Nor is a negotiated settlement likely. North Korea’s leaders are unmoved by the domestic or international costs of their nuclear program. The list of agreements violated by the Kim regime is long and distinguished: two IAEA safeguards, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the denuclearization agreement, the 1994 Agreed Framework, the 2005 joint statement, the 2007 and 2012 agreements. And they kept the gas pedal pressed to the floor on their long-range missile programs, conducting 15 missile tests in the last year, the most recent evidently intended to demonstrate their ability to reach the U.S. territory of Guam.

China, for its part, holds substantial economic leverage over North Korea, but rarely uses it, either out of concern about the collapse of the Kim regime, or because it considers it in its interests to use it to distract the United States from its intimidating activities in the Asia-Pacific region. It also hopes a Korea crisis will fray America’s alliances in Asia. Pious intonations by the Chinese and Russians of a “freeze for freeze” would reward North Korean aggression while diminishing America’s ability to reassure and protect South Korea.

Yet something must be done. To its credit, the Trump administration has lassoed UN Security Council members into agreeing to two more rounds of sanctions. More importantly, it has continued working in close concert with South Korea and Japan, presenting a united front. Both countries are inching toward collective military action rather than away from the United States as the crisis deepens. South Korea responded to the September 14th launch with its own, near-simultaneous missile launch that demonstrated, according to South Korean defense officials, its ability to unilaterally launch a preemptive attack on North Korea. While Asia hands doubt the effectiveness of extended deterrence, South Korea may well request the redeployment of U.S. nuclear weapons that would establish parity on the peninsula and mitigate its understandable fears of abandonment.

The signals from the Trump administration suggest that it has grown impatient. After delivering two important, unanimous rounds of UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the path of punitive economic measures is “pretty much exhausted” and the problem should be turned over to the Pentagon. National Security Advisor Lieutenant General McMaster echoed the sentiment, saying “we’re out of road.”

McMaster, in fact, has been almost singlehandedly trying to make the case for military attacks. Again and again, he has emphasized that President Trump won’t allow North Korea to develop the capacity for a nuclear attack on the United States, and that military options remain under consideration. He evidently argued the same case in private, too. Mattis has affirmed that military options are under consideration by Trump. More worrisome, yet, McMaster argued that military action must be on the table if diplomacy cannot keep North Korea from attaining the ability to attack the United States with nuclear weapons, supposedly because Kim Jong Un cannot be deterred. This is exceptionally sloppy thinking. North Korea may not have slowed its development of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles, but it has been deterred from attacking South Korea and the United States since 1953.