How to handle North Korea? Apply pressure — and then wait.

North Korea has embarked on an increasingly reckless path. Since inheriting his father’s position in 2011, Kim Jong-un has accelerated North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missile systems as a means of propping up his regime.

Last year alone, North Korea conducted two nuclear weapons tests and 24 missile tests, with more this year, including a new missile test on April 5, clearly intended to overshadow and complicate the first meeting this week between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

To avoid past failures in trying to thwart North Korea, the Trump administration should initiate bilateral diplomatic talks with the communist nation immediately.

In the next few years, North Korea will likely succeed in developing a ballistic missile that can strike the United States with a nuclear warhead. North Korea poses a significant threat to Asian regional security and to the United States but it can, and must, be deterred from initiating a war.

{mosads}Military preemption, as some hawkish voices have called for, is too dangerous because it invites disastrous retaliation against South Korea and U.S. forces in the region. Relying on China to influence North Korea has failed to produce any results and is unlikely to work in the future. Xi will do little more than provide vague promises that China will try to help moderate North Korea’s behavior.

China desires a stable but divided Korean peninsula; it has influence over North Korea, but its interests are not the same as those of the United States. The Obama administration’s attempts to force China to impose sanctions on North Korea repeatedly failed: The past eight years have only yielded a much more capable nuclear-armed adversary.

The Trump administration will be equally unsuccessful if its North Korean policy rests on a cooperative China. As demonstrated by the Clinton administration’s failed efforts to end the North Korean pursuit of nuclear weapons, North Korea cannot be effectively bribed to cease its efforts. Concessions will only embolden the regime and will be betrayed eventually. Additional sanctions may pay off in the long-term, but are unlikely to have much of a short-term effect on the regime.

This is why bilateral diplomatic talks with North Korea are crucial. Now is not the time for the “art of the deal,” but for a clear message of deterrence. The administration should deliver a simple message that the North Koreans cannot misread: Further proliferation of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technologies will not be tolerated and attacks on any of North Korea’s neighbors will be met by overwhelming force and an end to the Kim regime.

It is important to remember that while North Korean leaders are odious and insecure, they are not irrational and can be deterred from using nuclear weapons. Separating rhetoric from reality is important. Kim Jong-un and North Korean elites understand that they cannot win a war with South Korea, the United States and Japan.

If North Korea uses its nuclear weapons, it faces retaliation in kind. Though they care little for what effects such a war would have on their people, North Korean leaders’ privileges and quality of life would disappear after such a war. North Korea may appear to act rashly and provocatively, but the survival of the Kim regime is the top priority of North Korean elites, and threatening it with destruction will be enough to deter the regime from instigating a war.

North Korea can be deterred from attacking its neighbors and the United States, and it can be contained by maintaining a vigorous program of economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure. The North Korean regime will eventually collapse of its own accord.

John Lewis Gaddis, noted historian of the Cold War, has reminded us that there is strategic wisdom in letting our enemies defeat themselves. Time is on our side. Steady pressure, bilateral diplomatic talks and patience can win the day. During the Cold War, the United States did not need to directly defeat the Soviet Union; the United States could bide its time, exercise patience and have confidence that the enemy would eventually defeat itself.

While additional pressure against North Korea is needed, the potential benefits of strategic patience are vast, and outweigh a hasty and counterproductive overreaction.

Andrew Byers is a visiting assistant professor of history at Duke University and an intelligence analyst.

The views of contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.