The UN should put North Korea in the dock at The Hague

The UN should treat Kim Jong-un's threat as a crime against humanity, and refer it to the ICC

North Korea's threat to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US need not be taken seriously yet. But it has the bomb (in fact 12, by reliable estimate) and ballistic missiles, and it will take only a few years to design a nuclear warhead and a re-entry heat shield for the drop on Hollywood. By then Iran may have the bomb, as well as Saudi Arabia, and perhaps even Egypt. We will, by that time, feel nostalgic for the good old days of the cold war. So what do we do, other than wait for when the American president decides to carpet-bomb Pyongyang?

North Korea's threats have served to expose the fatal flaw in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. This was negotiated after the Cuban missile crisis with the object of limiting nuclear weapons to five great, or at least sensible, superpowers which would, one fine day, agree on reducing their arsenals to zero.