China’s stance on North Korea could lead to war

The Times(UK) ^ | 05/31/10 | Bill Emmott

[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.

[Carry_Okie]

Can you imagine what one EMP weapon over China could do to the global supply chain?

One that hadn't occurred to me.

[SunkenCiv]

• U.S. to Aid South Korea With Naval Defense Plan
• Question: Where's the UN Security Council an investigation into Sinking of South Korean ship?
• Russians to study warship sinking probe
• China's Korea crisis (WaPo editorial gets frustrated)
• U.S., South Korea Forces Say They Can Repel North as Raptors, Ships Deploy
• China Refuses To Sanction N. Korea Over Cheonan
• US/S.KOREA has joint commando rescue plan
  for S. Korea workers stuck on N. Korean side at Kaesong
• S. Korea's military reviewing further measures against North
• South Korea deploys troops in border zone to 'punish' North
• North Korea Scraps Military Safeguards with South

[nw_arizona_granny]

Bump.