China and North Korea

The New York Times:

Chinese leaders have consistently urged the rest of the world, and especially the United States, to show more patience with North Korea. Beijing has consistently contended that it was unclear whether North Korea had developed nuclear weapons, notwithstanding a growing volume of American intelligence to the contrary. Confronted with a statement by Pyongyang mentioning that nuclear weapons had been manufactured, the Chinese government's initial reaction today was silence. Later, in a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry's chief spokesman, Kong Quan, Beijing said it hoped the six-party talks with North Korea would continue.

China of course has always been the key to any solution over North Korea as they are the sole factor that keeps North Korea in existence. China also doesn't want North Korea to have nukes, both because they could present a threat to China itself, and because both South Korea and Japan could, and likely would, quickly want their own nuclear deterrent force. China though would still rather that the U.S. solve this problem. The focus of our diplomacy so far has been to convince China that they need to solve the problem and we don't, today's announcement probably helps rather than hurts our efforts in this regard. Unfortunately, Kim Jong Il is pretty much totally insane. How he will respond to continued Chinese pressure is the big unknown. My guess though is that China will be supporting a coup within North Korea and will put people who are a little less crazy in power there. Not an ideal solution, but probably the best we could hope for.