Pick up an American newspaper from the early 1970s and anxieties about East Asia back then bear a lot of similarities to the situation on the Korean peninsula today.

An unstable dictator with a religious-like following and propensity for brutality had defiantly built nuclear missiles that put America and its allies at risk. His one-party state used its media to lambaste American imperialism, calling for an all-out war that would lead to its destruction. He would regularly ratchet up international tensions to show his distaste for America’s intervention in his nation’s civil war.

I’m not referring to Kim Il Sung,