Since the latter years of the Barack Obama administration, “strategic patience” has been a euphemism for playing it safe on the Korean Peninsula. It has become a term of disdain for both engagers and containers, as it is hostile to North Korea in appearance yet enables it in effect. Whatever else one says about Obama’s second-term policies — from sanctions to human rights denunciations — they did nothing to curtail the North’s weapons systems development.

The Trump administration in 2017 made a show of abandoning the strategy. Yet by the second half of President Trump’s term, when face-to-face diplomacy fizzled, it became apparent there was not a backup plan. We were stuck again with strategic patience: little diplomatic initiative from either side, few efforts to compel or entice change and no ground given as North Korean weapons development continued.