Now that North Korea has successfully conducted its fifth nuclear test, and after taking into account its publicly stated goal of miniaturizing a nuclear warhead to fit it onto a missile, a growing chorus of experts are claiming that the time might have finally come to consider giving North Korea what it wants: recognition as a nuclear power and a peace treaty.

Giving North Korea what it wants as it currently stands would be a reversal of decades-long policy. Should the U.S. acquiesce to North Korea’s demands, it would be widely perceived all over the world, and correctly so, that the U.S., the world’s sole superpower, has capitulated to one of the poorest countries in the world. It would be a source of great shame for decades to come.