The thing about possibly ‘smart cookies’ is that so frequently, if not normally, they are not so smart as they think they are.

Just the other day I happened to be watching an old Michael Parkinson interview with the actor, David Niven. Parkinson said ‘I believe you met Churchill more than once?’

‘Yes…..and I asked him if he thought America would enter the (Second World) War?

His reply was positive based on something cataclysmic happening. Then came Pearl Harbor and then in came America.’

When Niven met Churchill again, he asked why he had been so sure that the cataclysmic event would occur. To which Churchill replied ‘I read history’.

Most likely the only history of which Kim Jong-un is aware is that learned from his father. It seems most unlikely that he has a rounded view of potential consequences. Most relevant may be “Carthago delenda est”. The combination of a determined Trump and a disillusioned Xi Jinping may bring about just that destruction of North Korea before their leader gets missile technology under control.

The sooner, the better!

(By the way, I have just picked up this quote from Niccolo Machiavelli: ‘ the first method of estimating the intelligence of a leader is to look at the men around him’