The Duchy invaded on the assumption it would lose and be overrun by the US, which would then pour money into Fenwick for reconstruction purposes. It didn't quite turn out that way — but that is another story. North Korea may be delusional about its military capabilities but it is not undermining the fragile peace in the Korean peninsula to extract financial aid or concessions of an economic or political nature. It is escalating because it believes itself in a position of strength — and this conviction, no matter how misplaced, allows it to be bullish because it thinks that its opponents are the ones who are bluffing.

While the fictional Fenwick was conscious of its weakness (and therefore bluffing) in a way that North Korea is not, the outcome may not be so dissimilar. The US Secretary of State John Kerry has indicated that North Korea's deployment of missile launchers, if followed by an actual launch, would be "a serious mistake". One hopes that this kind of intimation has more substance than the notorious "Assad must go" remark of President Obama in August 2011. Two years later Assad is still there, and America's actions have done little to make that presidential intimation much more than wishful thinking expressed aloud.

The kind of response the US will be able to put together on the day that Kim Jong-un chooses to defy these warnings is the measure of US power in the region and, by extension, in the world. Everyone will be watching. Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, will no doubt be comparing and contrasting Libya's late dictator Muammar Gaddafi with the Kim dynasty in North Korea, seeing what kind of yields one gets from acting reasonably, versus acting like a lunatic. The Arab world will also be watching, always wary of American power and yet dependent on it to fend off Iran's hegemonic ambitions. China and Russia will be keeping a close eye on developments too — their ambitions to counterbalance American power will get a boost if the US blinks. That is why pretending that the North Korea crisis is not that much of a crisis is silly.