by WorldTribune Staff, December 17, 2017
Beijing is losing its grip on the situation in North Korea and the country must prepare for any fallout from war on the Korean Peninsula, Chinese analysts said.
Meanwhile, a recent golf partner of President Donald Trump — Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC — said that Trump “has 100 percent made up his mind that he’s not gonna let Kim Jong-Un break out,” which Graham defined as achieving the capacity to “marry up a missile and a nuclear warhead that can hit America effectively.”
Graham said he would support direct talks with the Kim Jong-Un regime “without a whole lot of preconditions.”
Nanjing University professor Zhu Feng told a conference on the North Korean crisis that China should be prepared psychologically and practically for “a catastrophic nuclear conflict, nuclear fallout or a nuclear explosion.”
“Why do we always believe a war won’t occur?” Zhu said, according to a Dec. 16 report by the South China Morning Post.
“What China needs is a sense of urgency about its declining influence in strategy related to the peninsula and the way it brings down China’s status and role in East Asian security issues.”
Related: Report: China to build refugee camps near N. Korean border, Dec. 13, 2017
China is already preparing for a potential conflict.
Jilin Daily, the official newspaper of the province bordering North Korea, published a full page of advice last week for residents on how to respond to a nuclear attack.
Wang Hongguang, former deputy commander of the Nanjing Military Region, said the Jilin Daily article was a “signal to the country to be prepared for a coming war.”
“I don’t know how to say it any more direct: If nothing changes, Trump’s gonna have to use the military option, because time is running out,” Graham said in an interview with The Atlantic published on Dec. 14.
“I don’t care if North Korea becomes a Chinese protectorate. … I don’t care who [the Chinese] put in charge of North Korea, as long as that person doesn’t want to create a massive nuclear arsenal to threaten America.”
Graham, who most recently spoke with President Donald Trump over a round of golf on Dec. 10, said that Trump “has 100 percent made up his mind that he’s not gonna let Kim Jong-Un break out,” which Graham defined as achieving the capacity to “marry up a missile and a nuclear warhead that can hit America effectively.”
“There are a couple ways for this to end: The Chinese could kill the guy if they wanted to, or they could just stop oil shipments [to North Korea], which would bring [Kim Jong-Un’s] economy to [its] knees,” Graham said.
Graham added: “I would say there’s a 3-in-10 chance we use the military option,” and if North Korea conducts another nuclear test “I would say 70 percent.”
“War with North Korea is an all-out war against the regime,” he said. “There is no surgical strike option. Their [nuclear-weapons] program is too redundant, it’s too hardened, and you gotta assume the worst, not the best. So if you ever use the military option, it’s not to just neutralize their nuclear facilities – you gotta be willing to take the regime completely down.”
Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at Renmin University, said during a Dec. 16 conference in Beijing on the North Korea crisis that “North Korea is a time bomb. We can only delay the explosion, hoping that by delaying it, a time will come to remove the detonator.”
“Conditions on the peninsula now make for the biggest risk of a war in decades,” said Shi, who also advises China’s cabinet, the State Council.
Plans to set up five refugee camps in Jilin’s Changbai county also surfaced online last week.
Subscribe to Geostrategy-Direct __________ Support Free Press Foundation
China prepares for war, educates public near border on surviving nuclear strike added by World Tribune on
View all posts by World Tribune →