This story was originally published in the December 9 edition of Meanwhile in America, CNN's daily email about US politics for global readers. Sign up here to receive it every weekday morning.

(CNN) So much for falling "in love."

North Korea is celebrating a "very important test" at a launch site that US President Donald Trump declared would be dismantled earlier this year -- the real-life culmination of a recent exchange of verbal projectiles across the Pacific. Last week, Trump blasted Kim Jong Un as "Rocket Man," and North Korea fired back that he was suffering "a relapse of the dotage of a dotage." The North's threat of a "Christmas gift" for the US looms over the coming weeks.

The dealmaker-in-chief has made much of his efforts to sweet-talk Kim. Yet three face-to-face meetings between the pen-pals have done little to end the last Cold War-era standoff. North Korea now accuses Trump of stringing Kim along to keep him sweet during his 2020 US reelection race, and has ruled out another made-for-TV summit without a big payoff: Kim wants benefits before the year's end, and has already warned he won't denuclearize.

There's no sign the US is preparing for the kind of intricate diplomacy needed to keep Kim in his box. If this is just classic North Korean brinkmanship, Trump may be shrewd not to give in to another cycle of attention-demanding threats. But he's not alone in drawing a blank -- no other recent President has got the better of Pyongyang. In fact, Trump seems more concerned with squeezing more cash out of South Korea for the privilege of hosting US troops.

But he's taking a big risk. Any step closer to a confrontation across the 38th parallel is dangerous in itself. Trump can't afford a return to North Korean long-range missile and nuclear tests that some experts fear could be on the launchpad. And politically, a new showdown with the hermit nation would reveal his approach to Kim to be empty photo-op diplomacy -- and expose a misguided belief that there's something to be gained by palling around with tyrants.

Commercial satellite images of a site in North Korea after a suspected engine test may have recently occurred.

Commercial satellite images of a site in North Korea before a suspected engine test may have recently occurred.

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