In the early 1990s, even before North Korea had any nuclear bombs, the United States began to realize that it would be the world’s next nuclear threat. At the time, North Korea barely had enough fissile material to build one or two crude bombs. It lacked the delivery systems that would allow such weapons to reach the United States. And it would be well over 15 years before the regime would do its first nuclear test. Yet concerned government officials and observant journalists recognized that North Korea was intent on obtaining nuclear weapons and would likely become a source of regional instability.

Three and a half decades later, North Korea has blown past even the most pessimistic predictions of its nuclear development. It has amassed 50 nuclear bombs and stockpiled enough plutonium and highly enriched uranium to build 40 to 50 more. It has developed nearly 20 different delivery systems, including long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that can reach targets in the United States. It is actively pursuing ballistic missiles that can be launched from nuclear submarines, whose range and ability to evade detection improve North Korea’s ability to strike back even if the United States attacks first. Pyongyang has tested its nuclear weapons six times and its various delivery systems more than 300 times. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un intends to develop a modern nuclear weapons arsenal the size of that of France or the United Kingdom, each of which has over 200 nuclear weapons, and he is well on his way. In return for North Korea’s provision of thousands of combat troops, millions of rounds of ammunition, and hundreds of ballistic missiles in support of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Moscow is helping Pyongyang surmount the technology hurdles that prevent Kim from building the nuclear arsenal of his dreams.

Since the potential nuclear threat emerged in the early 1990s, the United States’ North Korea strategy across seven presidential administrations has been driven by the logic of preventing nuclear proliferation, or what came to be called CVID—complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization. American negotiators dealing with North Korea have repeated the same mantra: “With denuclearization, all things are possible. Without denuclearization, nothing is possible.” Washington’s strategy has been to offer incremental incentives, such as food and energy aid, to North Korea, in exchange for similarly scaled nuclear concessions—for example, a temporary freeze on operating reactors and a declaration of its nuclear inventory. And the United States has relied on economic sanctions to bring North Korea to the negotiating table and to pressure it to comply with nonproliferation agreements.

The size and sophistication of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal today shows that these approaches have failed. In addition to inconsistent U.S. policy and a lack of attention to North Korea amid perennial crises elsewhere in the world, the United States has struggled to implement and enforce denuclearization agreements because of a lack of buy-in from both North Korean leaders and U.S. presidents. Partisan divides in Washington have also forced each new administration to restart the negotiation cycle, and Pyongyang has repeatedly acted in bad faith by growing its nuclear programs and reneging on its commitments. Ultimately, a dearth of trust between North Korean and American leaders dating back to the Korean War—reinforced by many unsuccessful negotiations and agreements—has made it impossible to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. The one-­dimensional focus on nonproliferation has also hamstrung the United States in other areas of importance in which it could negotiate, such as reducing the size of North Korea’s conventional military or improving human rights. The use of economic sanctions as the primary tool of diplomacy, moreover, has not curtailed the nuclear program, and has only hardened resolve in Pyongyang.

The United States cannot continue the same approach; doing so will only make its failures more acute. Nor can it stand aside and do nothing because North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is increasingly able to target the U.S. homeland and a stronger North Korea can flex its military power to help U.S. adversaries, as it is doing by supporting Russia in Ukraine. The challenge is now even more daunting than in the past: with plentiful trade in energy and food with China and Russia, and combat experience and weapons technology from the Ukraine war, North Korea is in a much stronger position than it was in 2019, the last time U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim met to negotiate.

The United States should not renounce denuclearization, but policymakers must acknowledge that it is now a distant objective. Moving forward, Washington needs a new strategy that does not let the long-term goal of denuclearization get in the way of its more immediate national security needs. These include protecting the homeland, reducing the number of U.S. adversaries, minimizing the chances that North Korea would launch nuclear weapons first, and weakening the ties between Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang. Instead of making denuclearization a prerequisite for any negotiation, the United States should open conversations with Pyongyang on arms control agreements, limits on nuclear testing and missile production, crisis management mechanisms, and bans on the transfer of nuclear weapons or technology to others. It should also strengthen deterrence and defense with regional allies to gain their support for this new strategy. In other words, the United States needs a cold peace with North Korea—a relationship short of normalization but that prioritizes open dialogue to avoid miscalculation and escalation.

The world would be a safer place if North Korea shed its nuclear weapons. But getting it to give up its arsenal is simply not within reach any time soon, and proceeding as if it were would be detrimental to national security. Washington needs to reorient its strategy toward North Korea so that it can achieve more immediate gains, reduce tensions, and make the world safer now. The best strategy for avoiding a hot war with a nuclear North Korea is to preserve a cold peace.

NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP

An undeniable fact underpins North Korea’s successful pursuit of nuclear weapons. Three consecutive leaders—Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and now Kim Jong Un—were determined to build a nuclear arsenal at any cost. It was never North Korea’s intention to get rid of its nuclear weapons, regardless of the agreements it entered into that suggested it might. In 2006, when I was deputy head of the U.S. delegation at the six-party talks in Beijing aimed at denuclearization, one of my North Korean interlocutors told me bluntly: “We will never give up our nuclear weapons.” The United States had attacked Afghanistan and Iraq, he reasoned, because they didn’t have nuclear weapons. North Korea was not willing to tempt the same fate.

Kim Il Sung, the first leader of the modern North Korean state, recognized the awesome power of nuclear weapons in 1945, when, as a guerrilla fighter in the mountains of Manchuria, he witnessed how the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended Japan’s brutal colonization of the Korean Peninsula. Once in power, Kim signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, in 1959, and pleaded with Chinese leader Mao Zedong for nuclear weapons after China successfully tested them in 1964. (Mao denied the request.) The next year, however, Kim began operating a small experimental research reactor supplied by the Soviet Union. According to........

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