America doesn’t know exactly what North Korea's nuclear capability is, but it is likely sufficient to kill millions of South Koreans or Japanese. That North Korea would be smashed in retaliation is no consolation. The fact is that there is nothing much America can do about Kim’s attempts to develop nuclear-tipped missiles, especially without China’s support. Even Trump, his brilliance notwithstanding, must realize that some problems just cannot be “solved.”

The litany of futile diplomatic overtures to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions reads like a history of failure. In 1994, President Bill Clinton promised aid to North Korea in exchange for a promise to freeze its nuclear program. In 2002, it became clear that the North Koreans had reneged on the deal. The thing is that Kim will not give up his nuclear arsenal, for it is all he has got. Without the bomb, North Korea would be no more than a small, impoverished dictatorship. With nuclear missiles, it can behave as a major power, or more importantly, hold other major powers at bay.

Clinton also once considered bombing North Korean nuclear installations, but, in the end, considered the risk too high. It would be even higher now. Not only are such installations now more dispersed throughout the country, making a clean hit very difficult, but the “collateral damage” inflicted by a cornered Northern regime would be horrendous: Seoul is a mere 35 miles from the North Korean border.

Empty threats from Washington are not just ineffectual; they play into the Korean dictator’s hands. Whether most North Koreans really worship the Kim dynasty as much as they seem to is hard to know, since most of “these gestures of idolatry” are coerced. But Korean nationalism can be very easily stirred up. One thing that holds North Koreans together is the fear, constantly stoked by the regime, of a wicked foreign attack.

China is the only power with any influence in North Korea, but the last thing Beijing wants is for its communist neighbor to collapse. The Kim regime may be annoying, but a united Korea filled with U.S. military bases would be worse, not to mention the potential refugee crisis on China’s borders.

Perhaps a cyber attack could disrupt the North Korean nuclear program, but it would not be enough to rid of the threat altogether. So there appears to be little choice but to live with North Korea as a nuclear power. Pressing the Chinese to force their ally to give up its nuclear arms is useless. The best that can be hoped for is that China makes sure the North Koreans don’t actually use them.

Cooperating with China in this matter should not be so difficult, for the dirty secret in Northeast Asia is that everyone would really prefer to maintain the status quo. South Koreans tell themselves that unification of the motherland is their highest goal, but not at any price. It would be wonderful, of course, if a bloodless revolution could unite the two Koreas in a peaceful liberal democracy, as happened in Germany.