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It has already been stated, but we have been here before. The players are not all the same, as in Rocket Man / Trump. On its face, this makes it different. However, the main nations shifting the levers behind the scenes are the same. China has been and is the main player behind NK geopolitically and economically. If NK softens, it will be at least in part because China gains in the process.

Only a blind fool would refuse to recognize NK as the strategic shield and pawn it is to China mostly, as well as to Moscow. However, strategically and economically, it is possible and plausible, NK does not represent the geographic and geopolitical shield it has to this point.

China has vastly increased and leap-frogged in every area of conventional and strategic military capability. Thanks to Bill Clinton, China now has all of our population centers targeted with nuclear missiles, and has now placed its own version of S-400 and several 4th and 5th gen, very accurate high speed anti-ship missiles, as well as its 5th gen fighter on nearly a dozen of its newly created islands, placing a strangle hold into the southernmost area’s of the South China Sea. NK still has purpose, but it may be diminished.

While I do not anticipate we will be fooled diplomatically, as in the past (or was it American global socialist strategy), we really are speaking of a Chinese/Russian/US match here. This is proven by the immediate shadowing of our 3 carrier groups in the region by Chinese and Russians. This axis is rapidly posturing to challenge and even reconstructing its geopolitical stranglehold throughout the ME. At the end of the day, NK is not the end game here. It is a pawn.

In reality, much (if not all), of NK’s weapons/missile platforms, and likely even their nuclear testing, is not of NK origin. NK has been very useful as a pawn to China, and is likely to be a pawn for some time. China is not growing weaker, and they appear to be taking giant steps in their preparation to dominate the region by force.

Being that China is the real entity we are dealing with here, in the bigger picture, the question China is seeking the answer to is, how far is the US willing to go with China. China wrestled with and secured the $6 Trillion dollar per year economy of Hong Kong, and its people from Britain. The US is not GB, but China is vastly more powerful than it was in the 1990’s, and ready and able to take a number of nations throughout the theatre if the US blinks.

China and Russia are simply not going to give up NK.

Because of the socialist leadership South Korea now has at the moment, (regardless if some analyst are correct or not about the SK leadership being put in place by China), the strategic slight of hand being exercised by a vastly more militarized China, is a threat to the people of South Korea itself, without NK! The people of South Korea really could be in greater danger than at various moments in recent decades.