North Korea July 7 2017

Well, in the wake of so many North Korean nuclear ballistic missile launches it’s easy to become complacent

But North Korea’s successful launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile yesterday, which could deliver a nuclear weapon to Darwin, is serious stuff

Yesterday’s missile travelled 933kms reaching an altitude of 2,802kms over a flight time of 39 minutes

As Greg Sheridan writes today, the launch, years before experts anticipated it and timed to coincide with American Independence Day celebrations in the US, radically shrinks the timescale for tackling the North Korean threat

In April President Trump called the whole US Senate to a briefing on North Korea

He told a meeting of UN Security Council representatives “people have put blindfolds on for decades and now it’s time to solve the problem”

Since assuming the presidency Trump has been in close contact with Chinese President Xi Jinping over North Korea

Earlier this year he tweeted “it won’t happen” after North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un said his country was close to testing an intercontinental missile

But now it has happened

Presidents Trump and Xi will meet this week at the G20 meeting in Germany

China has a pivotal role in resolving this crisis

But Donald Trump’s most recent assessment of China’s attempt to rein in North Korea is that China had tried but failed

Not good enough

The West must confront this threat

We can’t allow ourselves to be played for mugs