To a certain extent. We need to decide when life begins in order to have sensible abortion laws. We define death as when brain activity stops. Because of this, we should define life as when brain activity begins, which is at 24-27 weeks. To account for this happening early, abortion should be banned after 20 weeks, which is the limit most states and countries with legalized abortion give. Before then, it is the woman's choice. After then, abortion should be banned.

Stalin's killing was primarily to purge threats to him. Hitler killed to eliminate specific races.

Hitler killed people for the purpose of racial extermination. Stalin killed people because he believed that they posed a threat to him. Neither of those are excusable, but Stalin at least had a legitimate reason for killing, while Hitler just killed because of racism.

According to Wikipedia, North Korea has 12-27 nuclear weapons. That's what the experts estimate.

According to leaked documents (link) (link), China views North Korea as a spoiled child. For China, this is a lesser evil situation, and a US ally on their border is better than an unstable nuclear state.

The US has the Missile Defense Agency. The MDA also protects US allies. Russia has the A135, which defends Moscow. They probably have something else for the rest of Russia, too. I think that China is developing a system to stop American, European, or Indian missiles.

Military spending isn't really a fair comparison of the countries. North Korea couldn't spend nearly as much as the US spends. The US spends 22 times as much on military than North Korea's entire GDP. The US is bore aggressive as well, but I suspect that's because they can be. If North Korea was capable of doing what the US does, it would.

China couldn't beat the US at the moment. It has a much larger population and more troops, but the US has better technology and more equipment. See the chart here. In a conventional war (no nukes) between the US and China, whoever attacked would probably lose.

China would abandon North Korea as soon as a war started. What's more important to them? Propping up a buffer state between themselves and South Korea, or trade with the EU, US, and Japan (the world's 1st, 2nd, and 4th largest economies) and avoiding a war with the US and its allies?

North Korea has a large army, but it is starving and lacks the advanced equipment of countries like Russia, the US, and France. What I'm worried about is how much damage North Korea would cause before it is defeated. It has 12-27 nuclear weapons, and could cause plenty of damage to China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, Eastern Europe, or the West Coast. It couldn't destroy Russia, China, or the US (it could destroy South Korea; It might be able to destroy Japan), but it could cause a lot of damage. Millions of people could be killed. The US would be successful in the end, but some country would suffer a lot of damage in the process.

Superpowers don't usually decline slowly. If the US plays things smartly, it will just decline, but based on the activities of countries in the past, I don't think that will happen. As I said in my main post, 8 superpowers have collapsed in recent history. Out of those, only one of them (the UK) slowly declined while still being a world power. France, Germany, Japan, and Russia are also major powers, but they both collapsed and then worked their way back up to being a powerful country

Right now, we're following the same path as the Soviet Union. We're building up the military and attacking weak countries, but our economy is still unstable. I expect the Iran War to throw us right back into the recession.

Finally, nobody expects superpowers to collapse. In 1988, people thought that the Soviet Union would last another 30 or 40 years. It was in bad shape, but nothing was too bad for it to handle. In 1989, most of Eastern Europe stopped being communist. In 1991, the USSR broke apart into 15 different countries.