Peace? Of Course Peace!!!

"The United States is the creator of NATO, its main sponsor. All the main resources come from the U.S. -- money, military technology weapons, ammunition, everything."

"And in the new U.S. National Security Strategy, Russia is not named as an enemy or a target. Yet the NATO secretary general is preparing for war with us."

"What is that? Can't you read?" 

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin during his annual Direct Line call-in show at Moscow’s Gostiny Dvor, 19 December 2025. Photo: EPA / SERGEI ILNITSKY

 

"The financial package for Ukraine has been finalized. Ukraine is granted a zero-interest loan."

"These funds are sufficient to cover the military and budgetary needs of Ukraine for the two years to come."

"If Russia does not pay reparations we will -- in full accordance with international law -- make use of Russian immobilized assets for paying back the loan." 

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz 

 

"[The U.S. is trying to] figure out if we can nudge both sides to a common place."

"We understand that you're not going to have a deal unless both sides have to get."

"Both sides will have to make concessions if  you're going to have a deal. You may not have a deal. We may not have a deal. It's unfortunate."

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio 

 

"The key question [relating to the U.S.-proposed plan to end the 4-year war] remains how the United States responds after consultation with the Russians. At this point, I honestly don't know, but I will know later today."

"This [agreement between Ukraine and Portugal for joint production of maritime drones] is one of the most promising areas of defence co-operation. What matters now is delivering results, and all parts of Europe must have sufficient capabilities to counter any threats."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 

Moscow Times

 

According to the Russian Defence Ministry it struck unspecified "transport and storage infrastructure used by the Ukrainian armed forces" as well as energy facilities supporting Kyiv's war effort. But then, Ukrainian drones have hit a Russian oil rig, the military patrol ship Okhotnik and other facilities as the ship patrolled the Caspian Sea near an oil and gas production platform at the Filanovsky oil and gas field, also hit, as well as a radar system in the Krasnosilske area of Crimea. 

 

Nothing, however, stops Mr. Putin from sneering at Ukraine's presumably feeble efforts at defence and offence, as, he claims, Russian forces are clearly winning the war that Ukraine is responsible for starting and he, Vladimir Putin, is anxious to put an end to. During the annual question-and-answer availability session staged by the Kremlin, Mr. Putin responded to many questions put to him. And in the process beamed over the fact that U.S. President Trump had shunted aside America's European allies in favour of Russia.

 

In responding to journalists and the general public in Russia the Russian president expressed his confidence on the trajectory of the Ukraine war while denying any responsibility for the war's consequences in massive human casualties, since it wasn't his fault at all, but rather that of the West. Sneering at NATO secretary-general's assertion that Russia might attack a NATO country within five years, pointing to the U.S. National Security Strategy linking Russia to "strategic stability". As for the security document; it is "largely consistent with Russia's intentions".  

 

"He can come back when he is ready for peace" 

Vladimir Zelensky and US President Donald Trump   REUTERS/ Brian Snyder

 

"When I arrived in Anchorage, I said these would not be easy decisions for us. But we agree to the compromises being 'proposed'. To say that we reject anything is absolutely incorrect and has no basis."

"The ball is entirely in the court of our opponents, so to speak, and, first and foremost, the leaders of the Kyiv regime and their, in this case, and above all, European sponsors." 

President Vladimir Putin  

It is, he reiterated, Kyiv that is refusing to end the war, while Moscow was prepared for peace with Ukraine and is willing to compromise to end the conflict, while Ukrainian forces were retreating "in all directions".  Terms suitable to Moscow are all that Russia is asking for to achieve peace. Terms eliminating "the root causes" of the conflict. Russia bears no responsibility for human war casualties "as we did not start that war".

 

While having assured President Trump that Russia stood willing to compromise in peace talks, Russia is also prepared to absorb more of Russia's "historical lands" from Ukraine through military force if negotiations to end the war on  Russian terms failed. Those Russian terms are, he contends, completely reasonable; the surrender of both Ukrainian territory in Russian hands, and portions still held by Ukraine. Oh and by the way, Ukraine taking steps to downsize its military and forego the weapons it holds to a limited number.

