Shoulder to shoulder while hiding behind the sofa

Michael Fallon is one of the few senior ministers to regularly appear on the Today programme, happy to roam from his day job of the defence brief to speak for the government on any matter which happens to emerge.

Today, however, he was on solid home ground trying to explain the government’s position towards North Korea in the wake of their hydrogen bomb test. Fallon told the programme that Jim Mattis – President Trump’s US Defense Secretary, somewhat unnervingly nicknamed ‘Mad Dog’ – will ‘absolutely exhaust every possible avenue’ to find a non-military solution to the North Korean crisis.

This should be something of a reassurance considering the gung-ho bombast that has emanated from President Trump – who tweets like a man whose only cultural reference points are superhero movies and westerns – though it doesn’t appear as though he is listening. In his phone call with Theresa May on Tuesday he made it clear that ‘now is not the time to talk to North Korea’, rather firmly sealing a potential avenue towards a peaceful solution.

Relations between the United States and North Korea have been frosty and on the verge of explosion for several years, but at least during President George W Bush’s time in office he tried to open corridors of communication. Bush deployed Douglas Dong-Moon Joo, the chairman of the Washington Times newspaper and born in North Korea, as a negotiator. According to a Daily Beast report in 2012, between 2003 and 2008 Joo visited North Korea several times as an emissary.

Clearly, in comparison to Trump, Dubya was something of a wise statesman. Maybe I'm wrong, but I find it hard to imagine Trump is pursuing any similar subtly during this current impasse. After all, despite being in office since January and North Korea inevitably going to be an area of concern, President Trump is yet to appoint an ambassador to South Korea., one of the many positions in his administration bizarrely left empty.

Understandably, this is viewed with concern by the Seoul government. Speaking to Buzzfeed in August, Bonnie Glaser, an Asia scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: 'The South Koreans are wondering why Japan, China, Singapore and other Asian countries have an ambassador in place, but they do not.... There is no representative of the president in country to ensure smooth communications.'

As with everything else, Trump is dealing with the North Korea situation with the steady hand of a child overdosing on tartrazine which makes it a bit concerning when Britain's ambassador to the UN, Matthew Rycroft, says Britain 'stands shoulder to shoulder with the United States' in tackling North Korea's nuclear threat.

Of course, in principle, we do ally ourself with the US. But while Trump blusters blinkeredly away, with our military options predictably limited, perhaps 'shoulder to shoulder' should mean standing well behind the US, hiding in a corner and hoping it all blows away quickly.