"One has the feeling that a conflict could break out at any moment."

The "one" in question being Wang Yi, foreign minister of the People's Republic of China, and the locale in question being the Korean peninsula.

I don't think he's just whistling Dixie. The US Navy's Carrier Strike Group 1 is steaming (so to speak) toward the waters off North Korea. The Chinese regime has the People's Liberation Army on heightened alert and is shutting down commercial flights between Beijing and Pyongyang.

I have a theory on how things are going to go. It's just a theory. This thing may resolve back to the status quo of 1953-2017 after the usual penis length contests. But if it does burst into warfare, here's how I think it will go:

• The US will not invade North Korea with ground troops. It will instead launch a missile and air war, with any ground combat being pretty much defensive in nature along the DMZ and with a priority on making sure Seoul is neither overrun nor destroyed.
• The US forces will quickly achieve air supremacy, taking out most of North Korea's air force, air defense forces, and missile capabilities in 24-48 hours.
• Within 48-72 hours, the Korean People's Army as a whole, including ground forces, will have lost any semblance of battlefield cohesion, but probably not before executing Kim Jong Un and other key regime personnel. Kim's pleas with China to intervene on his side against the US forces will be replaced by North Korean military pleas, and US requests, for ...
•  Chinese ground troops to move in as a "peacekeeping force" to "restore order," pleas/requests which will be granted. North Korea will quickly go from Chinese client state and all-around pain in the ass to  de facto Chinese province, under the direct control of Beijing. It might enjoy some ceremonial autonomy, but it will no longer actually be an independent player in any meaningful sense.

I would rather none of that happened, of course. But if it's going to be war, that's how I think the war will go. I'm not discounting the possibility that the North Koreans might get off a conventional ballistic missile or two at the South or even at Japan. I doubt that they can or will detonate any atomic or nuclear weapons.

Connecting two dots

Voice of America, August 24th:

South Korean defense officials say North Korea is deploying massive numbers of troops and arms near the capital of Pyongyang. ... The report said the deployment appears to be related to a meeting of key communist party delegates next month and the party's 65th anniversary on October 10. ... Some analysts say North Korean leader Kim Jong Il will probably designate his youngest son Kim Jong Un as his successor at the September meeting, only the third such gathering since the communist state was founded in 1948.

CNN, August 26th:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is visiting China, the South Korean JoongAng Daily reported Thursday, citing a South Korean government official.

"[North Korea's] National Defense Commission chairman Kim was detected to be visiting China on his private train," said the official.

The official said Seoul did not understand the purpose of the visit nor did the government know whom Kim planned to contact.

My guess is that the DPRK's military plans for the Kim dynasty to end with Kim Jong Il, and possibly for Kim Jong Il himself to end sooner rather than later; that he knows it's coming; and that there's a lot of jockeying for position going on. Maybe the coup is coming, maybe it's already happened, maybe he's trying to get Chinese intervention lined up to put it down when it comes. But something's going on.