 

Right: no NATO presence in Ukraine as a guarantor of peace conditions upheld, nor any future attempt by Ukraine to join NATO. As for reconstruction costs associated with rehabilitating and rebuilding Ukraine, reparations are of no concern to Russia; Europe can foot the bill. Europe's decision to help fund Ukraine's continuation of its offensive saw EU Council President Antonio Costa declaring: "We have a deal. Decision to provide 90 billion euros of support to Ukraine for 2026-27 approved. We committed, we delivered."

 

Belgium continues to hold out on the EU's plan to use frozen Russian assets for Ukraine's war effort and reconstruction. The International Monetary Fund estimated 137 billion euros would be needed by Ukraine in 2026 and 2027. The 210 billion euros of Russian assets frozen mostly in Belgium would fit the bill nicely. While Putin's ally, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban who sees himself as a peacemaker declared: "I would not like a European Union in War. To give money means war".  

"Western leaders created this situation themselves and continue fanning the flames by saying they are preparing for war with Russia. [It is] nonsense [that Russia wants a war with Europe]."

"I have no doubt that you and I will witness new successes of our armed forces, our troops on the contact line before the end of this year. That's the plan." 

President Vladimir Putin 

Putin answers questions as presenters Pavel Zarubin and Yekaterina Berezovskaya look on. Photo: EPA / SERGEI ILNITSKY

 

A Trade War on Steroids -- Between 'Friends'

 

"I was just with the President in the Oval Office, and I can confirm that tomorrow, the February 1st deadline that President Trump put into place in a statement several weeks ago continues."

"These are promises made and promises kept by the president."

"Starting tomorrow those tariffs will be in place."

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt

In the Oval Office on Thursday, January 30/25  AP

 

And so, President Donald J. Trump who lost no time in rescuing America from the dripping talons of the progressive-left Democrats whose playbook was Critical Race Theory and DEI, leading off  his second (interrupted) term that saw him reappraise wokeness, political correctness, affirmative action, net zero ad infinitum, going on to address the World Economic Forum in Davos to lecture world leaders on American Greatness, denouncing taxation in excess along with over-regulation, and reckless immigration/migration, has decided that his neighbours on the North American Continent were in need of a little reorientation in their trade with a newly protectionist United States.

 

His face stony and unmoving as he said he had quite a number of good friends in Canada, he proceeded to announce that his earlier pronouncements in punishing Canada and Mexico with an across-the-board tariff of 25 percent on their exports to the United States was printed in tablets of stone. America's neighbours had for too long taken his nation's good fellowship for granted, coasting on its coattails without themselves living up to trade fairness and he would put a stop to it. Full stop. In so doing, he illegally broke with the very trade agreement he had signed alongside Canada and Mexico during his first presidency.

President Sheinbaum orders tariffs in response to US measures  Reuters

Not only were the two countries dependent on the United States for trade breaks, he thundered, but on its protection from any potential hostile moves by other states; paying their equal share of security measures was absent from the relationship and he wouldn't have it any longer. Lax border attention leading to the ingress of illegal migrants had to stop! Furtively allowing leaky borders to smuggle Fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the United States had to end! The imposition of financial strain on Canada and Mexico would bring home to them just.how.serious Donald J. Trump is.

 

And he most definitely is. Today's announcement that the threat that has seen both countries on target feverishly plead with the president's stern admonishments to rethink his disastrous decision that would, they stressed, harm American consumers just as it would Canada's and Mexico's fell on deaf ears. Dependence on Canada's electricity and gas exports would turn into a misery for the U.S., and Canada and Mexico warned their reaction would be to impose similar penalties on American imports. 

 

The response to that was swift in the declaration by President Trump that should his neighbours retaliate, he would raise the tariffs even more steeply. Canada alone exports four million barrels of oil on a daily basis in support of the U.S. economy. To America First it is irrelevant that a trade war of these dimensions would trigger recessions in the two other countries. Nor is the reality that illegal migrants from Canada represent a minuscule proportion of those entering the United States. Reason.does.not.prevail...

 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addresses the media following the imposition of a raft of tariffs by U.S. President Donald Trump against Canada, Mexico and China, in Ottawa on Saturday. Public Safety Minister David McGuinty, left to right, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc look on. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)

"[Trump’s tariffs would] tax America first [in the form of higher costs]."

