If you think that a couple of shitty nukes is NK lifeline instead of the fact that anyone would have to go over China to get them, I strongly suggest you to pick a goddamn book.

I may be wrong, but I think the point is that USA used force against an enemy nation with no nukes, but the enemy nation that actually has nukes gets a mild nagging. I am not sure if it is presented as a good or bad point, however, since you could see it either as "USA prefers to attack nation that doesn't pose a nuclear threat but does nothing about the one that is a threat" or as "clearly, we don't fuck around with people that can press a button to erase millions of people, so we just negotiate with those instead, basically making it another situation seen as good or bad more based on personal bias rather than objective analysis.