Korea Break

The Soviet Union could not have been both a ramshackle operation that could not get food from one town to the next, and poised to conquer Western Europe, which it could have had simply by carrying on marching in 1945.

We all now know which it was, and which it was not. It was the one that Enoch Powell said that it was, not the one that Margaret Thatcher said that it was.

Likewise, North Korea cannot be both the backward Hermit Kingdom (and yes, I do know that was not what the term originally meant) and on the brink of blowing the world, or at least its own neighbours, to Kingdom Come.

It may be one. It may be the other. But it cannot be both.