Wolf you Do have to admit that if China Was not backing them the North Korean government would not be in existence.
I don't think a Somalia like lawless wasteland full of armed groups would be any improvement over the current situation.
I think even to day North Korea has worked hard to paint themselves as a buffer state in order to keep the Chinese wagged and supporting the North Korean state. The buffer state that stops the US from putting a base on the Chinese boarder
From how I read it, NK is less acting as a buffer and more like a suicide bomber, threatening to take everyone else with them if they don't get what they want. If NK was trying to play buffer, they would not be causing anywhere as much trouble and mischief.
The rent paid to China is the ability to use the Tensions when China wants bargaining chips.
I cannot think of a single example where this might have happened. If anything, the timing of NK's tension raising has often come at inconvenient times for China. NK is less doing China's bidding and more blackmailing everyone saying feed us or else we will make trouble.
Peace is not in the Kim plan forced Reunification is.
NK dreams of reunification as much as Taiwan dreams of taking over the mainland. The balance of power is so absurdly one-sided that reunification under the North is simply a laughable suggestion. The only position NK has on reunification with the South is firm opposition because reunification is the same as subjugation by the South.
They know the only way to try and win reunification is with Support, And China is their supporter. But they have to know that The Chinese Will not act unless The US attacks first. So they have aimed to try and get the US to pull the Trigger. Feeling that if they push the right button King Kim will be crowned in Seoul.
That is pretty damned far fetched and improbable.
NK is not looking to start a war, if there is a war, the only certain outcome is the Kims loose. If South Korea and America win, the Kims all hang. If China is forced to step in again because NK started the war. Even if the war ends in stalemate or, by some minor miracle Korea is reunited under the North. There is simply no way in hell China would allow those madmen to run the new unified Korea, and it just happens there would be hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops all over NK, so it would be a pretty straight forward matter to seize control. The Kims will probably all hang as well, and China installs a real puppet and makes the new Korea a vassal.
Either way, war would be the end of the Kim line, and they know it.
NK has mastered the art of acting just the right kind of crazy whereby no one can be sure if they are actually seriously going to make good on their mad threats or if its all hot air, but no one wants to call their bluff just in case they are indeed that batshit crazy.
The goal of the tensions are two fold.
Firstly, I think the young Kim needed to act tough abroad to cement his position and prove himself to the old guard generals. Since NK's continued exisitence is pretty much dependent on them being able to extort good, fuel and other essentials from the outside world, chubby Kim needed to prove that he can also intimidate the world powers like his old man and be NK's main breadwinner.
Secondly, through the recent tensions, NK has been able to pretty much take back every promise and concession it has made in the past on nuclear control. It has restarted enrichment at a previously shut down reactor, and will probably conduct more nuclear tests in the future.
Had NK just gone and done that without any build up, America would not have had any of it, and would have imposed sanctions or even consider military options.
By bringing the Peninsula to the bring of war, not only has NK succeed in making this big story about nuclear weapons a side show, it has also effectively neutered America's options to respond. If tensions have been normal, America would have acted to express its displeasure, like sanctions or even an air strike. But, with the two Koreas a hair trigger from war, America was understandably hesitant to do anything that might tip the two over the edge, so NK has pretty much gotten away with it with few repercussions.
Now that NK has archived those two objectives, it is letting things simmer down again.
Now As For ABM. Fact is in this new Century, Deterrence is no longer assurance unto it's self. Non state actors have access to conventional ballistic missiles of growing complexity. If the brits did deploy ABM it would before their interest the continued survival of Britain and it's Carrier's
The only ballistic missiles non state actors have ever got their hands on are early scuds with very limited range and poor accuracy. Those missiles and their launchers are hardly inconspicuous, and they would need to be moved to within a few hundred miles of the UK to be used. Please point on a map for me where any non-state actors could possible hope to get a scud missile and TEL to, to fire a ballistic missile at the UK?
If non state actors are to mount a WMD attack on the UK, it will not be done so using a great big ballistic missile, but rather a suitcase nuke, dirty bomb or gas grenades or viles of weaponised micro-organisms. Against those threats, ABM offers no protection, and the billions it would cost to integrate ABM onto the Type 45s would be far better spent on homeland security to counter the kinds of plausible threats I just mentioned.
