This article from the Christian Science Monitor suggests that if the Chinese government decided to stop helping North Korea, that might cause the country to “implode”, which feels like a good thing from an x-risk reduction standpoint.
I think the civil war that would result combined with extreme proximity between Chinese and US troops (the latter supporting South Korea and trying to contain nuclear weapons) is probably an abysmal thing from an x-risk reduction standpoint.
China has privately told the US that they would support the US in extending South Korean control over the entire Korean peninsula per the diplomatic cables leak. The Chinese would probably be happy if the US rolled in and flattened the entire country as long as they didn’t have to let too many refugees into China, and really, at this point, the way that North Korea is acting China is probably willing to take the risk given that the North Koreans seem eager to cause trouble, and there’s no guarantee it won’t happen in a worse way later on.
Honestly I think that crushing the North Korean government and military completely would probably pretty much end it. North Korea has a ton of propaganda about their country’s superiority over the rest of the world; without the tight control over the country that the present government has, I don’t think that vision of superiority would last very long.
Not to say that they’d be terribly awesomely happy with us, but the US rolled into Japan after WWII and it worked out quite well. Given the present day poverty of the country, really all you’d have to do to win is wait for a bad famine to hit the country and roll in then; showing the people that you care about them with food is a dirty but probably effective way to make them distrust you less, especially if you have the South Koreans move in and the US move out as much as possible. Though of course other options exist.
It would be a mess, but I think it would probably be significantly less messy than Afganistan, given that rather than having twenty different angry groups, you really have the government and that’s about it.
I think the civil war that would result combined with extreme proximity between Chinese and US troops (the latter supporting South Korea and trying to contain nuclear weapons) is probably an abysmal thing from an x-risk reduction standpoint.
China has privately told the US that they would support the US in extending South Korean control over the entire Korean peninsula per the diplomatic cables leak. The Chinese would probably be happy if the US rolled in and flattened the entire country as long as they didn’t have to let too many refugees into China, and really, at this point, the way that North Korea is acting China is probably willing to take the risk given that the North Koreans seem eager to cause trouble, and there’s no guarantee it won’t happen in a worse way later on.
Honestly I think that crushing the North Korean government and military completely would probably pretty much end it. North Korea has a ton of propaganda about their country’s superiority over the rest of the world; without the tight control over the country that the present government has, I don’t think that vision of superiority would last very long.
Not to say that they’d be terribly awesomely happy with us, but the US rolled into Japan after WWII and it worked out quite well. Given the present day poverty of the country, really all you’d have to do to win is wait for a bad famine to hit the country and roll in then; showing the people that you care about them with food is a dirty but probably effective way to make them distrust you less, especially if you have the South Koreans move in and the US move out as much as possible. Though of course other options exist.
It would be a mess, but I think it would probably be significantly less messy than Afganistan, given that rather than having twenty different angry groups, you really have the government and that’s about it.