Noah Feldman, Columnist

Here's Why China Tolerates a Nuclear North Korea

It's not in Beijing's interest to let the U.S. overthrow the Pyongyang regime. So much for Trump's threats.

July 6, 2017 at 4:06 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Somebody's happy.
Source: STR/AFP/Getty Images

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President Donald Trump still seems to think that pressuring China to rein in North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is the best way to push back against the rogue state’s nuclear expansion, most recently in the form of testing an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach Alaska.

This approach hasn’t worked so far, and there’s a reason: Chinese President Xi Jinping has no strong reason to object to a North Korean nuclear insurance policy against the threat of being overthrown by the U.S.