I'm John Batchez, speaking with Henry Sikulski, the Non-Proliferation Policy Education Center, my colleague.

We're looking at a war game that Henry has recently conducted with people representing North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, the People's Republic of China, the United States and Japan.

That is the mix in East Asia

right now in a standoff, meant to protect Taiwan from invasion by the People's Republic of China

and from the Korean point of view, they were part of that alliance to protect Taiwan until

these last hours and days in which the

governance in Korea is now either in tatters or unknown. We come to what does China do next,

given that it knows its ally, Kim Jong-un, has an opportunity to confederate the Korean Peninsula.

The game says China mobilizes to invade Taiwan and demands Taipei immediately agree to a timetable

to integrate their economy and military with that of the mainland.

However, Kim Jong-un is not quiet at this.

He mounts an attack with special operations units against a thad battery

in South Korea that's been protecting high-value targets in the South. That's a success

and the U.S. and the R.O.K. coordination, their combined military, their communications

break down, break down entirely. Henry, your move. You're the

Americans, you're the Japanese. Which do you protect? Taiwan or South Korea? Well, I think

when you aren't Goliath, you have to probably not take on the entire opposition.

You have to pick the thing that you care about.

And I think the United States does in this game indirectly.

They probably could have pushed themselves harder.

My guess is that in this situation, there would be strong sentiment amongst, I think, some of the harder-headed people, I hope, to say, okay, this is bad.

We would like to help out South Korea, but we're busy with dealing with China and we need to focus on Taiwan.

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