This week David discusses North Korea and nuclear war

For those of us who know about the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, there are some scary similarities with what is happening between the US and North Korea today.

Each new dawn brings a ratcheting up of the rhetoric on both sides, and the threat of nuclear retaliation and the drum beat of war gets ever louder.

Other similarities also exist – a dangerously erratic President keen to divert attention from failures at home. Likewise there is a big power proxy conflict at work with South Korea under US suzerainty and North Korea partly China’s client state as was the case previously with Cuba and the Soviet Union.

Of course the key was that Cuba was in the process of acquiring nuclear weapons and North Korea not only possesses that weaponry but also has launch capacity. Of course you can’t make too much of parallels.

Kim Jong-un is unique in that he leads a rogue state which is alone amongst nations is largely impenetrable to pleas for compromise from the wider world – even China is often reported to be close to despair on occasions.

Having met and talked to escapees from that North Korea the level of torture, depravity and suppression there is incomprehensible to the west.

The world needs to take a deep breath for we are nearer to the threat of nuclear weapon use than we have been for fifty years.

Sadly whereas the United Nations played a key role back in 1962, it seems largely ineffective today.

So the next few days and weeks are going to be a nervous time for us all. One has to hope that wiser heads are urging caution and trying to find a settlement unlike those in authority in both Washington and Pyongyang.

We did step back from the brink in 1962 and we now need the Security Council to step up its efforts to get both sides to sit down around the peace table and stop the dangerous rhetoric.