Kim only began to install his youngest son, the 20-something Kim Jong Eun, as successor in the last few years, but he has also quickly picked up the terror mantle. North Korean propaganda suggests that the youngest Kim was behind the unprovoked sinking of a South Korean navy ship and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island last year. A measure of the regime’s danger is that South Korea went on high alert upon news of Kim’s death, and the White House issued a sensible statement pledging to maintain stability on the Korean peninsula and support America’s allies in the region.

Yet these moments of transition are also when a syndicate like the one that rules North Korea may face internal leadership disputes. It’s possible that as the Kim gene pool gets shallower, the young Kim may not be able to maintain control the way his father and grandfather did. The West can exploit this tension by staying united in isolating the regime until it changes.

The wrong approach is to believe the regime will change with another round of cash and other carrots. In recent days Washington and Seoul have been tempting the North back to the six-party talks on denuclearization with offers of humanitarian food aid. But the lesson of the past 20 years is that this helps the regime by giving it currency or other aid to pay off its members and by enhancing its international stature.