But, really. As the WSJ put it yesterday, the problem with just acting crazy as your diplomatic strategy is that it doesn’t rule out the possibility that you are crazy. The whole place is pretty much at the mercy of one man’s kicking and screaming, and Kim Jong-Un has definitely been ratcheting up the volume of his tantrums recently. We’re all too familiar with the dynasty’s pattern of threat-escalation and aid-seeking, but as former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Rep. Peter King pointed out on ABC on Sunday, if Kim keeps this up, it is not going to end well for him.

It isn’t an empty threat. I wouldn’t be that concerned about them hitting the mainland U.S. right now… I think the real threat is to what north korea might be boxing itself into. Kim Jong-Un is trying to establish himself, trying to be the tough guy, he’s 28, 29 years old. And he keeps going further and further out, and I don’t know if he can get himself back in. My concern would be, that he may feel, to save face, he has to launch some sort of attack on South Korea or in the Pacific. … I don’t see any purpose in [direct talks with the United States]. As far as I see, this is not even a government, it’s more like an organized crime family running a territory. They are brutal, he is brutal, his father is brutal, his grandfather is brutal.