Re: Why not just plant schrapnel in Satellite orbits?
Now - would the world sanction nuclear retaliation for such a nerdy but essentially non-nuclear attack..? Interesting dilemma.
China and Russia have space programmes and their own satellites. They wouldn't tolerate such a behaviour, and (unlike the US) they have the will to use special forces capability to go in and neutralise Fat Boy Kim and his weapons programme if needed. FBK knows that without Chinese protection, he'll be hanging from a lamp post, so he won't do anything to annoy the Chinese. Chinese sanctions to date are merely for show to the wider international community, and being China there's no way of knowing if they actually enforce the sanctions, so I don't read anything into those for the Norks, other than a message that FBK can annoy the Yanks, but will be clobbered if he threatens or embarrasses Beijing. And rather than nuke the Norks, China would merely want regime change if FBK gets out of hand - that's why FBK assassinated his own brother, and many family members have been executed - FBK thinks that he's less likley to be replaced if he kills all the obvious candidates.
I think that ultimately that's how this pans out, unless FBK quickly backs down. If he doesn't thing escalate, FBK becomes too dangerous to Beijing. So Chinese special forces and ethnic Korean divisions go in and kill all the current senior Nork leaders, at the same time as neutralising the nuclear weapons sites. Then China either introduces a puppet government, or declare Nork territory as a Chinese region. I think on balance I'd expect the absorbtion of Norkea into China, since in international law, possession is 10/10ths of the law if you're hard enough to hold what you've stolen, as Israel or Russia have shown (and many other countries before them). And that would frighten Vietnam into conceding the South China Sea to Beijing.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
