On Tuesday morning, Donald Trump gave a bombastic speech to the assembled delegates of the United Nations. Pay special attention to how he addressed North Korea and its looming nuclear threat. Unlike most of what Trump said otherwise, its implications are as wide-ranging as they are grim.

“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” said Trump. “‘Rocket Man’ is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.”

“Rocket Man,” you rightly guessed, refers to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The rockets in question include intercontinental-range ballistic missiles, potentially capable of reaching United States territory. Soon, experts agree, North Korea should be able to pair those rockets with a miniaturized nuclear warhead. And while Trump has made similar provocations before, either in impromptu remarks or ill-advised tweets, his UN taunting worsens an already alarmingly combustible situation—while also making it harder to defuse.

Sound and Fury

There are two very important things to understand about North Korea in this context. First, as Evan Osnos explored in depth in the New Yorker recently, no one in the US—including Donald Trump—has perfect insight into what Kim Jong-un thinks about Trump’s various conflagrations. The country comes by its “Hermit Kingdom” moniker honestly.

But the international community does know at least one fundamental detail about the North Korean state.

“My perception, based on 30 years of work on this, is that North Korea is paranoid that the United States is going to eliminate them,” says Jon Wolfsthal, a member of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation’s Szilard Advisory Board, and former special advisor to Joe Biden on nuclear security.

One can trace that paranoia back to the Korean War. In 1950, then-US president Harry Truman said that he was prepared to authorize the use of nuclear weapons to end the conflict. Ever since, North Korea has “lived under US threat perception,” says Jenny Town, managing editor of North Korea watchdog 38 North and assistant director of the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“They point to several different actions and signals along the way, and they use this as a justification for why they need nuclear weapons, in order to deter the United States from any preemptive attack,” says Town. “They’ve seen this happen in the past, with Iraq, with Lybia. Early in the Trump administration they saw the bombing of Syria and Afghanistan. They’re trying to prevent this from happening to them.”

Those two ingredients combine into one bitter stew. Trump has once again threatened and provoked a country knowing not what specific reaction he might inspire, but with the general understanding that the rhetoric can only strengthen North Korea’s nuclear resolve. And while cheap nicknames worked for Trump on the campaign trail, “Little Marco” and “Lying Ted” didn’t have an arsenal capable of destruction on a global scale.

“In North Korea, Kim Jong-un is basically the state. If you’re threatening Kim Jong-un, or denigrating him, these are things Kim Jong-un takes as not only a personal attack but an attack against the state,” says Town. That attack burns even more when delivered in front of the United Nations.

In fairness, Trump’s remarks may have been precisely calculated, a four-dimensional chess move designed to bring about a political outcome, rather than barreling toward a disastrous use of force.

“I am convinced there is a solid strategy that is indeed mixing defense and deterrence on one hand with diplomacy and engagement,” says Patrick Cronin, a senior advisor, focused on Asia, at the bipartisan Center for a New American Security. “The president now has to balance the pressure part of the strategy with the diplomacy part of the strategy.”