“I’d tell China privately that any ICBM coming out of NK will be treated as an ICBM coming out of CHINA, period. The NK missiles say “Made In China” under the new NK paint job. Any attack from the NK “cats paw” is an attack by CHINA.”
How do know that wasn’t said and that message received by the PRC?
China’s response might have still been what they’ve just said.
Basically the PRC has just told N. Korea to back down.
We can’t know what will happen in 10 years. We also can’t know what is going on behind the scenes between the PRC and the DPRK. I’ve lived in China. I’ve talked to middle rank party apparatchiks there. They are not found of North Korea but feel sort of a weird Confucian responsibility for them.
N. Korea now knows that they can’t start a hot war and count on China’s help. That is a big step in the right direction. Combined with the PRC officially revising its history of the Korean war a couple of days ago to something that approaches the truth and telling N. Korea essentially, “You owe us, in fact, if it weren’t for us you’d not be there.”
I agree there is some gray area here. That can be clarified by having the PRC define what constitutes and attack by N. Korea. Bt, that is a better question to ask than “What will China do if.........?”
By allowing China to save face the situation is, at least for now defused and relations with the PRC are not fractured. Those are good things. Now we can work with India to defuse the situation between China and India.
This is a win. A big one for the Trump administration.
It can be argued that the situation with India is an attempt to deflect attention from the debacle that is north Korea
I don’t disagree, but aiming “near” Guam provides plenty of gray area for misinterpretation.
Do you think the “Guam missile tests” will proceed?
By allowing China to save face the situation is, at least for now defused and relations with the PRC are not fractured.
Yes, let us kick that can down the road again. Hell let us ship a billion dollars to NK so they can improve the accuracy of their missiles.
If China would have said that all Nuclear programs must stop, all existing Nuke be destroyed under international supervision, then yes, we can sit back and do nothing.
China is doing what communist have done forever. Three steps forward, one step back. That is they push and push until confronted and they concede small things to buy time. They have long range plans.
All previous administrations had done nothing but kick the can down the road and bribe the NK to be good little children. Well they took what we gave them and continued to build nukes. Why do you think they will do anything different now?
As for thinking China will help them, do you really think the US would not respond to an attack just because China might get involved? If China wants war, they will get one. If China wants peace they will take out NK nukes themselves.
In the end China needs to ask themselves do they want to take on the US?