North Korea on the cusp

What is the difference between "on the cusp", "very close to" and "on the point of"? We have had all these descriptions from US officials when referring to North Korea's ability to put a nuclear warhead on a long-range ballistic missile and fire it off to reach one or other city in America. CIA director Mike Pompeo's choice of phrase yesterday - "on the cusp" - I think was intended to indicate that North Korea was pretty well there right now, but just had a few minor glitches to sort out. That was possibly one step further than the assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency in August that North Korea had probably mastered the art of miniaturising a nuclear waread to fit on the end of a ballistic missile capable of reaching the US. It's semantics but probably the most lethal and dangerous semantics ever devised. "On the cusp" implies that Kim Jong-un is maybe weeks away, a couple of months at the most, from completing his plan to be able to launch a nuclear attack on the US if he so desired. Now no one thinks he will do it because the response would bring destruction to North Korea on a scale not seen since the bombing of Dresden in the Second World War. But Kim Jong-un put it rather succinctly the other day when he said he would not start a dialogue with Washington UNTIL he had a weapon able to hit an American city with a nuclear blast. So it's a Catch 22 situation. Yes to dialogue - and according to that North Korean defector the other day, Kim is desperate for dialogue with Washington - but not yet. Not now Kim is on the cusp of realising his dream. And that means a Catch-22 for Trump, too. He has made it plain he will not allow Kim to have a ballistic missile that can hit America with a nuclear weapon. So, if diplomacy fails, he may have to resort to military action. But everyone knows for sure that diplomacy is not on Kim's mind until he has his golden deterrence weapon to stop the US from launching an attack on his country. But, silly man (Kim, that is), the US, and that includes Trump, absolutely has no intention of attacking North Korea PROVIDED he doesn't build THAT weapon and prove to the world that it can reach the US. It's not just Catch-22, it's Catch-44. Both sides are stuck in a terrible groove. Once Kim has his nuclear-tipped ICBM, he's never going to give it up even if the US and the rest of the world offer him a trillion dollars in aid and investment and McDonalds goes big across North Korea. So, sadly, tragically, scarily, I see no way out of Trump's dilemma other than military action of some sort, not an all-encompassing strike to hit everything, but a devastating blow to put Kim's nuclear plot into the dustbin.