Washington’s dogged insistence on denuclearisation first has led to a prolonged deadlock that has only widened Pyongyang’s options
Each year on July 27, North Korea commemorates “Victory Day”, marking what it presents as its triumph in the Korean war. While few outside the country accept that characterisation, the date underscores a reality: the war never formally ended. The 1953 agreement was an armistice that left the peninsula in a state of suspended conflict.
Responsibility for the resulting instability is widely distributed. North Korea’s missile tests, expanding nuclear arsenal and escalatory rhetoric have undermined regional security. South Korean administrations have added to tensions, the most recent being the ousted Yoon government, accused of attempting to provoke an attack by Pyongyang to justify its martial law declaration. Russia compounds the picture: its deepening military cooperation has strengthened North Korea’s military and economic resilience.
Washington’s approach warrants scrutiny, given its central role in the war and any eventual peace settlement. The armistice was signed by the Korean People’s Army, Chinese forces and the United States representing the UN Command – South Korea refused. Because Beijing’s policy does not constitute the principal obstacle to peace, the core of the impasse rests with Washington and Pyongyang.
As a necessary signatory to any future peace agreement, the US holds the greatest capacity to unlock diplomacy, yet it pursues a strategy increasingly detached from reality.
For decades, US administrations maintained a denuclearisation-first posture: expecting North Korea to substantially dismantle its nuclear programme before meaningful normalisation, sanctions relief or a broader peace process can proceed. Yet North Korea today fields a more sophisticated and survivable nuclear force than before.
The prolonged deadlock has widened Pyongyang’s options. After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, North Korea deepened its military cooperation with Moscow and stabilised relations with Beijing. These shifts expanded its strategic flexibility and eroded much of the leverage Washington and its allies once held.
America’s approach has produced unwanted consequences for its allies. South Korea now navigates an alliance in transition. Washington has signalled that US Forces Korea may gradually assume a broader regional role beyond deterring North Korea – including countering China – even as it presses Seoul to shoulder a larger share of its own defence burden. Questions about US commitments have become more prominent.
The net effect, for Seoul, is heightened uncertainty: a more capable North Korean adversary and an American alliance whose priorities may no longer centre exclusively on the peninsula.
The regional environment has grown less stable too. Japan is undertaking its most significant defence build-up since 1945, expanding military spending and acquiring long-range strike capabilities, while in South Korea, public debate over an indigenous nuclear deterrent has moved steadily closer to the mainstream.
The clearest missed opportunity was in US President Donald Trump’s first term. The 2018 Singapore and 2019 Hanoi summits brought Washington and Pyongyang nearer to reshaping their relationship in decades. Full denuclearisation was likely to have been unattainable even then, but a narrower agreement – freezing or constraining nuclear and missile development in exchange for calibrated sanctions relief and sustained engagement – might have measurably slowed down the North’s military modernisation.
Regular contact could also have laid the groundwork for more durable US-North Korea relations and greater space for inter-Korean reconciliation, raising Pyongyang’s opportunity costs in aligning more closely with Moscow. Closer Russia-North Korea ties might still have emerged after 2022 but a Pyongyang actively engaged with Washington would have had stronger incentives to preserve its diplomatic flexibility. Instead, talks collapsed without a road map.
The intervening data illustrates the cost. In 2018, North Korea was estimated to have 10 to 20 assembled nuclear warheads. Most assessments now place the figure at around 50 to 60, with fissile material sufficient for as many as 90 in all. The seven years of diplomatic paralysis have coincided with the largest expansion of the North’s nuclear capabilities in history.
The sanctions architecture once central to US strategy has also lost much of its bite: China and Russia no longer meaningfully enforce sanctions, especially after Moscow’s 2024 veto of the mandate renewal for the UN Panel of Experts weakened international monitoring and accountability. Inter-Korean relations sit at their lowest point in decades. The diplomatic architecture that facilitated the 2018-2019 talks – with South Korea, Singapore and Vietnam playing mediating roles – has no current equivalent.
Since returning to office, Trump has repeatedly expressed his interest in resuming dialogue with Pyongyang, particularly praising his personal friendship with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
However, North Korea continues to reject such informal proposals until the US recognises its nuclear status and drops the denuclearisation demand. The strategic environment of 2026 is not what it was during Trump’s first term.
So long as denuclearisation remains the entry fee for dialogue, Pyongyang has little reason to bargain and every incentive to deepen its reliance on Moscow and Beijing. The alternative is to stop organising policy around the elimination of Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal – treating managed coexistence as the near-term objective while leaving a nuclear-free peninsula as a long-term aspiration rather than a gate that keeps every other question locked away.
Seoul has begun closing the gap between doctrine and reality through its peaceful coexistence policy. With Pyongyang’s arsenal expanding, its alignment with Moscow hardening, the effectiveness of sanctions rapidly eroding and the leverage of the US and South Korea declining, the cost of delay compounds.
Seventy-three years is long enough. If restarting dialogue requires trading outdated assumptions for current realities, that is a price Washington should be willing to pay.
