For the past year or so, Asia-Pacific chancelleries have been turning to a book central to analysis of one of the new century’s most disturbing geopolitical developments—North Korea’s acquisition of a thermonuclear weapon and the ability to hurl it at the United States. I refer to Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis (2004). The book’s three authors were at the centre of events in Washington when, in 1993, Pyongyang abruptly announced its intention to become the first nation to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Joel S. Wit had long served on the State Department’s North Korean desk;…