South Korea’s deployment of THAAD upsets China, seen as espionage tool
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
N. Korea is not really a a proxy state, the best you can call it is a rogue proxy state. It's not like it doesn't extort China too. It knows China doesn't want instability on it's border. Funnily enough the rest of the world thinks China can snap it's fingers and get the situation fixed up. The rest of the world is perplexed why it's not happening.
The analogy they made is to Israel. The whole world thinks that Israel is a proxy of the US. The rest of the world doesn't understand why the U.S just can't get Israel to stop building settlements. In fact when the U.S makes a public stink about it, Israel builds new settlements out of spite.
So the term is ... rogue proxy.
I believe this is the episode: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/podcasts/the-daily/north-... . Not a 100% sure about it, since I listened to it in my podcast feed and just did a search for it.
Not trying to make up excuses for any of the parties involved here. Just pointing out that China likely won't sit on its ass as this happens.
The only silver lining I see is that maybe this will provide China with the incentive to just throw Kim under the bus (literally under a bus... or a tank) and put some less belligerent puppet in his place.
China already is behaving aggressively, expanding territory under its control (e.g., in the S. China Sea) and threatening to do so elsewhere (e.g, in the Senkaku islands). They may try to justify their next aggression by blaming someone, but that isn't meaningful.
The same applies to Russia, which already had annexed part of Georgia and clearly had designs on the southern Ukrainian province of Crimea (which did nothing to protect them against missiles). They justify their behavior, like all bad actors throughout history. Look at the Nazi's list of excuses as they snatched territory in the run-up to WWII.
The U.S. and others can't be intimidated into inaction while aggressors like Russia and China keep moving forward, for fear of 'upsetting' their tender feelings.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/kim-j...
I suspect almost all countries that don't get military hardware from the US or Russia build their missiles with Chinese parts.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/15/world/asia/north-korean-labor-...
Russia gets slaves from them, thats why Russia protects them. China both profits from them, but also doesn't want to deal with Refugees. So they make the selfish act of letting the child run crazy.
How do you know the Chinese leadership's strategic thinking about NK? Also, that hypothesis doesn't explain the massive resources, including blood, they spent defending NK.
I don't think NK's 25 million citizen labor pool, likely operating at extremely low-productivity levels and less than 1/40th of China's, makes much economic impact. Nor does China want competition from cheap labor.
I consider NK to be a serious threat to the US and her allies but I think the Chinese do not consider NK to be a serious threat to the Chinese.
Imagine if Cuba decided to start allowing Chinese anti-missile defense systems at the US' doorstep because we weren't willing to deal with our ally Mexico regarding a conflict that didn't threat us.
It only makes sense for threatened parties to develop defense if not retaliatory measures. Imagine if the USSR never developed nuclear weapons while the USA threatened them with nuclear attack?
The missile defense systems we deployed in SK could be used to track Chinese missiles. My point was imagine the outcry from the US if we perceived that the Chinese were tracking our missiles under the guise of tracking Mexico's.
It is the radars that is the bigger issue because it diminishes China's nuclear projection in the region.
Maybe things aren't so bad elsewhere.
1. impeachment: Ultimate example of democracy at work. And no general stepped forward to declare he must rescue the nation from the chaos or did the society collapse. All institutions are working as they should. Unlikely to see such calm transition of power when a president is impeached in non-developed nations.
2. NK is NK, always firing missiles, even before all this.
3. S Korean govt is at least able to respond and/or have US willing to put in the weight to respond. Remember Ukraine?
No seriously, S Korea cannot be compared with other places with bad things happening now.