“A merciless offensive.”

That’s what Kim Jong Il plans to launch using his nuclear weapons should North Korea be provoked. “Our nuclear deterrent will be a strong defensive means … as well as a merciless offensive means to deal a just retaliatory strike to those who touch the country’s dignity and sovereignty even a bit,” said the state-run newspaper Minju Joson on Tuesday (emphasis mine throughout).

Pyongyang’s declaration, the first in which it referred to its nuclear arsenal as “offensive” in nature, was a major aftershock to a region already reeling from North Korea’s recent slew of nuclear and ballistic missile tests. If we believe Tuesday’s announcement, North Korea doesn’t just possess nukes—a frightening enough reality. It is ready and willing to use them.

Understandably, America and its allies in Asia are alarmed by the apocalyptic ambitions of Kim Jong Il. South Korea is a nervous wreck, with some companies beginning to close down business in towns along the border. Nearby Japan is so alarmed Tokyo is chattering about the need to develop its own nuclear arsenal. Virtually every nation in Asia, from India to Indonesia, is plagued by worry.

Except China.

When North Korea detonated its second atomic device last month, Beijing responded by saying it “firmly opposed” the act. That’s an awfully weak response. Kim Jong Il’s nuclear device packed a payload equal to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and was detonated less than 100 miles from the Chinese border. Beijing is closer to North Korea’s nuclear launch sites than Tokyo is, and hundreds of millions of Chinese live well within range of Pyongyang’s short-range missiles. Like South Korea and Japan, China’s entire population of more than 1 billion is within range of North Korea’s long-range Taepodong-2 missile. Moreover, China’s missile interceptor system is more rudimentary than Japan’s.

But is China gravely concerned? The best response it could muster to North Korea’s nuclear truculence was that it “firmly opposed” it. This pathetic and relaxed reaction is cause for deep concern.

In fact, the Chinese government has consistently defended Pyongyang from punishment by America and the international community. Beijing has more leverage over North Korea than any other state, yet is unwilling to use it. The U.S. has been negotiating with Pyongyang for 15 years under three different administrations. The whole time, China persistently has done its best to dilute UN sanctions and bog down negotiations.

Meanwhile, Beijing possesses the tools to wipe out Kim Jong Il in a week.

China supplies North Korea with about 90 percent of its oil, 80 percent of its consumer goods and roughly 40 percent of its food. It is Pyongyang’s largest military supplier, and its closest friend and strongest defender in the UN Security Council and other international organizations. “If it weren’t for the Chinese,” wrote author Gordon Chang recently, “there would be no North Korean missile program, no North Korean nuclear program and no North Korea.”

So why does China keep North Korea alive?

The common answer is, Beijing fears that the implosion of Kim Jong Il’s regime would create a humanitarian crisis that would see refugees flooding across the Yalu River into China. Perhaps there’s some truth to that claim. But surely such short-term problems would be marginal compared to the long-term advantage of encouraging an economically and politically stable government without ominous nuclear aspirations in Pyongyang.

The reality is more sinister: China’s leaders support Kim Jong Il’s regime because a rogue North Korea serves China’s ambitions, both within the region and in the global arena!

First, the existence of an unpredictable, highly volatile nuclear aspirant is a distraction to China’s competitors in the region, particularly Japan (and South Korea to a lesser degree). “Apparently, [Chinese] President Hu Jintao finds Kim useful in the short-term for keeping Japan and South Korea off balance …,” wrote Chang. China employs North Korea in Asia in much the same way Iran employs Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon—as an instrument to push, pry and distract Western-aligned governments, thereby undermining and countering U.S. interests in Asia.

The ultimate and most worrying reason Beijing sustains North Korea is that Kim Jong Il’s ideologies and ambitions align perfectly with China’s top global priority: undermining the United States!

The media have been awash lately with reports on China’s efforts to eviscerate the U.S. economy, including its efforts to destabilize the dollar, undermine the American financial system and strengthen the credibility of the International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions. Evidence shows that Beijing is expanding its military capacities, especially its navy, and solidifying military and strategic partnerships to counter America. China is competing with the U.S. in space, and reports show it to be undermining U.S. power in cyberspace. It is forging dubious relationships with anti-American regimes in Africa and Latin America, not to mention consistently undermining America’s diplomatic ventures across the world, particularly in sensitive places like Iran.

Meaningful analysis considers Pyongyang’s nuclear program through this broad prism, and ends with a sobering conclusion: China considers Pyongyang a proxy by which it can fulfill its ambition to undermine the United States.

When North Korea confirmed its entrance into the nuclear club in October 2006 by detonating a nuclear device, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, William Perry and George Shultz wrote a joint article saying “the world [was] on the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era.” “[T]he likelihood that non-state terrorists will get their hands on nuclear weaponry is increasing,” they wrote. “In today’s war waged on world order by terrorists, nuclear weapons are the ultimate means of mass devastation. And non-state terrorist groups with nuclear weapons are conceptually outside the bounds of a deterrent strategy and present difficult new security challenges.”

After Pyongyang’s recent test—not to mention the advancement of Iran’s nuclear program and the fact that Pakistan and its nukes could fall into the hands of radical Islamists—can anyone doubt that we have entered a new era of nuclear proliferation?

Strong evidence links the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs. North Korea’s fingerprints were all over the nuclear facility in Syria bombed by Israel in September 2007. China itself, violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it signed in 1992, helped develop Pakistan’s nukes; by refusing to support America and Europe in combating Iran’s nuclear ambitions, it has proven itself a supporter of Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic nuclear designs.

We live in the age of nuclear proliferation among rogue terrorist-sponsoring states—and China is the nation responsible for supporting and sustaining the most advanced of these states!

President Barack Obama’s administration, like previous U.S. administrations, pretends China is on America’s side on the North Korea issue. When Kim exploded his atomic device recently, Obama immediately dispatched a high-level delegation to Beijing (as well as Tokyo and Seoul) to sit down and hash out a plan to deal with North Korea. It was a fool’s errand, one America has been running for 15 years. China has groomed North Korea’s nuclear ambitions from their infancy. It pleases Beijing that Pyongyang’s nukes are pointed not west, but east, at the shores of the United States!

Bible prophecy shows it would be naive for Americans to underestimate Pyongyang’s nuclear program, and China’s sponsoring of it. Multiple Bible prophecies speak of a nuclear holocaust engulfing the world in the end time. In the Olivet prophecy, Jesus Christ Himself warned that conditions would be so bad in the world that unless God intervened, “there should no flesh be saved.” To learn more about the nuclear future of planet Earth, read “We Have Had Our Last Chance” and “The World Will Not End This Way!” in the latest issue of the Trumpet.

As Charles Krauthammer warned recently: “The [Obama] administration is pretending … that China is on our side. It’s not. It has no interest in weakening its ally and puppet in Pyongyang. It’s working against us.”

America ignores this unpleasant reality to its own peril. Thanks to support from China, North Korea is now a nuclear state with proven ties to the world’s greatest terrorist-sponsoring states. Pyongyang has been found sharing its technological know-how with Syria and Iran. It is hardly far-fetched to think that in time at least one or two of its nukes will find their way into the hands of Tehran, or a radical Islamic terrorist organization—ultimately creating a mushroom cloud over an American city!