Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
Oh and one poster said that the Chinese Army massing on the border is to stop the flood of refugees. The Chinese are moving their heavy hitter formations to the border like the 190th mechanized brigade which is a balanced combination of advanced modern battletanks and APC's supported by administrative artillery formations. Units like this aren't made to be effective border patrols against Civilians. They're built as the first to front armored fist where their speed, mobility and firepower rip holes in an enemy formation and charged to rear to encircle enemy defenses. The Chinese are also working up their airforce heavily.
The Chinese have placed an invasion capable formation at the border. If this was about stopping refugees, the Chinese have entire regiments of dedicated border guards that they would use.
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Thanks for your post generally. As to this part, I believe China has a good chance of staring down Kim Jong-un, unlike South Korea / US, because they really are quite prepared to launch a proper invasion.
What we are seeing is what China wants to put on display; their powerful, modern army, the opposite of "endless rows of men in uniforms" that is the traditional image of the Chinese army.
China also wants to establish themselves as a true world power, which pretty much means that eventually they will find a war somewhere. So what I'm coming to is this; while the Chinese are not stupid enough to really
want to invade North Korea, they will still propably take the chance to have their own globally accepted TV war, if Kim Jong-un is foolish enough to give them a good enough reason.
That will to go to war is evident in Chinese actions, and yes, I agree that it partly shows that Kim Jong-un is not the political strategist that his predecessors were. His father and grandfather were very good at playing China and US "against each other", for the lack of a better term, by dancing the line of being in China's "sphere of influence" while constantly appearing to be close to slipping out of it.
However, I doubt Kim Jong-un is stupid, and because he should see that the Chinese really are ready to go to war if that's what it takes to quiet him down, he will propably back down eventually. He really just needs a way of doing it that he can declare as a "victory". The problem with that however is that the people in positions of power in North Korea are not indoctrinated simpletons. On the contrary, they tend to be politically savvy creatures who are very good at seeing through BS.
(My father had some NK connections in the eighties actually. Complicated story, but no, he was not pro NK.)
As a sidenote, despite all the crazy talk in regular circulation in the US, I think there are a lot of signs that the US is in fact getting quite war-weary, and North Korea has all the optics of being potentially yet another disaster/political flop in the style of Afghanistan and Iraq. Kim Jong-un is I believe to some extent taking advantage of this politically. Should something go down now, I think there's a genuine possibility that the US might not be able to gather up the political will to properly stretch it's muscles. Some half-assed sabre-rattling and "border conflicts" with some shots fired would serve Kim Jong-un well.