The worst possible outcome of the crisis in the Korean peninsula would be a nuclear war. The North Korean regime is undoubtedly vile. In that case one of the ironies of the present situation is that North Korea has proved, by building one, that it never actually needed a nuclear deterrent. Whether or not North Korea actually possesses missiles and bombs that can be combined to threaten the US mainland as well as Japan is, in a sense, irrelevant. The best we can hope for in the short term is that the present uneasy sequence of American bluff and North Korean provocation becomes a new normal, without ever spilling over into less ritualised hostilities.

Source: The Guardian September 03, 2017 17:37 UTC