At the end of the day, decades of failed diplomacy with North Korea led to the sad result that it is a nuclear state, and at this late stage that situation is unlikely to be reversed.
Once the US-North Korean mutual deterrent rhetoric heated up to the levels we witnessed in late 2017 – culminating with the New Year’s “greetings” – it was pretty clear that the degree of threatening exchanges could not be sustained for long. Either the two states might stumble into military action, or, more likely, they would move to calm the situation down. It is perhaps not surprising that it was Kim Jong-Un who took the first step in the direction of tension reduction. Kim most likely understood that although he had demonstrated the capability to strike the US mainland with his long-range missiles, there was no symmetry between his country and the US, and North Korea would likely be obliterated if he ever thought to actually strike the United States. But what became a little more scary for Kim is that US officials back in the summer of 2017 started talking about the possible need for a preemptive military strike against North Korea. And it wasn’t only Trump doing the talking – the statements came from others, like HR McMaster, the so-called “adult in the room.”
