The Korean War has a weird place in the American war pantheon. Everyone pretty much assumes we “won” and no one’s entirely clear how there can be a technical state of war for 50 years.
The whole war is extremely complex. China and to a lesser extent the Soviets became a huge spoiler for what was a mostly cut-and-dried regional conflict; the North Koreans caught the poorly trained and ill-equipped South Koreans by surprise, but withered when faced with “modern” American combined arms warfare.
So I guess the big question now is, “Just how much does China value North Korea”?
You can pretty much assume we’ve already got every possible nuke storage site assholed already; say what you will about Barry I seriously doubt that he didn’t allow every available Tomahawk-enabled sub to be put on station. Some shock-and-awe action could eliminate their ability to go nuclear, if they can even make nuke attacks.
But, as in 1950, how China intends to deal with any action is critical.
My personal opinion is that they (China) see NK as useful idiots: irritate the US and its allies, keep us busy and distracted. They probably want a North Korea that’s just nuclear enough to stress everyone out, but I can’t imagine the Chinese want NK doing something stupid like randomly launching a nuke at Tokyo one sunny Thursday.
It seems consistent with modern proxy warfare to allow us to bomb NK a little closer to the stone age, then jump in and demand peace. This makes sure commerce (a key Chinese concern) is not ruined, but the useful idiot is now knocked down a peg by its arch-nemesis, keeping them hungry and angry at the Americans. China then makes a bunch of concessions and promises to oversee the peace. With Kim Jong Il with a foot in the grave, you can restructure NK to be more … useful to you.
