Fearing an outbreak of “actual war” as North Korea has threatened, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi this week urgently called on its ally to end all missile tests and for the U.S. and South Korea to suspend joint military exercises. Clearly it is time to try a new strategy beyond sanctioning and isolating North Korea to stop its nuclear threat. That key is direct negotiations with North Korea as a step towards a peace treaty and a guarantee against regime change.” Absent that, her argument went, the only path to security from the North’s perspective is its weapons. In such a scenario, North Korea would still likely retain a nuclear capacity ― unlike Iran, it already crossed this threshold long ago. But in this case the only other course to the U.S. negotiating directly with North Korea is the continuing buildup of an even greater destructive capacity that could be unleashed in an inevitable future war.

Source: Huffington Post March 10, 2017 22:30 UTC