The Big Proxy

North Korea is not a real country.  It exists on the map but it could not survive one day without China feeding and clothing the country and cuddling the leadership to make them feel loved.  Nobody else is going to do it.  It is just a suburb of Beijing.  Everyone knows it, yet the Wall Street Journal has an article today that says China is watching what the Trump Administration is going to do about the missile test they fired off this week.  Wake up.  That is why they fired off that missile - so China can see how the U.S reacts.   We should be used to it by now.  China knows if it did the kinds of things North Korea does - attack the banking and government of South Korea and Sony with destructive cyber disruptions & sink a military ship with a torpedo - the free world would be up in arms about it.  But they can watch the world react and claim they are just observers.

North Korea is not a real country.  Forget that they have a claim to statehood that is solely supported and fed by China and treat them as a satellite of China.  Hold China responsible for what they do.  China is setting up a difficult situation that allows North Korea to put a nuclear weapon on a long-range missile and fire it into a major city in the United States.  When the last development effort was going on the Iranians were there to watch.  That is two proxies to isolate themselves from potential retaliation.  We should make it clear that we don't regard North Korea as a "rogue state".  There is no such thing.  We regard it as a proxy of China, with the consequences appropriate to that view.