As if the last few years weren't bad enough, we now have a real nuclear crisis.

North Korea's loony regime of Kim Jong-un conducted a successful missile launch test – landing about 60 miles south of the Russian city of Vladivostok, according to some reports – marking a frightening nuclear escalation that has heightened tensions across the planet.

That this first serious confrontation in ages is happening now is ironic, given that a little-reported showdown about the use of nuclear power will soon take place in the U.N.

A draft of a U.N. treaty to ban all nuclear weapons is about to be voted on. It has the support of 132 nations and is very likely to pass, at which point the United States will soon once again be in technical violation of a major international agreement, as it long has been with regard to the International Treaty banning land mines.