The following article appeared on the
American Thinker on December 17th
By Rick Moran
A glimpse into the thinking of the
Chinese government on North Korea reveals that Beijing is concerned about being
dragged into war on the Korean peninsula and that "North Korea is a
time bomb" waiting to explode.
Various Chinese security experts who
advise the government made it clear at a conference last week that there is a
real fear in Beijing that the situation between the US and North Korea may be
beyond any diplomatic solution.
“Conditions on the peninsula now make
for the biggest risk of a war in decades,” said Shi Yinhong, director of the Center on American
Studies at Renmin University of China in Beijing and an adviser to
the State Council of China on diplomacy issues since February
2011, during the conference. “North Korea is a time bomb. We can only delay
the explosion, hoping that by delaying it, a time will come to remove the
detonator,” he added, reported the South China Morning Post Saturday.
Wang Hongguang, former deputy
commander of the Nanjing Military Region, an important military region, warned
that a war could begin as soon as March, when South Korea and the United States
are slated to hold annual military drills. “It is a highly dangerous
period,” Wang said during the conference. “Northeast China should mobilize
defenses for war.”
Chinese officials have sought to
improve relations with North Korea amid unusually high tensions between
Pyongyang and world leaders over the reclusive nation's growing nuclear
program. But local governments in China have also taken precautions to prepare
for conflict in case various diplomatic gestures do not succeed. Earlier
this month, a government newspaper in China’s northeastern province of
Jilin on the North Korean border published a full-page article advising
residents on how to survive a nuclear attack, Quartz reported.
“It’s natural that Jilin province is
more sensitive to the situation on the Korean peninsula, given its special
geographic location. It’s necessary for the provincial paper to publish
information on nuclear weapons,” wrote state tabloid Global Times in
an editorial.
As its largest trading partner and
main source of food, China is North Korea's most significant ally. It has
recently embraced new U.N. sanctions against North Korea while also calling
for dialogue. U.S. officials, however, have urged China to do more to
temper its neighbor's global threats and nuclear ambitions, Politico has reported.
US domestic concerns have mostly
shoved North Korea into the background, but our military buildup and pressure
continues and South Korea now appears to be reluctantly coming along with administration
policy and strategy. They have embraced the joint military exercises we've been
carrying out and while they are still calling for "dialogue" with the
North (as is Japan) they appear to be preparing for war.
So 20 years of US dithering and
kicking the can down the road on North Korea's nuclear and ICBM program appears
to be coming to a head during the Trump administration. Both Democratic and
Republican presidents failed to stop the Kim family from constructing a weapon
that can threaten United States territory. Now, an intolerable
situation must be remedied by any means necessary.
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Kim at the U.N. |
Trump will get the blame for any
conflict on the Korean peninsula but a reckoning with North Korea over their
nuclear program has only become necessary because of our failure to address the
problem when the cost would have been much less. The same people who have urged
restraint on North Korea for 20 years will now be advocating that we accept a
nuclear North Korea capable of striking US cities in the name of
"peace." And they will be the first to stick their face in front of a
camera to denounce Trump for doing what they didn't have the balls to do in the
first place.
Personally, I think the Chinese view
that there will be war in March of next year is optimistic. The next nuclear
test or missile test by Kim will be seen by the administration as sufficient
provocation to remove the threat. How they go about that militarily will
determine how bad the war gets.
Ed. As darlings of the U.N. I expect China will look to the United States to deal with Kim and his delusions of grandeur. And I wouldn't be surprised if Trump were to do just that, in a very direct and undiplomatic way.
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