The Korean Peninsula Has Seen Grand Overtures Come and Go – What Matters Now is Whether Small Steps Can Still Lead Somewhere
For decades, US policy toward North Korea has ranged from bombast to paralysis. The Trump-Kim summits marked a rare moment of high-level diplomacy, but with little lasting progress. Today, with signs that the United States may be preparing for renewed engagement with the North, the challenge is not how to go big, but how to begin wisely.
Conditions on the Korean Peninsula demand a fresh strategic approach. North Korea’s nuclear arsenal has grown significantly in both scale and sophistication. At the same time, strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific has intensified, coordination between North Korea and its authoritarian partners has deepened, and political uncertainties have raised new questions about the cohesion of the US-ROK alliance. The risks are growing too fast for diplomacy to remain on pause.
Should the United States choose to reengage the North, rather than chasing a sweeping agreement, it should focus on building a more stable relationship through small, concrete steps: practical measures that reduce military tensions and manage hostile relations. This approach offers a credible pathway to crisis prevention, preserves future diplomatic opportunities and aligns with today’s political realities. While denuclearization can remain the long-term goal, it is not achievable under current conditions. The task now is to shift the underlying dynamics to reduce the risks of conflict, build habits of communication and create political space that may one day make denuclearization a viable outcome.
However, any effort by the United States to reduce tensions with North Korea will inevitably reverberate across the US-ROK alliance. Measures intended to reengage Pyongyang—especially those that involve shifts in rhetoric, posture, or diplomatic framing—must be pursued in close coordination with Seoul to avoid undermining trust or cohesion. South Korea may view certain steps, particularly those that emphasize outreach to the North over deterrence signaling, as overly conciliatory or misaligned with its own threat perceptions. Ensuring sustained alliance dialogue, managing expectations, and jointly shaping the messaging around these initiatives will be critical to preserving unity while pursuing stability.
An Escalation Spiral and a Changed Diplomatic Landscape
The risks of rapid escalation are rising. North Korea’s arsenal now includes various kinds of tactical nuclear weapons and its doctrine includes potential preemptive use. It is actively developing maneuverable missile systems and has allegedly requested warhead miniaturization knowledge from Russia. Longstanding deconfliction mechanisms between the two Koreas, including the destruction of the inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong, have eroded, while trust is at its lowest ebb in decades. Moreover, since the collapse of the Hanoi summit in 2019, official US–DPRK engagement has remained dormant, with both sides reverting to mutual recrimination and symbolic signaling rather than substantive dialogue. The absence of regular dialogue, military transparency, or even basic communication channels creates fertile ground for misperceptions to escalate into confrontation.
At the same time, the political conditions for any sweeping agreement remain complicated. Kim Jong Un, emboldened by external partnerships and internal stability, appears less incentivized to engage than during the 2018–2019 summitry. He has declared North Korea a nuclear weapons state in law and doctrine, and from Pyongyang’s perspective, negotiating with Washington may no longer be as appealing as it once was now that it has deepened its military and diplomatic ties with Moscow.
Yet, there are signals that Pyongyang may be reserving space for future engagement. In recent months, the regime has notably scaled back its hostile rhetoric toward the United States in state media, even while maintaining harsh denunciations of South Korea and Japan. This rhetorical moderation, paired with public displays of new strategic systems and enrichment facilities, suggests a possible attempt to shape future negotiations on more favorable terms, rather than rule them out entirely.
Building Habits of Communication for Stability
To chart a viable path forward, the United States must reframe its goals from sweeping disarmament to pragmatic relations and crisis prevention. Rather than repeating the mistake of tying engagement exclusively to denuclearization, the United States should aim to establish new connections and habits of communication that will serve to improve ties and lower the chances of inadvertent conflict.
While the United States maintains an indirect military communication channel with North Korea through the UN Command, it lacks a direct, formal mechanism of its own. In the absence of a bilateral hotline, Washington can play a meaningful role in shaping a more stable operating environment by supporting the restoration of existing regional mechanisms.
