The latest North Korean missile test is yet another confirmation that Pyongyang is well on its way to possessing nuclear-tipped missiles that can reach Washington. It is high time for a new approach to avoid a nuclear stand-off worse than the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
The Cuban crisis did not end in catastrophe mainly because the leaders on both sides — John F Kennedy and his advisers, and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and his politburo — did not misjudge each other’s intentions. And Washington managed to find an effective course of action: a naval blockade. In the present Korean crisis, there is arguably a greater chance of the leaders — Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un
— miscalculating each other’s intentions. Moreover, because North Korea is not an island that can be blockaded (and given China’s refusal to cut off support to its fraternal neighbour), a similar course of action is much harder to find.