Why do I get the feeling all the sabre rattling

on the Korean peninsula is really nothing more than (in the words of the great Ernst Stavro Blofeld) impotent beach boys flexing their muscles?

Face it, the leaders in North Korea have to know that unless China has their back and that is far from certain, any kind of attack on the south with nuclear weapons will end up finishing off their backward Stalinist country.  If there is one thing totalitarian leaders like, it's power and one thing they dislike it's losing power.  Since any war will almost certainly end up with the Kim family losing its stranglehold on that little country, ask yourself why would they do anything to cause them to lose power?

Clearly it is a corrupt country.  North Koreans are on average, two inches shorter than other asians because they are so malnourished it is like they are in the Dark Ages when humans were shorter than we are today.  Yet when you see the Kims, they are pleasantly plump.  Mmm, where do you think the food not being eaten by the peasants is going?  Yep, you guessed it, into the Kims' pieholes. 

Wars of aggression tend not to end well for dictators and Kim should read history to see how aggressive war ended for Hitler and Mussolini amongst others.  The only way for dictators to stay in power is to shut their mouths and control their fiefdom through fear and hope no neighbour decides to end the reign of terror (see Vietnam taking out Cambodia's Pol Pot for example).  Once they leave the manor so to speak and try to take over the next manor, they tend to end up executed or committing suicide.  While the latter two results would look good on the Kim family, don't expect them to risk it. 

All they want is to bring the US to the bargaining table over North Korea's nuclear program.  Basically, they want the right to own a few bombs with which they can threaten Tokyo, Seoul and possibly Beijing  (who want to ensure starving North Koreans don't flood over the Yalu River into China. 

The key player in this quagmire is China as the Chinese government does not want a war out of fear it will have to support the parasite to the south against the country that it sells most of its goods to (USA).   Money talks in China and Americans funnel money to China whereas North Korea just syphons it south of the Yalu.  Mmm who do you think China will support?

Don't worry about Russia, it has too many muslims to worry about than whether a former satellite state is at risk of being overrun. 

Ultimately, this will all be over by Christmas.  Unfortunately, a few Koreans will likely die before the sabre rattling is over.