How do you solve a problem like Korea?

At the end of the Sci-Fi classic, "The Day the Earth Stood Still", Klaatu advises the assembled representatives of the world powers that unless they curb their intentions and cease to engage in an un-winnable arms race, the mighty robot, Gort, will destroy the Earth. The reason being that they were now a potential threat to the inhabitants of the other planets and they would not be allowed to become a viable one.

Great play was made in the movie of how difficult it would be to get these representatives together in the same room in order to listen to what Klaatu had to say.

At last, the Chinese and the Russians have tired of North Korea and the two countries are beginning to align themselves, obliquely, with the American position. Not publicly of course, but in private, diplomats on all sides are attempting to contain the bellicose and fantastical pronouncements of Kim Jong-un.

There is of course a fundamental problem. Kim Jon-un is mad and is surrounded by madmen. He has also followed in the footsteps of other great dictators such as Stalin and made very certain that there can be no powerful opposition and no internal threat to his life.

This was the mistake Hitler made; he later regretted not liquidating the upper echelons of the military, whose codes of chivalry and honour and their arcane and recondite rituals were virtually impervious to the crude mechanisms and mores of National Socialism.

Kim Jon-un, as far as we know, has an iron grip on the military, who if anything want war more than he does.

So what to do about him? Nobody is taking his threats for nuclear war as a joke. It does not matter how effective his arsenal is, it exists and can do damage, particularly to South Korea. Moreover, it could conceivably escalate into world war should the USA ignore the Russians and Chinese in order to retaliate on behalf of the South Koreans.

The stakes are high and all the more frightening because the man at the centre of it is a 30 year-old nut job with a certain desire to take the whole edifice down with him if it came to it.

We can only hope that the major world powers are, as I write, discussing every scenario and coming to some kind of agreement about containing the crisis.