Time for watching and waiting is nearly over

There has been little else but talk about North Korea’s weapons programme for almost quarter of a century. That may not be true for much longer, says Michael Mandelbaum

As Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first summit with US President Donald Trump takes place at Trump’s luxurious Florida estate Mar-a-Lago, at least part of the discussion will invariably focus on one of the world’s most impoverished places: North Korea.

Despite more than two decades of on-again, off-again negotiations, North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is pushing the world toward a strategic watershed much like the one that the West faced 60 years ago, when the United States and the Soviet Union faced off against each other in Europe.