President Donald Trump has made no secret of his reservations about multilateral approaches to global problems. So, it is reassuring that despite this, his administration has been able to persuade the UN Security Council to take unanimous action in the face of the gathering threat to world peace posed by North Korea. Previous US administrations exercised what became known euphemistically as “strategic patience” when it came to the hermit kingdom. At this precarious moment, there is no room for more of that.

The US-drafted resolution was designed to ratchet up pressure by reducing export revenues to North Korea by a third, or $1bn. This was adopted unanimously on Saturday after gaining approval from both China and Russia, the two permanent council members who had previously resisted the imposition of fresh sanctions.

It is a necessary development. The latest intercontinental ballistic missile has brought Kim Jong Un, the Korean dictator, dangerously close to achieving his goal of being able to hit mainland America with a nuclear weapon. Along with retaliatory naval deployments to the region by the US, his bellicose posturing has escalated tensions on the Korean peninsula to “crisis point”, in the words of the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi.