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I am familiar with this line of thought of course.

Oh, "of course".

That's all there is too it but wishful thinking can make people take leave of ther senses.

Whatver yu say.

Yes it would be preferably to put so much diplomatic pressure on China they remove Kim themselves. But no, we are not currently putting that pressure on China. The clock is running. China responds to the modest level of pressure we are actually willing to employ vs. them and vs. the north by expressing concern to our face and laughing behind our backs. The only thing that will make China choose to remove Kim themselves is a real and present fear that we will remove him military otherwise. They do not want to be in the position of losing their client and reputation, nor in the position of going to war for a nutjob when they will lose. Right now, they don't think we will use force because of their threats, that we will touch trade because of the business lobby, that we will embargo the north because of South Korean sentiment. They look at the whole board and they think we won't do anything hard enough to shake their position. They think they can continue to proliferate, ramp the number of nukes in the hands of proxies into the tens then hundreds, and then out to delivery nutjobs, and we will sit and discuss how hard the problem is but not do a blessed thing.