| famousringo said: I would dearly like to see Korea re-unified in my lifetime. As people have pointed out, China is the most important part of the equation here. Any retaliation which doesn't have tacit Chinese approval could quickly spiral way out of hand. Personally, I have a hard time understanding why North Korea still means anything to China. All they give China is illegal immigrants and a sense of colonial importance. It shouldn't be too hard to make China an offer that will secure their blessing. |
A buffer, and a buffer that is under their influence, no less. A unified ROK would have to act extremely differently than the current ROK acts, because the current ROK being militantly anti-communist would have huge ramifications if they were staring at the Chinese across the Yalu. It's the same reasons they kept them afloat during the Korean war, except that we don't have explosive personalities like Mao to make things interesting, so instead of the human waves and world war, we're going to get a diplomatic runaround.
Russia's the same way, really. They want to keep the DPRK where it is, otherwise they'll have an economically powerful pro-American regime sitting on their boundaries, something that hasn't happened before (the former Soviet satellites pose no real threat, as Georgia showed)
Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.
