The horrifying prospect of war again befalls the Korean peninsula. But perhaps we ought to remember that tensions have been far higher in the past, and that each time a path for de-escalation was eventually found.

Current levels of tension

The current phase of rising tensions arguably started at the beginning of the year, when President Donald Trump tweeted “[i]t won’t happen!” on 2 January as a response to Chairman Kim Jong Un’s New Year’s claim that the DPRK had “entered the final stage of preparation for the test launch of an