"This is a lose-lose. We will keep working with partners to show President Trump and Americans that this doesn’t make life any more affordable."

"It makes life more expensive and sends our integrated businesses scrambling."

Matthew Holmes, executive vice president and chief of public policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce

Making Friends and Influencing People

"For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity."

"If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving [The US move to have Panama return the Panama Canal to the US] are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America, in full, quickly and without question."

"I can proudly proclaim that the Golden Age of America is upon us."

"There's a spirit that we have now that we didn't have just a short while ago."

U.S. President-elect Donald J. Trump

Donald Trump speaks at a Turning Point conference in Arizona.  Getty Images

There's a certain familiarity with that message, it rings a familiar tone. One we've heard before. Leaving one to wonder, are Russia and the United States leading the world into a new order, leaving the international rules-based order respecting sovereignty of other countries, endeavouring not to intrude on the internal affairs of other nations, observing borders and the right of governance in the hands of freely elected politicians reflecting the agency of individual countries without interference from outsiders, about to undergo change?

 

The human right of nations comprised of populations sharing a history and heritage, in democratic fairness, their security and values reflecting a wide consensus, now endangered by two heads of state of powerful military nations thirsting to expand their control and command by absorbing territories not their own as the presumed manifest destiny of the largest, the strongest, the most militarily inclined, not shirking at imposing war and violence, death and destruction, millions of displaced and refugees in the process?

"Every square meter of the canal belongs to Panama and will continue to."

Panama President Jose Raul Mulino

 

Greenland is ours. We are not for sale, and will never be for sale."

"We must not lose our years-long fight for freedom."

Mute Bourup Egede, Greenland head of government

Oh yes, and Canada, Canada too. The great northern neighbour of the United States of America. Why not make Canada the 51st State of the Union? It would become the "Great State of Canada". Canadians, like Panama and Greenland citizens take exception. Suddenly the world is faced with another bully in the food chain of territorial ambition and acquisition. By any means necessary.

 

Mr. Trump giving fair warning before he once again assumes office, that a new U.S. is in the offing. A grasping Republic eyeing the natural resources of other countries, feeling justified in envisioning those countries as American protectorates at best, swallowing them whole with whatever means are required and readily justified at worst, by the world's sole super-power with China and Russia heavy-breathing from behind to produce a super-power triumvirate.

In previous years at the helm of government, Trump as President made offers for the U.S. to buy Greenland from Denmark. More latterly, Trump's designs on Greenland as well as taking control of the Panama Canal whose shipping rates for the waterway linking the Atlantic and Pacific are 'ripping off' American shipping. Everyone is taking advantage of the avuncular nature of the United States. And the incoming president simply will not take it any longer.

To Panama President Jose Raul Mulino's defiant response of ownership of the Canal, Trump's answer was: "We'll see about that!" And presto...a photo of a U.S. flag set up in the canal zone shouts out: "Welcome to the United States Canal!" Built in the early 1900s by the U.S., control was relinquished to Panama in 1999 under a 1977 treaty.

Greenland is sited between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, the largest island in the world, 80% mantled by an ice sheet. Where a large U.S. military base happens to sit. Since 1979, it gained its independence from Denmark. Its head of government has not been entertained by a suggestion of sale to the U.S., as unwelcome now as it was first time around.

Donald Trump is on a tear through the unwarranted complacency of countries now feeling somewhat vulnerable to his impromptu and volatile mood swings and declarations zeroing on in their uneasiness at his return to the White House. "Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State", he recently posted on social video with an AI-generated self-image superimposed on a mountain summit, looking out over territory below, a Canadian flag beside him.

 

Mr. President ...  you're joking!

