President-elect Donald Trump has made no secret of his ambition to negotiate big diplomatic agreements. He wants to forge peace between Ukraine and Russia, and he wants to finalize a historic peace agreement both between Saudi Arabia and Israel and between Israel and the Palestinians. The last seems an unlikely mix, to put it mildly. Trump even seems to want semi-detente with Iran, a country that has spent the past three years plotting to assassinate him.

Trump is keen to rekindle his previously amicable ties with Kim Jong Un, aiming for fresh negotiations with the North Korean leader. These discussions would ideally culminate in an agreement that diminishes North Korea’s nuclear threat to the United States, South Korea, and Japan.

Trump’s pursuit of such an accord is a good thing. Kim has spent the past four years improving his ballistic missile forces and integrating nuclear warheads with those missiles. North Korea tested an intermediate-range ballistic missile on Monday. This was probably intended to increase pressure on South Korea amid its political crisis and to remind Trump that he can ignore Pyongyang only at his peril. This matters because the Biden administration’s policy toward North Korea has seemed to focus on pretending North Korea doesn’t exist.

Time is not on America’s side. Of particular concern is the unprecedented technical support that Russia is providing North Korea. Russia needs Kim’s ammunition and troops for war against Ukraine. In return, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s scientists are helping Kim develop missiles that can carry nuclear warheads across the Pacific Ocean. There is no question that Kim’s threat is growing stronger because of this support. This unfortunate fact was underlined when North Korea........

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