Four months ago I wrote in this column about the risks I perceived to Asian credit from President Donald Trump’s likely military approach to North Korea. His deployment of two aircraft carriers to the Korean peninsula at the time suggested that the risk of military action had to be discounted in debt prices.

That proved to be the wrong call. And in the meantime the deployment of the carriers took a farcically long period to actuate.

Much about the Trump administration is tinged with the aura of farce, but I’m of the opinion that – barring his impeachment – Trump’s presidency will be coloured definitively by the North Korean situation.

The reasons are not too difficult to divine. It must have dawned on Trump already that legislative defeat on Capitol Hill looms for his most cherished domestic policies. The early signal failure has been his inability to upend Obamacare. A similar fate seems likely for his plans to aggressively slash taxes and beef up Federal infrastructure spending.

Like many incumbent leaders he is aware that creating foreign military diversions and looking to “wrap himself in the flag” is an area which holds the potential to boost his popularity ratings. And those ratings – the legacy of his days as a reality television star – are after all, everything to him.

Even waiving the deep cynicism of that comment for a moment, the newly emerged fact is that North Korea’s latest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test, involving the launch of a Hwasong-14 missile some 1,700 miles into space, suggests that the reclusive state has the ability to reach American cities with its weaponry, with some experts suggesting North Korean missles could even reach New York.

Even though the warhead carried on the ICBM in the latest test apparently shattered on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere – suggesting that considerable refinement of the programme is necessary before it poses a viable threat to the US – the fact remains that it would behove any US commander-in-chief to respond categorically to head off the threat.

Trump sent two B-1B bombers over the Korean peninsula in response to the test and produced Twitter rhetoric which seemed to prepare the way for direct military action against the North.

The president has been labelled “naive” in democratic circles in the belief that he can militarily challenge a nuclear-armed state. Perhaps, but much depends on the missile defence systems of the US and its allies, and an assessment of the North’s retaliatory capability as well as the ability to neutralize it should it prove materially significant.

The US successfully tested its THAAD missile defence system last Sunday in Alaska after launching a ballistic missile into the Pacific. But THAAD doesn’t work against ICBMs, only against mid-range and below missiles.

Of more concern is the mass of artillery the North has positioned against Seoul next to the demilitarized border between the North and South, which pundits suggest could be deployed to kill 100,000 residents of the city in a single day of attrition, should the US declare war on North Korea.

How much credence should we place on senator Lindsey Graham’s suggestion, made a few days ago, that Trump is willing to go to war with North Korea, because the attendant deaths would be “over there”?

Graham, a supporter of military action against the North, may be providing Trump with some sabre-rattling PR. But he may also be on point.

Having watched the secular compression of Asian credit default swaps over the past five years, with a few bumps along the way, I’m of a mind to suggest that reversal beckons. Credit default swaps, from Vietnam to Singapore, have been progressively tightening, as has the spread between the cost of protection between the worst credits and their high-grade peers. Maybe I should avoid the finesse of a time-lock and just say it should be written in big letters in your investment calendar.

Trump needs to boost ratings. He wants to make America great again. North Korea ticks all the available boxes. Best to prepare hedges as he primes to stamp his personality on global geopolitics.