Handicapping The Norks

How about a bit of analysis, eh?
First, Russia’s Lavrov has apparently said that a nuclear armed North Korea is unacceptable. Well, fancy that. It would have been nice if you gave a **** ten years ago, or five, eh?
Then there’s China. Let us not forget that in order to execute any foreign transaction someone has to intermediate the money coming back into the country. That someone has been one of a handful of Chinese banks, and may I remind you that all banks are licensed by the nation in which they operate. Therefore China has been able to enforce all previous sanctions against North Korea and has willfully refused to.
Now China says that it “will not” interfere if North Korea attacks US interests first. But China made no such promise if we attack to “change the regime.” In fact it claims it will “prevent” us from doing so (sure it will….. how?)
What’s the significance of this bluster from China? It reinforces China’s refusal to adhere to the previous and present UN resolutions and punish those organizations that intentionally violate same, including those very same banks.
This belies the ultimate problem on the Korean peninsula: China most-definitely does not want a unified Korea under a representative republican form of government. In fact it actively fears that happening since said nation would not be able to be controlled and could become hostile on a trade basis to China. In fact, it probably would become hostile to same at least in some degree and worse, if it demonstrated success it would add to the risk of political instability in China itself.
So here we are. China and Russia have sat on their hands or worse, actively aided and funded North Korea for 20+ years while it (1) built a reactor, (2) produced bomb material from said reactor, (3) assembled said bomb and (4) tested said bombs. They also sat back while the nation developed missiles of increasing ranges, up to and now including, it appears, ICBMs.

This post was published at Market-Ticker on 2017-08-11.