There's a lot of crystal ball fortunetelling with North Korea, and I have to admit, I'm not sure how much of it I trust. I do trust that these actions appear sane and rational from the inside, but it's very difficult for outsiders to understand what things look like from the inside. Nevertheless, hopefully they don't look so insane that there's going to be a war.
Not that South Korea seems to care. They've been through this dance too many times before.
Bizarrely, from an amateur, armchair perspective, I feel bad that there isn't going to be a war, what with the "population raised in malnutrition" and "accused criminals raped and tortured" and "generations of own civilians growing up in labor camps" atrocities made commonplace. But how easy is rebuilding with three armies camped on your wreckage? Not to mention the inevitable cost to South Korea while missiles are flying. So an invasion would also be painful and abhorrent and more of the same war-is-hell we already have too much of, even before the long, long process of reunification and rebuilding and all the costs that nobody really wants to sink into giving a country a modern... everything.
I think it will totter along, maybe decades longer, before the inevitable utter collapse (and expensive reunification and rebuilding.) In a way, this looks like an odd situation for America because China, not America, is the keystone here. China is basically NK's life support, and nobody's doing anything without China giving a nod.
The problem with a humanitarian war is that it depends on China's acquiesence. I worry that even if there was one a lot of people would suffer and die while Kim Jong-Un was put out of power. Following which, China would ensure that another China-friendly dictator was put into power and ruled over the North. It wouldn't be quite as bad as the Kims, but it probably wouldn't be very friendly for the people there. Certainly China wouldn't want them going north, and they wouldn't want the people going south, so I suspect that you would end up with almost the same situation. I worry that this is one of those problems where there are no good answers.
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http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/292562-1
does a really good job of explaining the rationality of what looks like completely irrational actions.
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Not that South Korea seems to care. They've been through this dance too many times before.
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I think it will totter along, maybe decades longer, before the inevitable utter collapse (and expensive reunification and rebuilding.) In a way, this looks like an odd situation for America because China, not America, is the keystone here. China is basically NK's life support, and nobody's doing anything without China giving a nod.
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