“Un”? Using that appellation makes one look less than knowledgeable about Korea and Koreans. Kim is the family name; Jong-un is the personal name. Calling him “Un” is like calling Billy Crystal “Y”.
China’s government and military both know full well that the UN command will not attack North Korea first. They didn’t even attack in response to the sinking of the Cheonan or a few other high profile incidents.
North Korea’s military also knows that isn’t in the cards. The North’s bluster serves two purposes: domestic consumption to show their population how other governments accede to their great leader, and foreign consumption to unnerve other governments enough to provide aid.
China doesn’t give a tinker’s damn if there’s another democracy on their border and what its alignment would be. What they care about is “stability”. In this case that means not having potentially 25 million refugees swarming across their border. China is already having enough trouble domestically with groups who don’t like Chinese rule; they do not want more. This is what China hopes to prevent by ensuring the statusvquo on the Korean Peninsula.
One of the Beijing TV stations is currently airing a series about Chairman Mao. The last few episodes aired concern the beginning of the Korean War. Besides the bad acting from both Chinese and foreign actors, the script is so propagandistic that not even a Chinese version of a Trumpist would believe it. Accuracy is not the point. What it’s building up to is how the Chinese, not the Koreans, suffered during the war. It’s for domestic consumption–the “hearts” part of “hearts and minds”. The top military leadership, of course, knows it’s BS.
Regarding the 25 million NK refugees trying to go to China in the event of a war, I don’t see how that is likely to happen. My guess is that due to the nature a war with NK is likely to take that the vast majority of those 25 million will be dead by nuke before they have a chance to reach China. Under what scenario might we be looking at 25 million refugees rather than 25 million dead people?
An ‘in kind’ response to an attack from NK would not wipe everyone out. Not even close.
If NK where to nuke, say Guam, I suspect they would get a few in return, and then a ‘conventional’ war would be not much more than a mopping up process. With a great deal of it taking out NK’s ability to fight. Which in turn is going to disrupt an already shaky transportation and the logistics to distribute the little food they have.
An army marches on it’s stomach. Especially if most of your equipment is based on 1950–70’s technology. Refugees will swarm China. Whether of not it does them any good is up to debate, but hungry people go where the food is.
It seems very unlikely indeed, and the only reason Guam’s in the news is that Kim looked at a map of US territories and noted Guam is definitely within range.
Firing four missiles just to splash near Guam would be a strange decision, since
It could result in a hostile response; the U.S. and its allies can’t tell at first if the missiles are armed or not, and may at least shoot them down (which would be hideously embarrassing, and is entirely possible; there are THAAD batteries in Guam) or possibly start a shooting war the DPRK doesn’t want.
Even if the USA somehow knew for sure it was all a show, wasting four of their best missiles to make a show of a bellyflop contest is a damn expensive display. North Korea doesn’t have a huge arsenal of long range missiles to just throw away without a purpose.
Pool (and everyone else in this thread), I’m going to recommend you read The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia by Andrei Lankov. Lankov is one of the top minds on North Korean politics and his book should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in Korean politics.
As you note, pool, Kim is not out of control and he is not crazy. What he says and what he does is calculated to one end: survival. The fact that the Kim regime has managed to stay in power for 60+ years attests to their success.
I find it mildly humorous just how many Americans work themselves into a frothy outrage at every little thing Kim does, claiming that this [whatever “this” is that made the day’s news] is irrefutable proof the man is a psychopath. Apparently we forget that our own democratically elected leader acts just as unhinged and is, by all evidence, a fair bit more unhinged than Kim is. We condemn Kim for having one of the largest militaries in the world (not much smaller than ours, actually) while allowing his country to fall victim to famine; despite our condemnations we often forget that there is a very large and powerful political party in our country that believes a strong military trumps all things and social welfare programs should be nearly non-existent—as existed in North Korea during the height of their Great Famine.
Kim is not going to fire a nuke at us, or likely do anything else that would prompt a military response from us. Kim is aware of NATO article 5, just as (I hope to God) Trump is aware of article 2 of the Sino-North Korean Mutual Aid treaty. Kim and Trump are not in a pissing contest (although Trump may be stupid enough to think he is), but rather this whole situation is a calculated move by North Korea to gain international respect to be taken seriously.
So far, it’s been working. Kim has managed to hold onto his country when Quaddhafi, Hussein, and Mubarak failed to keep theirs.
Regarding this:
May I also recommend Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick and Without You There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea’s Elite by Suki Kim. Recommended to me by others here on the SDMB, these books examine everyday lives of everyday people in North Korea. Perhaps most startling for me when I read them is the fact that the population of North Korea literally worships the Kims. They believe the Kims are saviors: that they and they alone are the protectors of North Korea and that everything they have, no matter how bad, is due to the awesome leadership of the Kims. They also believe with 100% certainty that the United States wants to harm them and that the rest of the world is one monolithic enemy hellbent on their destruction. While there are defectors here and there in the grand scheme of things they are relatively rare; most truly do belong to the cult of Kim. We should step back, examine the behavior of Trump’s base, and not be surprised by this. Trump used many of the same tactics to gain power.
The only difference between now and the last 60+ years of the Kims exhibiting this behavior is 1) they have actual nuclear weapons and most likely the necessary hardware to deliver them to at a minimum our allies and, thanks to our military presence in Japan and South Korea, to our own citizens, and 2) our president does not understand or believe in diplomacy and has no idea how this game is played. Kim has always operated under the assumption that the rest of the world understands his saber rattling. That is no longer the case, hence our current apprehension.
Given this mess, why isn’t China being more aggressive in reigning in North Korea? China has lots to lose and not much to gain from their continued alliance.
Well, I don’t think China will be in any better mood if 25 million refugees is replaced by a cloud of poisonous radiation drifting down their main population centres.
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The only “rational” reasons ever given - by Westerners - as to why North Korea should give up its nukes reflect Westernized thinking:
*
“He should do it for his people.”
“Nukes scare North Korea’s neighbors.”
“The money spent on nukes could be spent on food, medicines, etc.”*
I wouldn’t go that far. But, for now (today…maybe for the next few hours, or until KJU eats lunch or takes a shit), the NKs are (supposedly) taking a wait and see approach. I didn’t seriously think they would launch missiles at Guam anyway, and this lets’s lil’ Kimmy 3.0 back off of that and save face at the same time. It also lets him look reasonable when he tests missiles by firing them somewhere else.
Sure, but it’s always “for now” with the DPRK. They can always decide to make new threats. But even if it’s only for now, they didn’t have to announce that they were stepping back from their threat, and yet they did.