 

Pernicious State-Generated Provocation

"These actions [Moscow's aggressive interference programs] are persistent. They're pervasive and they are meant to undermine America's democracy on a daily basis, regardless of whether it is election time or not."
"[Russia and other countries continue targeting U.S. businesses, government, allied institutions] the warning lights are blinking red."
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats

"It's imperative we get to the bottom of what is going on so we can be prepared to protect ourselves in advance of the 2018 elections."
"My personal view: the Russians are at it again. BIG discrepancy [between warning by Coats and Trump's post-summit statement]."
Republican Senator Lindsay Graham

"Some people HATE the fact that I got along well with president Putin of Russia. They would rather go to war than see this. It's called Trump Derangement Syndrome!"
"So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki."
"We got along well which truly bothered many haters who wanted to see a boxing match."
U.S. President Donald J. Trump 

President Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki

Reuters

Well, that's what we like to see: world leaders behaving well with one another, like reasonably intelligent people able to converse with one another, discussing world affairs and their nations' relationship as they probe one another for variables in the perception each holds. This is big ego time, with Russian President Vladimir Putin cultivating his image of himself as leader of one of the two super-powers world attention pivots toward, and Donald Trump asserting his belief in self as conciliator, charmer extraordinaire and solver of unfortunate misunderstandings.

The United States, they and the rest of the world occasionally tend to forget, has a long history of interference in the affairs of other countries whose politics they abhor and feel should more closely resemble the values and priorities of the United States. The CIA represents the long arm of American-style justice, its agents well schooled in the kind of violent reprisals that propaganda and reality leads the West to attribute to the old KGB operatives, now carried forward by the new agency dedicated to the same old techniques but with technological advances.

Perhaps the Russian Federation is more skilled in the use of proxies than the U.S., though both are well known to have extensively used private militias tasking them to perform vital work each would prefer to keep their federal military figures clear of, clearing the air of responsibility and leading to the denial of culpability since these were not state actors, so go ahead and prove otherwise. It's tough to feel too much sympathy for Washington furious over the Kremlin's manipulation of social media to advantage themselves in creating havoc at election time.

How many times, after all, has Washington instructed its CIA agents to indulge in suborning citizens of other countries in efforts to destabilize the political environment, including during elections, even while it sends election monitors to ensure that no double-dealing, corrupt measures are undertaken by the foreign government which the U.S. insists must respect the democratic rights of their citizens. American citizens practise their democratic right to freely elect candidates they feel are likeliest to govern as they would wish them to.

If a foreign government's apparatchiks have stacked the decks in favour of a candidate that they feel is an egotistic, unprincipled, incompetent and ignorant boor whose kick at the four-year cat of governance will create turmoil and turn the population toward a polarized enmity against one another then it is a frail democracy that has failed too many of its own to begin with. One can only suppose that Russians themselves enjoy the exploits of their very own egotistical, unprincipled, competently sinister autocrat, so it appears that they are not alone; a major segment of Americans do as well.

In Russia, dissidents and opponents of the government, journalists who write disparagingly and despairingly of the corruption and wreckage their government has made of human rights and basic civil entitlements, along with threats to global stability find themselves imprisoned with long sentences or very, very dead. In the United States opponents of any current administration froth and fulminate awaiting their turn to elect their own incompetent governments in a conscienceless, capitalist system that awards those who familiarize themselves with its opportunities.

It is the sanctimony of righteousness in lofting democratic values over the clearly autocratic ones of one's political opponents that reveal the hypocrisy of one system against another that makes no pretense of favouring human rights over the more appealing path of dictatorship under a cloak of democracy so favoured by elections geared to garner majority votes in favour of pitiless strongmen jealous of their power base which in fact has its counterpart in the appeal of a Trump promising that large swath of disgruntled voters he is their man.

And he is, as much as Putin is Russia's. Little wonder there is a personal magnetism they respond to, between them. The wonder of it all is that the general population of each country manages to survive their unfortunate choices as well as their lack of choice. Since it is the fate of all ordinary people lacking the ambition it takes to claw their way to the pinnacle of political power to mull events then get on with their lives as best they can. They can and they do.

President Trump and Russia's President Putin sit for a working lunch in Finland's Presidential Palace

AFP/Getty

One of a Kind?

