Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

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It has never been about a concern over a humanitarian crisis on their border. In regards to North Korea, that's trivial for China. They have 300+ million people living on just a few dollars per day. They could absorb 5-10 million more and not notice in the least.

It's about preventing the unification of Korea and allowing the US military to get closer to China's territory. That's a double loss as far as China is concerned strategically.

The situation has an easy solution. China collapses North Korea as it exists today and pays off all the military leadership (which actually runs the country); said military cabal gets to live in China, and doesn't get prosecuted for war crimes (all obvious requirements from their perspective). The US, South Korea and China put together an initial trillion dollar, 20 year, package for economic recovery. The US & South Korea agree to cede between 1/3 and 1/2 of North Korea to China, to be used as a form of territory buffer between the US / S.Korea and China. The US agrees not to position its troops any closer to Chinese territory (ie not to occupy any of the territory South Korea acquires), various rules could be put into place that everyone agrees upon to ease China's concerns.

This is a trivial problem to solve as far as the big problems of the past century go.

What's not trivial, is that North Korea's nuclear & missile technology is going to keep pushing forward, which will eventually spur the US / Russia / China to begin aggressively pushing their nuclear technology forward again. Further, North Korea will attempt to hand their nuclear technology to other nations, as there are no real consequences for them doing so (oh no, more sanctions), only the benefit of spreading nukes around further which lessens the spotlight on them.

It is possible to determine, after a nuclear explosion, to determine from whence the weapon was produced. You'd better believe that such a discovery would be an extreme casus belli for an invasion.

North Korea isn't interested in proliferation. They want (and have) nukes to keep the United States at bay. Historically, the US has no problem attacking states without nuclear weapons but never does so to states with them. It's a good strategy.

> North Korea isn't interested in proliferation.

Of course they're extremely interested in proliferation. Just as Pakistan, China, India, France, Israel, Britain and Russia were all interested in proliferation (insofar as it suited their interests) and for exactly the same reason. The only reason the USSR and China got nukes in the first place, is they had a desperate self-interest in proliferation. North Korea's acquisition of nuclear weapons was also proliferation, which they were extremely interested in.

North Korea would love nothing more than to give the US & Co. other nuclear problems to deal with. The more so called rogue nations (or really anybody would do) with nuclear weapons there are, the easier it is for North Korea to justify keeping theirs, the less unique the North Korea situation becomes, the less pressure there will be on North Korea to give their weapons up. If five new nations pop up with nuclear weapons, the premise of North Korea being a rogue nuclear entity loses most of its punch, and the sanctions would wilt accordingly.

Agree with most of what you say.

Right now China/Russia are in a position where they have very little to lose and can just sit back and watch the US embarrass itself. They can't be seen as enabling NK, but beyond that they win by default in that we are distracted by it and look weak.

Russia has very little to gain or lose in this whole situation, but they benefit so long as it isn't resolved. As long as Russia holds a veto in the security council, nobody will be trying to take action on Ukraine, since they can start vetoing NK sanctions to make a point. Maybe more importantly, while the US tries to build an alliance to invade NK (possibly inevitable), Russia can sit back and call for calm and peace and de-escalation. This doesn't undo their Ukraine grab, but it creates an equivalency between Russian and US policy.

If I were China I would wait until I could horse trade. They want mineral rights in the south china sea, and Japan/SK/US (who are the primary states who can resist their island grabs) want to regime change NK. I predict they will do the minimum required by the UN and passively resist any other attempts to defuse the situation (in fact I think the more they pressure NK the more they make war inevitable. NK is now going to start starving and it's leadership may have to become hyper-aggressive) until they are paid out. Even then they will insist on concessions such as 'no US troops in the former NK'. If I were China I would participate in korean unification, but only with the condition that the US pull 100% of all military assets from the unified korea (since what can the US claim is the reason to keep them there if NK doesn't exist?), and that the US/SK/Japan concede that china owns the claimed undersea minerals.

Even easier: declare the Korean peninsula as Switzerland.

China collapses the DPRK and allows it to be reunified under South Korean leadership. The US withdraws all armed forces from South Korea. Both China and the US agree that Korean territority is inviolable. With nuclear consequences if either / anyone violates this.

North Korea avoids its leadership being killed in a war / assassination.

China avoids the US on their borders.

The US disarms the North Korean threat.

(South) Korea gains an incredible security guarantee and becomes a unique crossroads for the region.

Win/win/win/win.

I agree with the US removing its presence in Korea and that your scenario is the ideal.

Much like China has very specific requirements/wants out of the situation (they'd want the US gone from Korea), it's very unlikely the US will want to cede that strategic position. Both sides are playing that angle and have been for decades, which is obviously making the situation more difficult to resolve.

I suspect the US would be the biggest problem in the full removal scenario, the military industrial complex wouldn't want to give up that beachhead. China would be the biggest problem in the mixed compromise scenario (they'd have very rigid demands that wouldn't be easy for the US military & political machine to swallow).

It could be as simple as the US withdrawing troops from the Korean peninsula once reunification does happen. South Koreans are already very pro-US, and I imagine China really doesn't want to cause an international incident by trying to annex Korea.

I might be wrong however. China is very greedy when it comes to territories it has historically regarded as tributaries, and Korea has been one for thousands of years. Maybe they would use that excuse for an outright invasion, like they did in Tibet?

> The US & South Korea agree to cede between 1/3 and 1/2 of North Korea to China ...

If you think this is an "easy solution", you clearly haven't talked to Koreans much. You might as well cede Alaska to Russians.

(Those armchair diplomats...)

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