Today, Pyongyang is waiting for South Korea’s March 9 presidential election. Incumbent President Moon Jae-in’s declining approval ratings have made him a lame duck for months, and Kim Jung-un has had no incentive to aid Moon’s increasingly frenetic legacy-building efforts. Although Kim prefers victory by whomever supports the most abject policy toward his regime, he may grasp the uncertainty and risk inherent in trying to help one candidate over another: better not to gamble and unwittingly boost a harder-line nominee. Kim’s diplomatic profile is so low the North has announced its team will not attend the Winter Olympics in China, its closest ally. What Kim decides to do after March 9, particularly whether he makes the first post-election move, is impossible to predict now.

America’s problem, however, is not only what Pyongyang is up to. We are also at risk from Biden’s reversion to Barack Obama’s policy of “strategic patience,” a euphemism for doing nothing on North Korea, hoping it does nothing dangerous in return. Unfortunately, Biden’s inaction and inattention simply means the North has lulled three successive Presidents into ignoring the unpleasant truth that it is coming ever closer to having deliverable nuclear weapons.