Carl Thayer, Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defense Force Academy explained to Sputnik Radio why the North Korean dispute is unlikely to be resolved during Donald Trump's voyage to Asia.
Sputnik: What are your thoughts and feelings with regards to the potential for diplomacy and getting bodies round the table to bring some leverage and some platform of potential harmony with North Korea? It is an excellent opportunity to try and resolve the crisis or at least initiate some process for that. Do you see any potential or is this North Korea dispute "a bridge too far"?
Carl Thayer: The North Korea dispute is not going to be resolved the way Donald Trump wants. North Korea will in fact emerge as a de-facto nuclear state. And the only way of stopping that is really to have a nuclear war and I don't think that the US is prepared to do that. North Korea is an ultimate brinkman in all of this. China has a reason to stop proliferation but not to see the regime collapse. So, it has differences with the US.
READ MORE: What Message South Korea, China Are Sending the US Regarding North Korea
Trump will meet Xi Jinping and no one is going to walk out saying "I won the deal!" which North Korea will follow through. They will agree to continue pressure, UN sanctions in particular. Xi will try to get Trump to give sanctions a chance, which he has not done. The wild card of course is Kim Jong-un. What kind of provocation might he undertake and how would the US respond?
Clearly the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense are stressing diplomacy. There is no effective military option to solve proliferation in North Korea.
