For Republicans, this stance is ideologically coherent. Republicans tend to think Ronald Reagan proved that the way to deal with adversaries is through ideological denunciations, economic sanctions, and military threats. By contrast, Democrats—at least in the Obama era—emphasized diplomacy and international cooperation. Instead of seeking the capitulation of hostile regimes, they sought deals that involved compromise by both sides. They supported pressure only when it helped to bring such deals about.

Not anymore. When I asked the veteran arms-control expert Joe Cirincione what today’s Democrats believe about North Korea, he answered: “A Bud Light version of the hawkish neocon view.”

What makes this so tragic is that the path Trump is on—with bipartisan support—is doomed to fail. Were Democrats willing to risk a political fight, they could offer a better way.

Trump’s path is doomed to fail because it is based on scaring Pyongyang into giving up its nuclear weapons when fear of the United States is a major reason Pyongyang wants nuclear weapons in the first place. Given that North Korea still has no peace treaty with the U.S. (the Korean War ended in an armistice) and watches American troops patrol the other side of the demilitarized zone, it has considered the United States a threat for a long time. But over the last 15 years, America’s efforts at regime change have left Pyongyang even more convinced that only nuclear weapons bring protection.

In April 2003, a month after the U.S. invaded Iraq, a North Korean spokesman declared that “only military deterrent force, supported by ultra-modern weapons, can avert a war and protect the security of the nation. This is the lesson drawn from the Iraqi war.” When Pyongyang conducted a nuclear test last January, its official news agency declared that, “The Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq and the Qaddafi regime in Libya could not escape the fate of destruction after being deprived of their foundations for nuclear development and giving up nuclear programs of their own accord.” Therefore, “History proves that powerful nuclear deterrence serves as the strongest treasured sword for frustrating outsiders’ aggression.” As Dartmouth’s David Kang has explained, “To dismiss North Korea’s security fears is to miss the root cause of North Korea’s actions.”

The Trump administration, however, believes America’s problem is that it’s not scaring North Korea enough. Asked as a candidate about assassinating Kim, Trump replied, “I’ve heard of worse things.” In April, Mike Pence said that, “When the president says all options are on the table, all options are on the table. We’re trying to make it very clear to people in this part of the world that we are going to achieve the end of a denuclearization of the Korean peninsula—one way or the other.” And in March, the U.S. and South Korea held an eight-week-long training exercise, involving more than 300,000 troops—many more than in past years—in which the two armies practiced missile strikes against North Korea’s nuclear sites and “decapitation raids” aimed at killing its leaders. In response, Kim Jong Un appears to have quickened the pace of his nuclear and missile tests. Which was entirely predictable given what North Korea has said and done in the past.