North Korea has long been the geopolitical equivalent of the boy who cried wolf: it gets much of its leverage from its unparalleled ability to repeatedly generate the same threat perceptions from other countries over and over again.

That’s not, of course, to downplay the very significant military assets North Korea has, its highly advanced nuclear and missile programs, and its demonstrated willingness to escalate.

But more often than not, Pyongyang manages to pick its actual escalations from a well-established, limited toolkit of tactics while magnifying the sense of threat for domestic and international