"There was a risk of thermonuclear war. The more I was able to go to a Cuban military camp, prowl around the exterior and look at ... their equipment and describe that and sketch that, the more the American intelligence community realized [Soviet Union leader Nikita] Khrushchev was keeping his word."
John W. Graham, Canadian diplomat to Cuba

"General Carter said that CIA would examine the possibilities of sabotaging airplane parts which are scheduled to be shipped from Canada to Cuba."
"[Carter had also asked National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy] to increase security intelligence on Canada because of its] reporting funding of subversive elements in Ecuador and possibly elsewhere."
Recently declassified memo

"This would have constituted a violation of Canadian sovereignty, but that shouldn't surprise anyone."
"This is an agency [the Central Intelligence Agency] which has undermined numerous countries."
""It was unlikely the CIA would risk an operation on Canadian soil as] it's just so much easier to have a ship blown up at sea."
Arne Kislenko, university professor, history of espionage, Ryerson University

"[Kennedy] hated Canadian nationalism and thought Canada was the boonies."
"He had a tremendous imperial arrogance toward Canada."
John Kirk, professor of Latin American studies, Dalhousie University

A rare photo of John F. Kennedy and John Diefenbaker smiling during the U.S. president’s visit to Ottawa on May 16, 1961. University of Saskatchewan, University Archives & Special Collections, J.G.D. Diefenbaker

President John F. Kennedy was the American shining knight, the hope of the future, a courageous war veteran, a man who struggled through intolerable physical pain to show a brave face; steering the United States of America unerringly toward its rightful place in the world, he was the champion of all champions for human rights, lofty ideas of probity, responsibility, trustworthiness, audaciousness, empathy and pride. The world loved him almost as much as Americans did, the very exemplar of American steadfastness in the face of adversity.

There were those in the press corps in Washington who heard rumours, who conducted discreet interviews, and who knew otherwise than the popular fiction of a celebrated, worshipped public figure who could do no wrong. They also knew how to be discreet, mostly because who would believe what they might write, simply because no one would want to have their icon tumbled from his pedestal. People need their national heroes and he was a hero of unmatched quality and fame, stirring pride in the populace and envy abroad.

Oddly enough, a man  who has garnered a reputation so completely the reverse of JFK's  has given the U.S. National Archives permission to release over 25,000 sealed and secret files matching John F. Kennedy's presidential era. One memo dating from 1962 outlines Kennedy's hate affair with Canada. Which had its nerve to exert an independent nationalist spirit against the United States' decisions that didn't sit well with the Canadian administration of the era, mostly under John Diefenbaker, a Conservative leader; their ideologies and personalities clashed.

When Diefenbaker threatened to release a heavily compromising memorandum to the press that Kennedy had inadvertently left behind, on a visit to Canada, Kennedy was beyond irate, ranting in the White House that he would "cut his balls off", then reverting to naming Diefenbaker a "prick", a "f--ker", and a "son of a bitch". This, the man whom the U.S. press adulated, and wrote nothing but praise for, reporting on his every initiative as though it was an order direct from on high. Unlike the manner in which the press universally writes of the current President of the United States of America.

President Donald Trump is generally acknowledged by the global community as being less than statesmanlike, and Kennedy was eminently statesmanlike, diplomatic, careful to portray himself as he wished to be seen, rumours be damned. Like his father, Kennedy was a social aristocrat, like his father he was an unredeemed womanizer, like his father he was a bully and an imperialist. A foul-mouthed, entitled 'intellectual', a drug-dependent, mob-friendly playboy-president. Unlike his father who only made it to Ambassador to Great Britain during the Second World War, JFK became president.

He had his father's connections and wealth to thank for that, along with the family's dynastic name. The hands-off attitude of the press toward Kennedy has nothing in common with the feeding frenzy of the press reporting on the uncouth, sexist, uninformed boorishness of the current president. Where JFK had all the backing anyone could wish for from the public and the press to accentuate his qualities and quietly acquiesce to ignoring his faults, Donald Trump, with many of the same qualities and rife with similar faults trumpets his own fame.

Where Donald Trump has brought the United States and by extension the world at large close to a nuclear confrontation with the Peoples Republic of North Korea through his bluff handling of the swaggering little Kim playing his nuclear gamesmanship, his predecessor brought the same situation to a close head in a game of chicken with the Soviet Union over its stockpile of missiles in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 1960s.

