[wavefunction]

Seems short-sighted, as in the winding down of the Kim Juche dynasty through a planned-for and managed process seems more attractive to China than those million+ refugees fleeing North Korea en masse because we went back to a shooting war.

In fact there is absolutely no real reason for China not to begin this effort immediately with or without the assistance of partners, given how their leniency has allowed NK to develop ICBMs and the fact they'll face the tidal wave if they fail to act to remove the NK regime. What happens if the fail to prepare and a war between NK/US happens? They're still going to be dealing with the refugees.

The US is not going to suffer a NK that and and does threaten nuclear attack as a foreign policy.

[RobertoG]

Maybe I'm pointing the obvious, but the reason that the idiot in charge in NK want nuclear weapons is in order to avoid the fate of the idiot that was in charge in Iraq.

Probably that war was like an epiphany for the people in charge in NK. And maybe Iran think something in the same lines.

So, maybe he is wrong, or, maybe, that it's the only way that the US will suffer his regime.

[bilbo0s]

"...given how their leniency has allowed NK to develop ICBMs..."

The issue is that North Korea's atomic and missile programs were helped along by Russia. That's where the technical assistance all came from, at least initially. So China, and even the US for that matter, really had no way of stopping that. The Russian involvement is a fact that is generally glossed over by policy makers because there is little you can do to stop Russia.

What's surprising about the Trump belief that China could have stopped Russia, is what it says about Trump's foreign policy acumen. It betrays either Trump's lack of knowledge about the history of the North Korean program, or his naiveté with respect to the extent of China's power.

[lostlogin]

“After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy,” the president told the Journal. “I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power [over] North Korea. ... But it’s not what you would think.” Trump.

https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2017...

[acqq]

You're misinformed. North Korea got atomic bomb tech from Pakistan.