North Korea: Will the situation blow up – or be defused?

Now, I am not saying we would not get our hair mussed. But we could get away with no more than 10 million to 20 million killed – tops. Depending on the breaks.

Some of you will recognise the above as an adaptation from a scene in Dr Strangelove, as General Buck Turgidson offers his advice to the American president.

Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece of political satire and black comedy was made at the height of the Cold War. But today you can well imagine a similar scene as America’s military chiefs in the “war room” ponder the options and possibilities for a military response as North Korea continues its illegal missile testing with the undisguised aim of being able to deliver a nuclear weapon to the United States.

It is a nightmare come true. Somebody mad, bad and dangerous, with his finger on the trigger of an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Yes, comes a ready chorus – that’s Donald Trump.

Trump is such a divisive character that one of the dynamics of the current situation is a predisposition of the media and his whole armies of critics to become locked into a Pavlovian “Trump is a chump” agenda which distracts from the fundamental issue.

In other words, they are so keen to do what dogs do to Trump’s tree, that there is a failure to see the wood.

I will call it the Thatcher effect. In the early 1980s Mrs Thatcher was so hated by the Left – and of course they still hate her and everything she stood for and did, but it was particularly vociferous back then – that the Falklands War gave them a difficult choice of positions.

Not long before the war, Tony Benn had written an article in the Left wing magazine Tribune which said words to the effect that there was both a right and duty to fight against Fascism.

Then in April 1982 a murdering Fascist junta made up of military chancers and led by a drunkard invaded the Falkland Islands, and Mrs Thatcher’s government rocked.

Suddenly all that stuff about implacable and indomitable opposition to Fascism was trumped by Tony Benn’s hatred of Mrs Thatcher. He campaigned against the war, and for an accommodation with the Fascists and their illegal aggression.

Presidents Bush and Obama played pass the parcel with North Korea and now the entire ominously ticking package has landed in Trump’s lap.

There are essentially two things which can be done, both of which have grotesque dangers. The first is essentially to do nothing, and accept that a rogue state which defies the international community has acquired the ability to lay waste its neighbours and eastern American cities.

The other is to draw a red line. This is actually what I think will eventually happen. The United States will say enough is enough, and issue an ultimatum.

The world will then hold its breath.

Cut this out and keep it. It is my prediction, but not my hope, which is that North Korea will respond to international pressure, and the situation will be defused.

And it explains why I think in the general scheme of things, whether Boris Johnson is driving from the back seat or has a place in the Brexit front seat is relatively trivial in comparison.

I do feel rather sorry for Boris. Just as the “Trump is a chump” mindset is so fixed that his tweet that Scotland Yard had the London terrorists in its sights was for some reason considered a national news story, the perception that Boris Johnson is a gaffe waiting to happen is also deeply fixed in the collective psyche.

A few days ago there was an article in the Daily Telegraph which wondered why he was lying low and making so little impact.

“We hardly ever hear from the Foreign Secretary nowadays unless there’s some tragedy unfolding overseas, or an off-colour joke has backfired on the other side of the world,” wrote Fraser Nelson.

One popular theory, he said, was that Boris was playing dead, hoping to spring to life and claim the Tory leadership once Theresa May has been deposed.

But what’s this? The very next day Boris bounded into public view like a large dog responding to a call. In the very same newspaper he outlined his 4,000-word blueprint for Brexit, an optimistic Churchillian vision of bright sunlit uplands and wonderful opportunities.

For this, he has been given a good smacking from all quarters.

We probably won’t hear from him again for a while.