Two unique individuals with strong personalities and more than their share of emotional and habitual character flaws so closely aligned in nature albeit not in reputation that they could be clones, but for the variance in their facades. Kennedy  tried to influence a Canadian general election, interfering by inviting and hosting the leader of the Canadian opposition to a soiree to which he failed to invite the Prime Minister of Canada. Currently, claims are rife that Russia interfered with the U.S. general election to aid Trump.

The more things change, the more they resemble what went before.

Perspective is (almost) Everything

"[U.S. student Otto Warmbler was provided with excellent care by North Korea which spent] all the money for nursing [him]."
"The U.S. administration, or some people with a certain intention, let him die. This must be intended to foster and spread anti-Communist hatred within America."
"The situation on the Korean Peninsula is on the eve of the breakout of nuclear war."
"We can survive [such a war]."
"[ U.S. President Donald J. Trump is] a crazy man, a thug, a pathetic man with a big mouth."
Choe Kang-il, senior official, North Korean Foreign Ministry

"There will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!"  BBC News

It seems that Mr. Choe got that one right. Unsurprisingly, he was also describing North Korea's dear little chubby leader to a T. But then he is also advocating in his professions of being able to distinguish acceptable behaviours as opposed to those that are clearly aimed at slurring North Korea's leader as a juvenile enfant terrible best left locked behind bars in recognition of his bellicose threats to turn the world into a fiery cauldron, the perverse direction given to the people of North Korea to regard the United States' ambition to incinerate them post-haste.

The other leader, the crazy man, the thug, the big mouth did, after all say something quite approximating that as a testy rejoinder on Twitter, the official communications organ of the White House. So the expectation is there, a nuclear war in the offing, North Korea matched against the United States. Patriotism is in evidence everywhere with high school students marching in military uniform daily denouncing criminal America in the streets of Pyongyang.

Where billboards and posters on public roads feature missiles sending the U.S. Capital into smithereens, the American flag shredded beyond repair. Even kindergarten playgrounds are not off limits for posters of deadly missiles. State television is fixed on those images. But are North Koreans fearful of any outcome between the two nuclear-possessing adversaries? Not really, since North Koreans have it on the most reliably reassuring advice that it is not America that will win that war.

"If we have to go to war, we won't hesitate to totally destroy the United States", Mun Hyok-myong, 38, and a teacher, stated with confidence. More or less quoting Donald J. Trump in reverse. And since that Trump statement of reckless idiocy there has been an appreciable rise to prominence within North Korea of hard liners, responding to the American president's promise to "totally destroy" their country. Whoops, hard liners in North Korea and the same in America, however polarized their vision happens to be.

While Secretary of State Rex Tillerson engages in a futile effort at diplomacy, his president casually tweaks his nose on Twitter. Trump, it would appear, is confident that his bullying will influence Kim Jong-un to surrender his schoolyard taunts to the greater bully; except that Kim appears to feel he has the upper hand, and in any event, has no intention whatever of giving up his toys; they're his, he wants more and what Kim wants Kim gets.

Mr. Choe iterates what is already generally assumed to be fact, that North Korea took its lesson from Iraq and Libya both of which surrendered their aspirational nuclear programs only to have the United States move in on them removing their regimes, which North Korea takes as its signal that it would be extremely foolhardy to make themselves vulnerable in the same manner. North Koreans cling to the notion of their infallible dear little leader leading them to the apex of world power.

After all, in every obscure, isolated village, in every home there are Big Brother speakers broadcasting morning propaganda doses. The totalitarian state issues its own version of the history of the world and North Korea's rightful place in the order of world influencers and power-mongers. All adults sport facial pins of the Great Leader or the Dear Leader, Kim's grandfather and father, whose portraits appear everywhere in homes, factories, classrooms, public arenas. The most adored portrait, however, is reserved for reverence of Kim himself, the tiny perfect monster.

Of the United States and its people, North Koreans believe that "just as a wolf cannot become a lamb, so an American imperialist can never change his aggressive nature", a bit of a spin on a leopard never changing its spots type of thing. The corollary to which is that a Kim is a Kim is a Kim.

So, given the principles and the principals involved here, let's just hope there are no accidental aerial collisions between an American and a North Korean warplane. And that the U.S. can resist the temptation to bomb a ballistic missile site whose missile, they intuit preventively is in preparation for launch over Tokyo with a nuclear warhead.