China's Offier for N Korea

So, if you give up having joint exercises with South Korea, North Korea will give up development of nuclear weapons....  sounds like a deal to me - a bad deal, but at least a proposal for deal making to start.   If we want to know the history of this story, go to the website for the Arms Control Association.  A fascinating history it is too.

If anyone ever imagined North Korea doing anything it said it was going to do, or that China said it was going to do, check the facts.  The process takes forever - while they continue to work on nuclear weapons - their are agreements that lead to nothing.  President Bush pulled all the nuclear weapons out of the South, so the North would have no incentive to have any.  Now they want to skip over the South and launch them on long-range missiles right to the U.S.

We tried sanctions.  We tried inspections by the International Atomic Energy Association, which showed "discrepancies" between what the North said they had and what they actually had.   We tried sanctions again.  We may try sanctions again on Chinese companies that are helping the North with the development of their weapon systems.  At least we have figured out who is developing the weapons now.  It is not North Korea.

China loves having the North threatening its neighbors and the U.S. And it continues to support the "discussions" without a real intent to do anything about stopping the North from getting a weapon it can use on a long-range missile.  This time, we are supposed to believe that if we just stop having those joint exercises with the South, the North will stop nuclear weapons development.  This sounds like the same negotiators that put the Iran nuclear deal together.  They are not going to stop, and either China can't do anything about it, or chooses not to.  My guess is the latter.

The Chinese have violated sanctions every time we have set them up.  They even voted for Iran sanctions which they then violated over and over.  For all the screaming and yelling during the election process when candidate Trump talked about having nuclear weapons in other countries, he may have been onto something.  Maybe Japan could defend itself and retaliate.  Maybe the South could too.   In a bizarre set of circumstances China may be encouraging us to send weapons to places we tried to keep free of them.  Then, the U.S won't be the only ones facing weapons aimed at them by parties they can't control.

Yes, this is a dangerous game.  So, why do we let China play it by their own rules?