Second, Trump must understand that the North Koreans are not offering to denuclearize. They see their weapons capability as the only thing standing between them and regime change. They’re offering to halt their nuclear and missile programs, but not to disarm their existing arsenal — that’s been their position for years now, and Trump’s goal of reversing the Iran deal has only hardened North Korea’s stance: We can’t even trust an agreement the Americans have already signed, so giving up all our nukes wouldn’t be prudent.

Third, Trump must also be clear that what the North Koreans still want, as part of any deal, is the withdrawal of our roughly 38,000 troops from the Korean Peninsula. Hostilities may have ended in 1953, with the Korean War armistice, but the war isn’t technically over, and the North Koreans haven’t forgotten that more than 4 million Koreans died in that conflict. For us, North Korea is just one of many global flash points. For North Korea, we’re the flash point, and we remain the issue at the core of their security strategy.