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Shortly before Christmas, the administration unveiled a new security strategy that offered few answers. It vaguely spoke of “improving options” to get the inscrutable North to abandon its nuclear weapons. By the administration’s own admission, its official North Korea policy of “maximum pressure and engagement” hasn’t to date included significant engagement. “The White House and the secretary of state seem unable to coordinate on even the most basic elements of a common strategy,” wrote Stephan Haggard, a North Korea expert at the University of California, San Diego. The U.S. has scored successes in its international pressure on North Korea. It has won cooperation from the North’s traditional backers such as China and Russia on restrictions that have put new strains on an economy Kim has promised to modernize in his half-decade as leader. The U.S. also says more than 20 countries have curtailed diplomatic ties with Pyongyang. But Trump this past week strongly criticized China for still allowing oil supplies to North Korea, highlighting the likely limits on Beijing’s willingness to put the squeeze on its unpredictable neighbor. So far, pressure hasn’t accomplished the stated goal: forcing the North to abandon its nuclear weapons program or, at least, to enter negotiations over such a possibility. Kim has remained focused on developing a nuclear arsenal he views as guaranteeing regime survival. And his program advanced leaps and bounds during 2017. After a rash of failed missile tests last year, North Korea has conducted more than 20 missile launches since Trump came to office. It also tested what it described as a hydrogen bomb — an underground blast so big it registered as a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. Then in late November, it test-fired a new intercontinental missile in the clearest demonstration yet that all of America was within its striking range. Trump has compounded the world’s sense of alarm. While he has presented his own threats as proof of an America that won’t be intimidated, critics at home and abroad have argued that he has elevated the risk of nuclear conflict through his personal insults to Kim. Trump has called Kim “short and fat” and “a sick puppy.” At the U.N. in September, he lampooned Kim as “Rocket Man ... on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.” Kim replied by calling Trump “mentally deranged” and a “dotard.” North Korea’s foreign minister then warned of a possible atmospheric nuclear test — done by no nation since 1980. Diplomacy isn’t dead, however. The Trump administration was quick to restore a back channel for talks between the State Department and North Korea that disappeared in President Barack Obama’s final months. The U.S. envoy on North Korea, Joseph Yun, secretly met North Korean officials in Oslo in May to press for the release of Americans imprisoned in Pyongyang.