China's president: Won't allow war on Korean peninsula

China is North Korea's "ally" in the sense that every wacky little brother has a big brother who rolls his eyes and gives him wedgies when it becomes necessary. I guess that's what you get for clinging to communism. You're stuck with friends like Bowl Cut Jr., although you do get very nice things written about you by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times. And when it looks like little brother is so out of control that war looms, people think it's your job to stop it. And if China wants to do something, now might be a good time because the Norks still can't get their missiles to launch correctly. Once they get that figured out, any sort of aggressive move against Pyongyang could provoke an attack on Seoul. Maybe Xi Jinping figures there's no time like the present to bring an end to the Kim dynasty:

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China will not allow chaos and war to break out on the Korean peninsula, which would be to no one's advantage, Chinese President Xi Jinping told a group of Asian foreign ministers on Thursday.

North Korea's drive to develop a nuclear weapons capability, in defiance of U.N. resolutions, has angered China and raised tension in the region. "As a close neighbor of the peninsula, we will absolutely not permit war or chaos on the peninsula. This situation would not benefit anyone," Xi said in a speech to a Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia. North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and followed that with tests of various missiles that could deliver such a weapon. The isolated state is expected to conduct another nuclear test before a rare congress of its ruling party, beginning on May 6, at which young leader Kim Jong Un is expected to try to cement his leadership. China is North Korea's sole major ally but it disapproves of its development of nuclear weapons and backed harsh new U.N. sanctions imposed last month.

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Late last week, people noticed an unusually large massing of Chinese troops along the border with North Korea. Publicly Xi claims this is no big deal and they do it all the time. Do you think that's the message he intends to send to Kim Jong Un? I doubt it. Then again, if the Chinese actually send troops into North Korea, it seems to me that's not so much the prevention of war. That is war. Maybe it's not one the Norks can win, but doesn't Kim seem like the kind of guy who might want to go down in a blaze of glory? Oh, right, then again . . . he can't get his missiles to fly. By the way, I really see no scenario that makes the U.S. a winner here. If Bowl Cut Jr. stays in place but behaves himself enough to satisfy big brother China, then we've still got a massive backwards prison torture state working on the delivery of nuclear missiles. If the Chinese get rid of him, it's only so they can install a communist regime that plays ball and provides them a real ally, not a lunatic they have to constantly deal with. The best-case scenario is reunification with the South, but how does that happen when the U.S. plays hands-off and lets China deal with the problem? It doesn't. Not that it would be easy for a U.S./South Korea-led effort to get rid of the communist Norks. It would be an espionage and infiltration task, and whoever volunteers for it would be risking decades in a torture camp if caught. But it's getting us nowhere to keep playing the sucker's game where we let Kim thumb his nose at everyone with his missile tests, then we try to appease him with grain shipments or whatever.

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The reason you work on nuclear nonproliferation is a guy like this. Once such a guy is actually in power, and getting close having operable nukes, you demonstrate your unseriousness when you sit there and let him stay in power. I guess we're out of the business of removing dictators because everyone's bought the notion that we shouldn't have done it in Iraq, so we'll leave it to the Chinese to replace him with another dictator that better follows their orders. I really liked it when people still had a reason to fear America's power - before we got so gun-shy about ever using it.

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