Originally posted by Serial_Apologist
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Here is a thorough and interesting recent article entitled "The Mindset of North Korean Elites" which might answer a lot of the questions posed on this thread about the nature and structure of North Korean society; and here, from the same online journal, is a concise account of relations between China, DPRK and the USA - opening with the contradictions we're now seeing unfold:
China’s influence on North Korea’s nuclear policy is minimal. The DPRK knows that the PRC values North Korea both as a buffer and as a profitable hinterland for cheap labor and raw materials that it is completely unwilling to cede to South Korea. Therefore, the PRC will not push the DPRK to the wall about its nukes.
It is understood both by the United States and the DPRK that, absent a regime implosion countenanced by the PRC, North Korea will never discard its nuclear weapons arsenal, given the negative examples of Iraq (no nukes) and, under the Obama administration, Libya (denuclearized completely in accordance with US demands but subjected to US backed regime change anyway).
However, beyond the genuine security risks of a nuclear North Korea and the theoretical US commitment to nuclear non-proliferation (the somewhat shaky basis for President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize) there are pressing and compelling geostrategic reasons why the United States finds it virtually impossible to accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons power.
It is understood both by the United States and the DPRK that, absent a regime implosion countenanced by the PRC, North Korea will never discard its nuclear weapons arsenal, given the negative examples of Iraq (no nukes) and, under the Obama administration, Libya (denuclearized completely in accordance with US demands but subjected to US backed regime change anyway).
However, beyond the genuine security risks of a nuclear North Korea and the theoretical US commitment to nuclear non-proliferation (the somewhat shaky basis for President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize) there are pressing and compelling geostrategic reasons why the United States finds it virtually impossible to accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons power.
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