3) Blow the ever loving snot out of every power plant and nuke facility in the country. Send a message to the powers that be saying, "Knock it off, or we'll keep you in the dark and the cold until you do."
Problem with this is that it really affects the (already pretty miserably-oppressed) people of NK more than it does the far-smaller number in charge.
The
people of North Korea don't deserve to suffer more than they already do, in order for us to send a message to leaders whose fingers are stuck in their own ears.
Maybe what we
really need to do is call up China and say, "China, look, the whole pet pit-bull thing was cute when you were an economic skinny teenager and you needed to look like a tough guy. But you're a grownup now, and the dog keeps biting people. Time to have it put down." Who knows? They might listen; there was a time when having NK on a leash that they could release made geopolitical sense for China: projected force coupled with plausible deniability.
Now, what good is NK really doing China? It's fairly obvious that even if China wanted to hold on to the mantra of "Communism is teh awesome", NK wouldn't be a good poster child to point to, since there's not even the slightest chance that anyone would believe that the people in NK are living in a paradise brought about by communist ideals. So what's left? Force? Pyongyang can't project force much past Seoul or Japan, and they can't even do
that without us stepping in and squashing them like a bug. And the only thing that would prevent us from doing that is if China faced off against us. And China doesn't want a global conflict with them on one side and the US on the other; where would they sell their cheap plastic crap?
Having NK as a pet has reached and gone beyond the point of diminishing returns for China. Maybe we should remind them of that.