Military-to-military communication remains the most urgent channel for reducing risk, and the existing link between the DPRK and United Nations Command offers a functional, if limited, foundation. While not a direct US–DPRK line, it serves as a critical backstop in times of heightened tension. Rather than building something new from scratch, Washington should focus on reinforcing and supporting this mechanism while exploring long-term opportunities for broader communication architecture, including eventually restoring dormant political hotlines if conditions permit. One practical step the United States could take to help lower tensions on the Peninsula would be to encourage the revival of inter-Korean military deconfliction protocols. For instance, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has called for reviving the 2018 Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA), a set of inter-Korean protocols that previously suspended hostile military activities near the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and included deconfliction procedures and communication hotlines. Given North Korea severed its own participation only after Seoul’s suspension, a sequenced restoration could give Pyongyang space to respond in kind.
Reestablishing these channels won’t resolve deeper mistrust, but they can reduce the risk of tactical miscalculations. Even basic updates to emergency contact protocols and reaffirming communication procedures during exercises would help prevent inadvertent escalation.
Some of President Lee’s early moves including halting loudspeaker broadcasts across the DMZ and stepping up enforcement against non-governmental leafleting campaigns have signaled a willingness to de-escalate. Indeed, Pyongyang responded in kind by ceasing its own broadcasts, offering a modest but meaningful example of reciprocal restraint. This kind of “goodwill for goodwill” dynamic, while fragile, could lay the groundwork for a broader effort to restore inter-Korean channels and reduce tensions without requiring formal breakthroughs.
Small-scale, technically focused initiatives also matter. Rather than attempting immediately to address denuclearization or sanctions, Washington should support the creation of narrowly scoped, legally permissible working groups that address non-nuclear, low-politics issues. These could include government-to-government mechanisms for disaster response coordination or maritime search-and-rescue operations in contested waters, as well as sanctioned-exempt dialogue mechanisms involving multilateral or third-party non-governmental actors. For more sensitive areas like academic and scientific exchanges, the United States should work with the UN Sanctions Committee and its allies to explore the feasibility of case-by-case exemptions for non-proliferation-neutral, engagement-enhancing activities. Though limited in scope, these initiatives can serve as scaffolding for more ambitious engagement down the line by building cooperative muscle memory, lowering institutional barriers to communication and creating channels that future diplomatic efforts can build upon.
Alongside material measures, the United States should also consider how its public communications and deterrence signaling are perceived in Pyongyang. Instead of unintentionally validating fears of a regime-change agenda, Washington should adopt a more disciplined and calibrated rhetorical posture. North Korea tends to interpret US military signaling and official statements through the lens of existential threat. To avoid reinforcing these assumptions, US officials should emphasize defensive objectives, refrain from language that personalizes threats to North Korea’s leadership, and steer clear of framing exercises or deployments in ways that could be construed as preparation for coercive regime pressure. This does not mean weakening deterrence, but rather conveying it with greater strategic precision and clarity of intent.
Additionally, the United States can pair rhetorical restraint with measured adjustments to its force posture that reinforce deterrence without exacerbating North Korean threat perceptions. This includes scaling back the most overt forms of signaling, such as high-profile exercises involving nuclear-capable bombers and ballistic missile submarines deployed to the region, which reinforce perceptions in North Korea that the United States and South Korea harbor hostile intentions.
However, because these visible deployments have been driven by demands from Seoul for more robust demonstrations of extended deterrence, these adjustments must be matched by credible investments in reassurance. Any attempt to recalibrate will require clear alliance coordination and compensatory steps in both the political and conventional military spheres. To avoid fueling concerns in South Korea about the erosion of extended deterrence, the United States should deepen conventional defense cooperation through measures that enhance alliance survivability and operational resilience. This can include hardening command-and-control centers, strengthening counter-missile and counter-drone defenses, and incorporating deception tactics into joint operational planning. Moreover, the United States could expand joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and support qualitative improvements to South Korean strike and theater missile defense capabilities. Such moves, however, would likely draw scrutiny from Beijing, which may view deeper US–ROK military cooperation as part of a broader containment effort. This makes it even more important for Washington and Seoul to be clear that these efforts are aimed at Pyongyang, not Beijing.
By focusing both messaging and posture on stability, alliance coordination, and the consequences of aggression, the United States can reduce misperception, diminish early-use incentives, blunt domestic calls in Seoul for an independent nuclear option, and reinforce the credibility of its deterrent position.
