The leaders of South Korea and China on Saturday agreed on the need to manage the security situation on the Korean peninsula in a stable way and to resolve North Korea-related tensions peacefully after a summit meeting, the South's presidential office said.
That's certainly nice work if you can get it, as the expression goes. But how?
And when?
Because North Korea is going to be capable of hitting America with nukes sometime soon and when that happens, the threat of military force to bolster diplomacy will lose a lot of its power because we won't be sure we get all the missiles in a strike and we won't be sure our thin missile defenses can stop anything that survives to be fired at us.
Perhaps this is all a bluff by America and we will try to cope with a nuclear-armed North Korea.
But it does seem like we are preparing for a strike campaign in the new year some time (depending on assessments of North Korean nuclear missile progress) if diplomacy fails and if China fails to de-fang North Korea.
So get to work on that stable peaceful solution right away. The clock is ticking.
