But if North Korea follows through on its threat and conducts a nuclear explosion, that would almost certainly produce a serious escalation of the crisis and result in a breakdown of the current diplomatic overture.
The current revival of "Pacific Overtures" at Studio 54 may not be the definitive, mind-blowing production that Stephen Sondheim's fans had hoped for, but there are moments when the music transcends all.
By the end of 2006, the House Ethics Committee put out a 200-plus page report indicating that Hastert, his aides and others had failed to take sufficient steps to put a stop to Foley's long-standing overtures to current and former House pages.
But when Sid Ramin, one of the two orchestrators for the original 1959 "Gypsy," visited the musicians in the current production, he told them that he wrote the overture before anything else, Mr. Laird said.
Mr Sharif deposed in 1999, the last time he was prime minister, by the army, under Pervez Musharraf made overtures to the armed forces early in his current term.
But Danny Alexander, the Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury, dismissed Miliband's overtures and confirmed the allowances would be scrapped in their current form.
The Philharmonic's current concert, led by David Zinman, is fine holiday fare: the sparkling overture to Glinka's "Ruslan and Ludmila," Dvorak's "New World" Symphony and Glazunov's violin concerto with Midori as a glittering soloist.
And finally, at around 10.40pm, you got the first whiff of real politics, when Alan Johnson made an early coalition overture with a heartfelt speech on the shortcomings of the current voting system.
Anything is possible, of course, in the current oil climate, but the Saudis have another reason to be wary of Russian overtures.
When the overture was first performed, the cannons were fired by an electric current triggered by the conductor.
