The first question you must ask yourself - why was North Korea demonized in the first place?

Ok - the Korean War. But that's long over with. The North Koreans have North Korera, the South Koreans have South Korea, and both sides quietly dream of re-unification.

The US, since the second world war, is a militarized nation. One thing a militarized nation needs is an enemy. No enemy = no need for the military industrial complex and huge sums of money flowing into certain pockets.

The West used to have the Soviet Union to justify their spending. Then they had to 'liberate' various countries that somehow had American oil under the soil.

That is more or less resolved. But one enemy is never enough, so North Korea, instead of being embraced is hounded and persecuted for 'all sorts of crimes against its people'.

And so the rhetoric the west is building in preparation for the upcoming war you are proposing, is that they will be 'liberating' the poor North Koreans. Nobody gets to ask the North Koreans if they want the Americans to rescue them. It's just assumed that because the eat rice instead of McDonalds that they need rescuing.

Where does North Korea get its revenue from? A bunch of it comes from tourism. Yes that's right, North Korea is destination of choice for many Chinese to spend their holidays. It is by all accounts, a quite beautiful country. Are the Chinese shocked by the deprivation and people starving in the streets?

No? Why not? the Chinese are not an especially cruel and heartless people. They have a long history of famines and starvation. They know what it's like. So if a neighboring country was starving when they now have plenty, don't you thin they would be shipping massive amounts of food across the border?

And... telling the world about it so they look good on the international stage?

But that's not happening right? So why not?

Why would the West invade this country?

To prevent a nuclear war.

If that is the real reason, then they should be looking at other nuclear countries first - like India and Pakistan. While it may be that they are only ever going to nuke each other, the devastation of that exchange would dwarf anything North Korea could do.

But they won't do that, because the natural resources they want are not in those countries. The treasure is in North Korea. All they need to do is liberate it from the people.

I don't buy into the rhetoric that this is a failed state that needs taking down to 'save the rest of the world'. We only ever get one side of the story and that always makes me suspicious, and then I question the motives of those telling the story.

War is never a good outcome for anyone. It is a last resort to be used when everything else has failed.

Have we tried everything else?

No. No even close.

We have tried bullying them, starving them, isolating them, threatening them, and it hasn't worked. The people haven't revolted. Why?

Perhaps it is because they have been bullied, starved, isolated, threatened and as a nation they are united in their determination to resist the West. To stand proud as Koreans and defend their own way of life. A way of life that is made harder by the West, but it is still theirs. And in that way they are in fact free.

The West styles their leader as insane (remember this is not a western democracy, so the culture and practices are different), they see their leader as a symbol of defiance, strength, hope.

So when the American boots hit North Korean soil and the G.I.s wander in expecting the people to thrown down their weapons and embrace their liberators, just imaging their shock when they discover that every inch of soil will be defended to the death, with a fanaticism the West can not even dream of.

Vietnam will seem like a picnic compared to a war in North Korea.

I hope that my government has enough sense to keep right out of it.

So what can we do Trev? What smart thing can we do to fix this problem?

How about de-escalation?

I'm not talking appeasement. I'm talking about the West stopping being a bully and tying to get the North Koreans to be westerners. Give them a valid cause to calm down.

It could be something as simple as the West announcing that they have come to an agreement with China that it should manage the security and behavior of its neighbor. And China will be judged by the international community on its actions to stabilize the region. - local people solving local problems.

The US pulls out of the region and focuses its military elsewhere, like on all the other wars they have going on at the moment. or perhaps feeding its own people.

North Korea is no longer under threat, no longer needs to look strong. It has the protection of China and needs to toe the line with China in order to keep that protection. The North Koreans are free to be North Koreans and work quietly on re-unification with South Korea without western interference.

The constant threat of war is preventing this. The constant military buildup by the West is what is driving the nuclear program. This problem was created by the arrogance, ignorance and greed from the west.

Sound familiar? It should do, because the world we live in is a result of that same arrogance and ignorance and greed.

It's time to try something different, something brave, something that doesn't involve killing people.