North Korea has nuclear weapons and apparently wants more. The United States says it can stand for neither. And yet, the nuclear-armed dictatorship and the world’s superpower apparently aren’t talking to each other to resolve the standoff.

The last session of the Six-Party Talks, the official disarmament negotiations that also include South Korea, China, Russia and Japan, was held in late 2008. Sporadic diplomatic overtures since then have ultimately amounted to little. In 2012, the U.S. agreed to resume food aid to the North in return for a moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests. But the widely hailed “Leap