Posted on 05/30/2010 6:27:16 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
May 31, 2010
China’s stance on North Korea could lead to war
The world is anxious about the Kim regime but greater disasters lie ahead if its superpower neighbour fails to act
Bill Emmott
Try this quiz. You lead a rising economic superpower, with ambitions for global political power. You have pledged to pursue a “peaceful rise” and to work through the United Nations wherever possible to maintain international stability. Out of the blue, your unruly neighbour, an ally and quasi-dependant for the past 60 years, torpedoes a warship of its own neighbour, killing 46 sailors, and then, when accused of this crime, threatens all-out war. What do you do?
Virtually nothing, is China’s answer so far, for that is the superpower and the neighbour is North Korea. Officially, Chinese leaders are still “reviewing the evidence” presented by an international team that was asked by South Korea to investigate the sinking in March of the Cheonan, evidence that has convinced virtually everyone else that a North Korean torpedo was to blame.
A faraway country of which we know little, is what many are tempted to say of Kim Jong Il’s northeast Asian enclave, paraphrasing Neville Chamberlain’s notorious line about Czechoslovakia in 1938. The North Koreans have a long history of outrageous behaviour, from killing most of the South Korean Cabinet on a visit to Rangoon in 1983, to living off counterfeiting and cigarette-smuggling, to firing missiles over Japan, to testing nuclear weapons twice in the past four years. Recently, in negotiations they have mostly proved to have been after something, and have scuttled back into their “Hermit Kingdom” when they got it.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
As long as we are just pleading, that will be the way. They only act when their stance will promt us to act to threaten them strategically. However, it may well not happen. We are all preoccupied with keeping our financial bubble intact than addressing strategic threat. More so than China.
In the end, it will only amplify post-Kim jong-il uncertainty. China owns this crisis.
P!
Bump
Wow, I had forgotten the Rangoon incident and
I remember when it happened.
China may figure a little war might reduce the size of the problem for them.
Just gotten done watching the Merorial Day concert on PBS, and remembering one of my late uncles who was in Korea during the Korean conflict, and seeing a very touching tribute of two buddies who was in that war, I cannot help but think, with this year marking 60 years since the start of that war and with renewed worries about a possible flare up again with the two Koreas, reading this makes me think about those two buddies and my late uncle.
Next month marks the 60th anniversary of the beginning of hostilities. Will there be a restart?
They are just more concerned with damage to their geopolitical calculus. If it benefits them geopolitically, they will waste no time to take refugees. It will make good PR, too. China use to support defeated Khmer Rouge to keep pressure on Viet Nam after their invasion led to disastrous defeat. If they supported genocidal Khmer Rouge for strategic reason, what not do the same for N. Korea?
bttt
Democrats always did start the biggest wars.
If China is smart, they are already quietly staging as much humanitarian relief supplies and food as they can near the Korean border, ready to flood the country when Kim assumes room temperature, and prevent a mass exodus of 22 Million starving NoKo refugees.
That would give Chia Head a wrong message, making him push envelope ever further. Because of their lack of action, Chia Head is turning into a bigger and bigger headache. He is incrementally maneuvering himself into a position of greater leverage, even against China. Of course, Chia Head is dying and Chia hopes that this headache would end soon and they would have a free hand on shaping N. Korea's future heavily in their favor. They are saying to themselves, "OK. Wait a little longer. Another month or another year, and this will go away. Let's be a little more patient." However, Chia Head create real problem even before he dies. It also gives time to Chia Head to put measures in place for Chinese encroachment, creating a situation they cannot control, making their intervention extremely costly even though China can prevail in the end.
With Obama in the White House, China knows that there will be no penalties no matter how intransigent they are.
As a start, couldn’t we at least have FAIR trade with Red China?
I’m so sick of kissing their butts.
Soon enough, one of those Nork subs will suffer an unfortunate event and disappear into the briny deep. Quid pro quo, no one will talk about it, and the war prep and talk will be gone with the wind. Meanwhile, thousands of kids are out on the streets of Pyongyang and elsewhere in Norkland practicing for the Mass Games.
China does not want a war between the Koreas. So there won't be one. That's the bottom line behind the Nork bluster.
Mybe not yet and maybe not over Korea, but certainly China is the best candidate to end up in a devastating nuclear war with the USA.
My guess is they will take Taiwan by force and God knows where that will escalate to.
I think this is an excuse advanced by the left to explain away Chinese support for NK.
When you think about it, NK has 25 million people of which only a percentage are close enough to the Chinese border to present China with a potential refugee problem
If tens of millions can be fed in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami, China, a nation 1.25 billion or so can easily handle 5 million refugees.
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