"Gift Packages" From Pyongyang to Washington, With Love

"When a rogue regime has a nuclear weapon, and an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile pointed at you, you do not take steps to lower your guard."
"Enough is enough [in the wake of the sixth nuclear test by Pyongyang; recommendations by China and Russia for the United States to restrain its response is] insulting."
Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations

It is not, after all, either Russia nor China, the mentor and great benefactor of North Korea which face the potential of a nuclear strike. Russia has its own agenda that impels it to sit back at the Security Council and enjoy the spectacle of the United States' bedevilment by an audaciously volatile little dictator enjoying a game of confrontation and provocation growing increasingly dangerous by the month, week and day.

"North Korea may not be the biggest problem to China, but it does add a unique and very serious dimension to China’s task of supplanting America in East Asia. That’s because it is the only East Asian power with nuclear weapons."

"[Even if the United States steps back from the region], North Korea’s capability means China can never be able to dominate the region as much as its leaders today probably hope."

Hugh White, former strategist, Australian Defense Department

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has overseen a number of nuclear tests, defying Beijing. Credit Korean Central News Agency, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

"The cost is to continue to alienate Japan, enrage the United States and irritate South Korea.

"If Japan and South Korea feel forced to go for radical options like nuclear weapons, it will badly affect regional diplomacy."

Zhu Feng, professor, international relations, Nanjing University

"A balance of mutually assured destruction in Northeast Asia will not be a satisfactory situation for anyone."

"But it will not necessarily be unstable, and it may be of some small consolation to Washington, Tokyo and Seoul that the implications for Beijing are somewhat worse.”

Bilahari Kausikan, former foreign secretary, Singapore

Yet now that China has groomed and encouraged Kim Jong-Un to foster its own ambitions in the East, it would appear that it has finally realized it has helped to create a monster that not even it can control. China's identifying North Korea as a hostile bulwark against the U.S. presence in the East, providing it with a barrier which, without its presence, would leave China surrounded by U.S. allies in the region has meant it felt an obligation to shield North Korea.

That nothing has been done outside diplomacy in the past several decades to persuade Pyongyang that its preoccupation with achieving nuclear weapons and the technology to perfect ICBMs in its determination to become a world player alongside other world leaders speaks to the Kim dynasty's belief in its superior status, equal to that of a super-power, and China has encouraged it.

The bridge over the Yalu River is a key supply route for North Korea from Dadong, China   BBC News

China was hoping that it could, through its avuncular exchanges with North Korea of critical technology, food and energy aid, create a dependable satellite ally. In the process allowing North Korea to create a crisis of such existential depth that the U.S. could be persuaded to withdraw its forces from Japan and South Korea in exchange for nullifying the North's gains, as it obediently acceded to Beijing's interventions.

Except that proved to be a faulty reading of the regime that Kim Jong-Un leads, apparently. The nuclear threat will not fade into obscurity. Pyongyang, thanks primarily to China's helpfulness and the Kim clan's firm devotion to itself, and despite all intelligence from all sources pointing to the eventual failure of its nuclear enterprise, has succeeded what it set out to do.

And arrogant threats sit comfortably in Pyongyang, citing the 'gifts' it plans to continue sending to the United States as down-payment for a gift to eclipse all others. A just payment to a powerful nation that persists in infuriating the wannabe powerful nation that is "hell-bent on escalating confrontation" as "warmongers" of the first degree; which is to say, the U.S. and Seoul. 

It is, of course, Pyongyang that has been provoked beyond endurance. By the insolent threats of its neighbour and its great nemesis, the dastardly United States, which refuses to acknowledge the greatness that is North Korea  under the tutelage and supreme leadership of Kim Jong-Un. 

"The recent self-defence measures by my country, DPRK, are a gift package addressed to none other than the U.S."
"The U.S. will receive more gift packages from my country as long as its relies on reckless provocations and futile attempts to put pressure on the DPRK."
Han Tae Song, ambassador of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the United Nations

South Korea's Hyunmoo II ballistic missile is fired during an exercise at an undisclosed location in South Korea. Picture: South Korea Defense Ministry via AP

"With regard to the so-called gift packages that the North is presenting, my recommendation to the North would be, instead of spending inordinate amounts of money on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, that it give its people the gift package of peace with their neighbors, economic development and an opportunity to rejoin the family of nations."

"We look forward to working with our partners in the (U.N. Security) Council with regard to a new resolution that will put some of the strongest sanctions possible on the DPRK."

"Advances in the regime’s nuclear and missile program are a threat to us all ... now is the time to say tests, threats and destabilizing actions will no longer be tolerated."

"It can no longer be business as usual with this regime."

U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Wood

U.S. Air Force B-1B strategic bombers and U.S. Marine Corps F-35B stealth jets flying over the Korean Peninsula as they trained with South Korea's F-15K fighter jets in response to North Korea's continued ballistic missile launches. Picture: AAP