A unified Korea is the ideal end game for the U.S. , whatever it takes!

Stage two: control of the South China Sea ...perfect outcome!

A nuclear bomb or device could be sent by shipping container to almost any port in the world and destroy an entire harbour perhaps permanently.
To say nothing about immediate and residual radiation and fallout.

Wake up.

Put down the guns and bombs and threats and BS and instead work toward prosperity and peace worldwide.

Hi JF,

Yes, that region is so crowded, that any war or large-scale military action is bound to spill over, to China and to Japan. Any pre-emptive action, so-called, is bound to provoke a larger counter-action, and away we go.

As Churchill said, it's better to jaw-jaw than war-war. Are there any carrots that could be offered, rather than sticks ? Without lurching into appeasement, would it be possible for China and other regional countries to develop, let's say, economic projects, perhaps involving US firms too, in North Korean border areas, Economic Zones,to deflect North Korean belligerence ?

They would certainly be difficult to initiate, and subject to all manner of North Korean elite corruption and bribery. As well, any US involvement might go against Trump's populist promises to bring back jobs to the US.

But breaking promises is becoming one of his trademarks, after all: it's fascinating to observe how many of the policies that he condemned, are now being championed: isolationism ? Nah, interventionism. Get tough on China ? Nah, suck up. Suck up to Russia ? Nah, get tough. Keep out of the Middle East ? Nah, bomb the sh!t out of them. Who knows, at this rate, Trump might ban guns and double the environmental budget. Nah.

You have to ask yourself: what would Batman do ?

Joe

Killarney,

Do you believe that the earth is flat? The statement that the South Koreans started the war is just as ludicrous.

Ludicrous, Shadow Minister? I wouldn't bet on it. For months the South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee had been thundering on the air waves that he would unite Korea by force. The night the war broke out I happened, as a journo on the Melbourne Sun, to be watching the teletype news feed and caught the outbreak, billed as a surprise attack by the North across the border. Problem was the same teletype reported the first fighting to be in a village (forget its name) 2 1/2 miles north of the border, followed by a rapid advance of the North Koreans almost to Pusan as South Korean soldiers deserted in droves. By the way, Australian soldiers of the Occupation forces in Japan were flown to Pusan and assigned to barracks there hours before the supposed sudden attack across the border by the northerners.

There's a quite good summary of the Korean war and its context at http://www.history.com/topics/korean-war though it is weak on the fine detail. One must remember that the menacing, goose-stepping North Korea and the democratic South Korea of today hadn't been born at that time.