Postby aero » Fri Aug 11, 2017 5:17 am
North Korea has a shoestring military budget, no economy to speak of, and their only claim to being a threat is a limited supply of nuclear weapons. North Korea could be invaded following preemptive strikes on their nuclear facilities, but the retaliation has to be considered along with the immediate refugee problem that will emerge. North Korea really only has the power to knock over a single domino but it's everything after that's the actual threat. And again once all of the dominoes have fallen, you have chaos left over when the regime changes. China doesn't want a unified Korea or a regime sympathetic to the US enough to allow military bases, the US doesn't want another equally dangerous regime hostile to it or its allies, and the people of North Korea have a right to self determination. Because of this the US can't install a sympathetic government like previous attempts in the middle east, they can't invest in the region like they did for Europe after WWII with the Marshal Plan for the same reasons, and neither the US nor China will let the other engage in any opportunism which will make the post-war reconstruction ready for the most aggressive bunch to take control.
The only way I see this working out is if the US and China can negotiate terms that North Korea must follow (i.e. halting its nuclear tests, releasing all prisoners from the concentration camps, allowance of U.N. peacekeepers to inspect as they please) and create a shared red line for military intervention if the agreement is breached. Tbh, that's what I thought President Trump would do but right now he's just trying to see who blinks first with both countries mounting up tensions.