Critics may argue that such measures reward bad behavior or signal weakness. But risk reduction is not appeasement. It is a clear-eyed recognition that stability is the starting point for any meaningful diplomatic progress. Deterrence and diplomacy must be made to work in tandem, not opposition.
A Bridge by Any Other Name: Language, Framing and Forward Engagement
Framing matters as much as substance. The United States must not only act differently; it must sound different too.
To coordinate these efforts and lend them institutional backing, the United States should appoint a Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Tensions Reduction. Unlike previous envoys, whose sprawling mandates included managing denuclearization negotiations and sanctions enforcement, this envoy’s role would be narrowly scoped to focus on mitigating risk and reestablishing basic dialogue and confidence-building measures. This more technical and bounded mission would help insulate the position from the political sensitivities that have derailed past efforts. It also avoids the perception of legitimizing North Korea’s nuclear status while still advancing tangible US interests. By emphasizing stability over breakthrough, and process over outcome, the role could earn broader support in Washington and avoid becoming a lightning rod in partisan debates.
Language, too, matters. Using Korean conceptual frameworks like “alleviate military tensions” and manage “hostile relations” shows an understanding of Pyongyang’s worldview and a willingness to adopt terms that de-emphasize regime change and unilateral pressure. In Pyongyang’s eyes, the central grievance has long been “hostile policy” rather than specific weapons deployments. By speaking in terms that resonate with North Korea’s own strategic vocabulary, and without conceding any political legitimacy, Washington can lower psychological barriers to reengagement and demonstrate sincerity without sacrificing principle.
However, this framing would likely raise concerns in Seoul, where there is often skepticism toward language perceived as too accommodating of Pyongyang’s agenda. To avoid exacerbating intra-alliance friction, Washington would need to actively coordinate with the Lee administration and ensure that South Korean perspectives are incorporated into any new diplomatic approach. This will require careful alliance management to ensure that efforts to coax North Korea back to the table do not come at the expense of South Korean security or political agency. The current political environment may offer a unique window: President Trump has expressed a consistent preference for bold, unconventional diplomacy, and his rapport with Kim Jong Un and command over his party give him room to support risk reduction efforts that might otherwise face domestic resistance.
While not an immediate objective, the Special Representative could, over time and in coordination with allies, explore the possibility of technical engagement with North Korean scientists or facility managers—including, if conditions permit, a discreet site visit along the lines of the 2010 Stanford visit to Yongbyon. A visit today could be conducted under the banner of nuclear safety considering Yongbyon’s aging 5MWe reactor and Pyongyang’s efforts to start up its Experimental Light Water Reactor. Moreover, such a visit could serve the interests of both sides. It would provide Washington with a clearer picture of the regime’s evolving capabilities and intentions—given all the new construction and renovations that have taken place in recent years—while giving Pyongyang a controlled way to emphasize its deterrent and signal a degree of transparency without committing to political concessions. More importantly, it would demonstrate that reengagement is possible outside of summit theatrics or maximalist demands, which in itself is a form of tension reduction.
Make Stability the Starting Point
This approach is not a substitute for longer-term goals. Eventual denuclearization remains essential, and the United States must continue to uphold non-proliferation commitments and support its allies. But sequencing matters, and maximalist demands issued into a vacuum will only invite failure. Without credible mechanisms for managing tension, the risk of miscalculation will always outweigh the chance of diplomatic progress.
At this moment of heightened friction and nuclear risk, Washington has a choice. It can either continue to chase lofty goals that increasingly fail to reflect current geopolitical realities or it can invest in the quieter, harder work of building a minimal but meaningful architecture for tension management. The former may reap the administration some short-term headlines; the latter may reap it a peacemaking legacy.
Small steps are often dismissed. But in a region where timing and perception can mean the difference between peace and catastrophe, they may be the most important moves the United States and North Korea can make. Diplomacy is not concession. Language, wisely chosen, can be a bridge. And if the United States can begin laying even the most basic foundation for a more stable relationship with North Korea, it may discover that crisis prevention is the first and most essential act of serious statecraft.