in the right place at the right time.
The USA created the problem. The USA exacerbated the problem by unilaterally breaking a treaty and placing nukes in South Korea for more than 3 decades thereby encouraging Kim 1 to start on a similar nuclear programme. With both North and South as puppets in the Cold War, this was inevitable with help from the Soviets. The USA under Bush 2 and Obama failed to grasp the nettle and left the mess to the next Presidents. If it takes military action in North Korea which results in mega deaths in other parts of Asia to save deaths in Seattle or Los Angeles, it will again have failed to honour its treaties.
It's one hell of a problem. But it is very largely one of America's making. And before going further, let's remember that nukes are just part of the problem. The North has very large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. How are those to be taken out?