North Korea as of two weeks ago could not feed the lower enlisted ranks of its Army.
When the Generals paychecks bounce the country will fall and probably be handed over to the S. Koreans.
No payments have been made by then US to N. Korea since Trump took the White House. Presidential advisers are all that is keeping him from starting a trade war with China. The result would be a financial disaster for the world economy.
ChiComs want to bring the Americans to the table by instructing their puppet in DPRK to set off a few bombs and missiles to bluster, sabre rattle and get Trump to the table. For 40 years the US has been blackmailed into paying for the DPRK elites and military to stay in power, inadvertently of course or so past administrations would claim.
Trump had said enough is enough and the gravy train is over. Let the SOBs starve.
Speculation of back-channel chatter with China is that Trump would tolerate the ChiComs invading DPRK to force regime change, bring them under PRC's umbrella of security and protection. They would then have to give up their nukes and stop being a recalcitrant child.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-a...2017-09-04
Any military intervention, Chinese or otherwise, would carry huge risks. But before dwelling on them, consider what a successful Chinese intervention would achieve.
For starters, it would put North Korea right where the country’s post-Korean War history suggests it belongs: under a Chinese nuclear umbrella, benefiting from a credible security guarantee…
If, as is commonly assumed, North Korea wants some sort of credible security guarantee in exchange for curtailing its nuclear program, the only country capable of providing it is China. No American promise would remain credible beyond the term of the president who gave it, if even that long.
If China were to combine threats of invasion with a promise of security and nuclear protection, in exchange for cooperation and possible regime change, its chances of winning over large parts of the Korean People’s Army would be high. Whereas a nuclear exchange with the U.S. would mean devastation, submission to China would promise survival, and presumably a degree of continued autonomy. For all except those closest to Kim, the choice would not be a difficult one.
China’s strategic gains from a successful military intervention would include not only control of what happens on the Korean Peninsula, where it presumably would be able to establish military bases, but also regional gratitude for having prevented a catastrophic war. No other action holds as much potential to make Chinese leadership within Asia seem both credible, and desirable, especially if the alternative is a reckless, poorly planned U.S.-led war. What China needs, above all, is legitimacy, and intervention in North Korea would provide it. Successful use of hard power would bring China, to borrow the distinction coined by Harvard’s Joseph S. Nye, huge reserves of soft power…
What we can say with near certainty is that a Chinese land and sea invasion, rather than an American one, would stand a better chance of avoiding Kim’s likely response: an artillery attack on the South Korean capital, Seoul, which lies just a few dozen miles south of the demilitarized zone. Why would North Korea slaughter its southern brothers and sisters in retaliation for a Chinese invasion that came with a promise of continued security, if not autonomy?
Moreover, while the Kim regime’s nuclear restraint could hardly be taken for granted, China would be a less likely target than the U.S. for North Korean missiles. Were a Chinese military option to be contemplated seriously, some intelligence and missile-defense collaboration with the U.S. might be worth exploring. Given the risks, it would be hard for the U.S. to refuse.
This scenario may well never happen. But it is so logical that the possibility of it should be taken seriously. It is, after all, China’s best opportunity to achieve greater strategic parity with the U.S. in the region, while removing a source of instability that threatens them both.
This article was published with the permission of Project Syndicate.
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