Thanks China! Way to act like you care about resolving the North Korea issue as the most pressing security issue in the region!
Japan scrambled fighter jets on Thursday after four Chinese coastguard vessels entered what Japan considers its territorial waters near disputed East China Sea islets and a drone-like object flew near one ship, Japan said.
It was the first such flight near the islands witnessed by Japanese officials, although the incident took to 13 the number of intrusions this year by Chinese coastguard ships in the contested waters, Japan's coastguard said.
So let's get those freedom of navigation operations going in the South China Sea--real ones and not innocent passage dressed up like freedom of navigation operations.
And Japan should be prepared to emplace and use their own ground-based remotely manned weapons backed by aerial drones and smart mines to destroy Chinese unmanned drones trespassing in the Senkaku Islands.
Most importantly, because the North Korea nuclear issue isn't apparently a dire enough crisis to get China to pull back on pursuing other objectives in favor of a united front to stop North Korea, let's make the North Korea nuclear issue a problem China actually cares about:
So if China won't solve America's (and Japan's and South Korea's) North Korea problem because the problem isn't bad enough from China's point of view, perhaps we need to make a problem that China does care about.
We could quietly let it be known that America will be willing to help South Korea and Japan to each match North Korean nuclear weapons warhead for warhead to deter North Korea.
I suspect that the possibility that Japan and South Korea will have nuclear arms (and if they go nuclear, Vietnam and Taiwan and perhaps others will see a green light--or at least an opportunity to get lost in the outrage directed at Japan and South Korea--to go nuclear) would be important enough to get China interested in solving a nuclear proliferation problem among potential foes of China.
Or maybe less dramatically we can exploit this:
Levels of hunger not found in other parts of East Asia persist in North Korea, according to a report from two United Nations agencies.
The Food and Agricultural Organization and World Food Program's 2017 Global Report on Food Crisis states 17 percent of the North Korean population, or 4.4 million, are in a state of "crisis, emergency and famine," Voice of America reported Thursday.
Perhaps we should just blockade North Korea and let that hunger spread until North Koreans flood across the northern border into China looking for food.
What? Is that cold-hearted? Are we supposed to care more about North Koreans than Kim Jong-Un cares as he squeezes them to afford nukes? Maybe we care more about Americans, South Koreans, and Japanese who would be the targets of North Korean nuclear weapons.
China apparently feels it can throw its weight around as usual while counting on America, Japan, and South Korea to go along with whatever China does on the faint hope that China will deal with North Korea's nuclear threats.
But hey, at least now we know what China's priorities are.
UPDATE: China can just enjoy this:
Raytheon Co and Lockheed Martin Corp are working with Japanese partners on rival projects to develop new radars that will enhance Japan's shield against any North Korean missile strike, government and defense industry sources in Tokyo told Reuters.
As long as China won't stop North Korea, Japan has the perfect justification for building missile defenses. It is just a coincidence that it would be useful against China, too.
But what can China really say given that their little psycho pet nuclear threat really does justify missile defenses?
How much is China willing to endure to protect their little loose cannon on their border?
UPDATE: I see that it is clear that China and America have different objectives in Korea:
China said on Wednesday no one had the right to bring chaos to the Korean peninsula, a day after it pushed for full implementation of U.N. sanctions against neighboring North Korea for its missile and nuclear tests and called for dialogue.
China doesn't want chaos and America doesn't want North Korean nuclear weapons. That's quite a gap to bridge.
