Trump: 'We'll handle North Korea'

[politicat]

75. I'm not so sure on China. Russia, maybe. Disaffected former Soviet engineers? Likely.

China tolerates Lil Kim, but they treat him like a big family treats the crazy drunk cousin with the conspiracy theories: they invite him to holidays, but they water down the booze. He's family, so they deal with it. But they're not giving him the good booze or matches and the turkey fryer -- they know they don't want to deal with that fire on their backside, or taking in cray cousin's brood of feral children when cray cousin wraps his Fiero around a tree.

Russia does seem curiously blind in NK's direction, and I mean that literally. Their radar at DPRK is either really shitty or they lie very consistently about what they see on launches. (As in, their math always works exactly as if their radar is myopic at the exact same degree.) That could be intentional, or they could be just good and consistent on that lie. They've got a lot of empty territory (populated mostly with people who aren't racially pure Slavs) between Moscow and the bulk of their population and Lil Kim, so they could consider him a minor risk for which they may need billions of pounds of concrete someday.

My bet is DPRK found some former Soviet engineers who couldn't make it into the Russian mil or private sector, coupled with a very well trained generation of math and engineering brains who know what's possible with ballistics, and rely on some old plans plus reverse engineering and refining. Pay the engineers well, ensure they've got what they want.

Lil Kim is not stupid. He's an asshole, but we err at our own peril if we don't credit him with social skills for his own culture and intellectual brains.