The careful hint from China on Friday is encouraging but carefully written for North Korea and was not published from an official source.

“China should also make clear that if North Korea launches missiles that threaten US soil first and the US retaliates, China will stay neutral,” the editorial said.

However, it added: “If the US and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so.”

— Al Jezeera; August 11, 2017

Al Jezeera’s correspondent went on to note that China is in agreement on the higher UN sanctions against NK but has not been aggressive in these raising the question of how much control they will exert.

As I suggested the best we could hope for is China taking control and this seems to set the guidelines. With one fruit cake in North Korea setting on as many as 60 launchable nuclear warheads and a demented idiot surrounded by incompetents in Washington, this is equal warning to both sides.

The technical capability to bring down an IRBM or ICBM is there but if that happens we’re screwed. We will be totally dependent on our military commanders to ignore Washington and do nothing after a, hopefully, successful counter against a lone ‘political statement’ missile. That is not a position those people should ever be in. If it is anything more than a token missile, it’s over.

And, yes, the Cuban crisis was far more dangerous strategically. But both Khrushchev and Kennedy were rational, careful, and competent leaders of military empires. Now we’re dealing with a rogue, nuclear, hermit kingdom and a collapsing military empire with an incompetent, mentally disturbed, usurper technically in charge.

So this is far more dangerous.