Write off Trump at your peril.: The US president as he boarded Air Force One after his visit to see the impact of Hurricane Harvey in Louisana. Credit:AP But surely the mere existence of the North Korean weapons program and Pyongyang's talk of targeting the US constitutes a "threat?" And lest the North Koreans were worried by the meaning of "massive military response", Mattis added: "We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea". Similarly, Trump's "we'll see" response to questions on the imminence of a US attack on the North was breathlessly reported as the president "refusing to rule out" an attack. But equally it didn't narrow the range of options for an American response. Was "we'll see" an advance on, or a retreat from Trump's earlier "fire and fury" and "locked and loaded" warnings? So, as the global mood darkens, we go in endless circles – asking questions that go unanswered as all sides push around the options, much as a child does the peas on his dinner plate. Q: Is it all too late, in the sense that North Korea has achieved, or is on the verge of achieving nuclear power status?

South Korea fires a missile during an exercise on Monday. Credit:AP/South Korea Defense Ministry A: In making this argument, some analysts argue that Kim's objective is to make the world respect his hermit kingdom and to treat him as an equal in a dialogue that acknowledges his new nuclear status. Q: Would Kim fire off one of his newly minted nuclear weapons? A: None of the other recent rogue arrivals into the nuclear club have done so – see Pakistan and India. But there are more nuanced lines of analysis: would a nuclear Pyongyang checkmate any US moves against North Korea, even, say, in the event of the North creating a pretext to reunify the Korean Peninsula on its own terms? Would Washington acquiesce to demands that US troops to be withdrawn from the peninsula or the region because Pyongyang has a new capability to strike Chicago or San Francisco? Q: Is Trump playing into Kim's hands?

A: Time will tell. But the president's repeated lashing out at China and his more recent attacks on South Korea are courageous – in the Yes, Minister sense. China has the economic clout to squeeze North Korea that Washington doesn't have, but will it use it? In the wake of the weekend test, there is renewed speculation that perhaps it might. But for Beijing to do so would require China to abandon its long-held doctrine that a contained Kim on its doorstep is a better bet than the alternative. This could include regime collapse, reunification of the peninsula and the prospect of an even greater US presence in the new Korean entity. Similarly, Trump's charge that South Korea is attempting to appease the North because it so desperately wants to avoid a repeat of the horrors of the Korean War seems like crude conduct towards a vital ally. So does this insistence that South Korea pay for US missile protection, and his reported threat to withdraw from a five-year-old free trade treaty with South Korea. Really, is this the time for Washington to be picking a trade fight with Seoul? And is all this a gift to Pyongyang, leaving Seoul and others to conclude that the US cannot be relied upon now? Or, perhaps even more so in the future if Pyongyang's capacity to target American cities is confirmed. Q: A military response?

A: Despite his sabre rattling, Mattis reportedly is one of the Trump administration's greatest skeptics when it comes to any of the military options, because of the risk of replaying the Korean War. "The military options are all bad," former National Security Agency and CIA director Michael Hayden told CNN. "They're not zero. We have got them – but none of them are good." Q: A Trade response? Loading A: Trump has stepped up his talk of a trade war, threatening to stop "all trade with any country doing business with North Korea". But few bought that as a serious threat, precisely because of the appalling impact it would have on the global and US economies. It would mean the US sanctioning the dozens of countries that trade with North Korea, and particularly China which exported goods worth almost $US500 billion to the US in 2016. That's lot of peas, all being pushed around on a plate – but it's not kid's stuff.