So, as in your scenario, North Korea falls apart. Obviously, South Korea is willing, on some level (on a spectrum of enthusiastically to grudgingly), to welcome its co-Hanguks back into the fold and to unify the peninsula under a democratic government. What happens then? Does China go along with it? Or do they continue to follow the anti-Gorbachev playbook (see Massacre comma Tiananmen) and ensure that the collapse of an ally does not signal to its own people the weakness of the régime? Are they secure enough in their rule to let that happen? (Your Volgi thinks such a chain reaction unlikely, but he does not preside over the Middle Kingdom.) As has been documented by a Friend of the Gormogons, Gorbachev’s restraint of Erich Honecker’s Tiananmen-style instincts led to the collapse of East Germany, the hardest-line of Russia’s satellites. Having learned that lesson, do the Chinese, out of perceived necessity, secure their flank?

Your Volgi tends to think that they might feel it necessary (if they could) to establish (or prop up) up a puppet régime which, while not as brutal as the Kim Crime Family, would continue to fly the red flag on the peninsula and keep the democratic contagion farther away from Manchuria.

Your thoughts?

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.