Well, first, I completely take your point on Russia. Sitting in the U.K., we see the threat development from Russia quite clearly, literally off the coast, sometimes, when it comes to Russian groups steaming through the English Channel. I didn't want to, for a minute, suggest that I don't have an appreciation of that threat, or indeed, that those on the other side of the pond don't either.
I'll take issue with the term “client state” as well, if I may. The relationship between China and North Korea is much more complex than that. While there is certainly a degree of dependency, it is an enormously difficult relationship from both sides. China's no doubt irritated at the trajectory of the North Korean nuclear missile issue. Indeed, they're aggravated by the current North Korean leadership. Whenever I speak to a Chinese official, they will often say that North Korea is being disrespectful to China, which I think is an interesting use of language as well.
China's view on North Korea is that they have a hierarchy, if you will, of concerns when it comes to the country, what we like to call the three noes: their priorities are no war, no instability, and no nuclear weapons, in that order. That shapes a lot of Chinese thinking towards the North Korean issue.
If no nuclear weapons is a subordinate priority to no instability, and the Chinese view of how to reduce the prospect of instability is through economic integration, then you can see where we run into an issue with the discussion we're having with China over sanctions implementation. To give you a broader sense, this is not a policy that China merely applies to North Korea; it's the foundation of their entire neighbourhood policy. The one belt, one road strategy that China has towards its neighbourhood rests on the idea that China will have a better relationship with its neighbours, a more manageable and stable relationship, if they're economically interdependent.
That same thinking applies to the Korean Peninsula, so what we're asking China to do by implementing very strong sanctions against North Korea is to actually discard that policy approach. In my view, we need to be realistic about what we're asking China, and whether or not they're likely to give it.