We're not sleepingwalking into war. Rather, it's just that everybody in the U.S., liberal and conservative, scholar and layman, is in willful denial about the stark choices we face.

Negotiation is not an option: North Korea has been racing in earnest to both build a bomb and a delivery vehicle since at least the 1980s. Their entire social and political system is predicated on radical self-reliance. This notion plays itself out in every facet of their system, from the cult of personality to the structure of their corrupt economy. It's neither coincidence nor mere opportunism that North Korea has proliferated both nuclear and ballistic missile technology across the world for decades. Nuclear weapons technology simultaneously offers them both military and economic security. North Korea will never willingly give up nuclear weapons. They can't. The political regime and relinquishing nuclear weapons are effectively mutually exclusive.

That leaves 3 stark choices: a nuclear North Korea[1], war, or Chinese-forced regime change.

But no mainstream American political party will accept a nuclear North Korea, especially given North Korea's proven desire and ability to proliferate. And China, for various complex reasons, has been steadfast in refusing to topple the regime. That means American politics has been moving inexorably toward war with North Korea and will continue doing so unless and until war breaks out or China capitulates. In the meantime--which could extend (and hopefully will extend) into the indefinite future--we'll just put our heads in the sand and ignore the very thing we keep swearing we'd never accept.

The denial exhibits itself in weird ways. The conservatives keep shifting attention to Iran. North Korea is light-years ahead of Iran in terms of being both a nuclear threat and in manifest capacity to proliferate nuclear weapons. But war with NK is simply unpalatable, and as conservatives prefer unilateralism to compromise their only political move has been to ignore NK and focus on Iran, whom they're currently comfortable bombing.

Liberals, by contrast, both refuse to entertain a military solution[2] and refuse to admit that a negotiated settlement has eluded negotiators for decades. The Clinton, Bush, Obama, and even Trump[3] administrations have pursued compromise in earnest. Only the most cynical of observers would argue that the U.S. hasn't pursued a settlement in good faith. But NK's bait+switch in the 1990s, increasing intransigence, and continued proliferation have made negotiation increasingly difficult for each successive administration. Good faith does not mean gullible. And, in any event, it's no mystery why NK won't sign away their nuclear capability.

Obama's deal with Iran really screwed everything up. The deal meant conservatives could no longer shift attention to Iran, which had benefitted the liberals by making the perennial failures with NK less pressing (and memorable).

Of course, Obama made the deal with Iran precisely because NK was the actual immediate threat, and kicking the Iran problem (such as it was) down the road was the intelligent strategic choice. But as a Muslim Kenyan, perhaps only Obama was capable of seeing the obvious truth that every real American denies.

Unfortunately, the deal had the effect of turning the NK situation into a crisis overnight, despite literally nothing changing. NK has been on the exact same trajectory it's been on for decades. The time for freaking out was when they began exploding nuclear devices 10+ years ago, not the next stepwise iteration of their missile technology.

Because America is not capable of accepting a nuclear NK, either formally or informally, and because NK is not capable of forgoing a nuclear deterrent, the options are stark. That doesn't mean war is inevitable, only that the direction is inevitable. The end game, should it arrive--as opposed to the crisis, with ever increasing risks of conflict in East Asia, being drawn out indefinitely--is either war or a deal with China that realigns power in the Pacific.

The upshot is that the only country to be negotiating with is China. What will it take for the Chinese to topple the North Korean regime? It might take a lot because, even if they're amenable to a deal, we probably overestimate their ability to force regime change.

[1] Which we already live with, technically. North Korea currently just lacks first-strike capabilities. Which surely they'll remedy in the next year or two.

[2] Which, strategically, could be useful in negotiating with China. A credible imminent threat of war (stick) combined with a realignment of power in the Pacific (carrot) might bring China around.

[3] Rex Tillerson's recent, frantic offer for "unconditional", bilateral talks is evidence of this. We can't blame the hardline tactics of the Bush or Trump administrations. The diplomats have been earnest, and if the diplomats saw light at the end of the tunnel no administration would be able to hide that. But even diplomats from the Clinton and Obama administrations have no idea how to proceed.