China has been playing a dangerous game in nurturing the Kim regime and allowing it to obtain nuclear weapons. China has benefitted over the years from the presence of a hedge on its border against the US and South Korea, and from the frustrations the Kims have caused for the US, South Korea, and Japan. But it's been keeping a wild animal as a pet in its own backyard, and now that animal's got claws and rabies.

Interestingly enough, I see the emergence of common ground between Washington and Beijing on this issue. Sooner or later, China is going to calculate that Kim Jong-Un is more trouble than he's worth. When that happens, I can see the US and China arranging an unwritten agreement to take out Kim in exchange for the US's acceptance of the legitimacy of the North Korean state.

That would be a bitter pill for the US and its allies to swallow. But it seems preferable to the current course and speed of events, which basically have Kim developing usable ICBMs within a decade or less. To assume that a growing nuclear arsenal will somehow make Kim less of a threat, or endow him with a newfound sense of global stewardship and responsibility, is to place a particularly strange bet.