Missing, or, at least, relegated to the margins, is any clear articulation of the role of American missile defense. “I don’t hear enough about it, and this baffles me,” says Jon Kyl, the former Arizona senator who is now a Washington think-tanker and a member of the congressionally mandated Commission on Defense Strategy. “It seems so obvious that the first thing you have to do with North Korea is shore up your ability to ensure that they can’t damage us or our allies. Once you’ve done that, then you’ve got a lot more flexibility to do whatever you’re going to do—whether it’s with more sanctions or whatever.”

Kyl, a freshman congressman during Ronald Reagan’s presidency and then a three-term senator, has long been one of Washington’s most forceful advocates of missile defense. Given today’s existential threat posed by North Korea, Kyl can’t understand why missile defense isn’t central to every defense policy conversation. “I think part of the answer is that people really do think that somehow or other we’ve got this covered,” he says. “And, you know, we don’t.”