China can take over any time they wish both Taiwan and N.Korea.
N. Korea? Perhaps.. but with a bloody battle..
Taiwan? Doubtful... but if so, with an EXTREMELY bloody battle.. China currently lacks the amphibious capability to establish a viable beachhead in Taiwan.
All what they want is a treaty with US same kind Cuba is enjoying. But the US is demanding first total destruction of possibility to produce WMD.
I don't buy that scenario. Because they tacitly had EXACTLY that arrangement with the US for the past 40 years prior to the discovery that Kim Il Sung was pursuing a nuclear weapons program in 1992(?) which initiated this on-going crisis.
And despite the 1994 arrangement between Carter and KIS (as accepted by the Clinton administration), the minute KIS died, his son, KJI, decided to recommence the program covertly, which resulted in the MOST RECENT crisis.
We were giving them 500,000 tonnes of fuel oil per year. Arranging $5 Billion in finance for a light water reactor, and encouraging reconciliation talks between them and Seoul..
But KJI p*ssed it all away because he wanted nukes..
Now possibly he wanted them for several reasons.. to coerce the south into succumbing to his demands, and/or to provide him an alternative to his vast and costly military machine. Build nukes, maintain the "esteem" of his generals as their "guardians", and downsize his army..
That's what I believe his plan may possibly have been.
Even then I don't believe Americans will have the stomach to go after them.
Something to note. When the war in Iraq commenced, KJI hid for 40 days in the belief that Bush might be crazy enough to target him in the same manner that he was targeting Saddam, with precision munitions.
They learned very well in Serbia that their expensive precision weapons are only effective in the open countries, not the wooded and full of hills hundred of miles dugouts in them terrain
That's absolutely incorrect now. With laser guided munitions, you'd be correct. But JDAMS technology cares not what the weather is like, or how rugged the terrain. Just plug in the appropriate GPS grid coordinates and let them fly.
I can almost guarantee you that any war with N. Korea would definitely aim at a decapitation strike with guided munitions.
But even that scenario is highly unlikely, given that it would come at the sacrifice of Seoul (from the north's massed artillery).
Hawk |
