When comparing North Korea’s position to past rivals of the United States, its disadvantages are easy to spot.

North Korea is a much smaller country than, say, the Soviet Union, and as such it has numerous economic disadvantages and is, in conventional military terms, far less threatening. This has led to an overreliance on nuclear weapons, which creates the risk of proliferation in the region and which the U.S. has insisted that it cannot tolerate.

This also diminishes the possibility of negotiations, and even those that are presented are discarded by the North, which fears both being overpowered militarily by