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North Korea’s sixth nuclear test is easily its most impressive. The fifth—in September last year—involved the detonation of a device similar in yield to the bomb the Americans dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The latest test features a substantially larger yield. Seismic signals are an imperfect indicator, but estimates currently range from about 70 kilotons all the way up to about 500 kilotons. It’s possible, but not certain, that the test featured a genuine thermonuclear device, a second-generation nuclear-weapon design in which a primary fission explosion ignites a secondary fusion stage. If any radionuclides have leaked from the test site, we’ll get a better picture of the explosion, but that could be some weeks away.

Still, the big conclusions are relatively straightforward. First, North Korea’s nuclear capabilities are no longer constrained to the detonation of relatively low-yield fission devices. The days are over when we could depict the North Korean nuclear program as merely the equivalent of the US program in 1945. Second, when the results from the sixth nuclear test are placed alongside the large strides that Pyongyang has made recently in ballistic-missile development, we’re fast approaching a crunch point where something must be done to corral the North’s nuclear arsenal. A fresh bout of hand-wringing and garment-rending—even another bout of sanctions—is probably not going to give us much leverage on the problem.

Each test, whether of missile or nuclear weapon, gradually builds North Korea’s capacities. True, none of the individual tests is a back-breaker by itself. But the broader programs are breaking the back of global and regional order. That’s because a North Korea equipped with nuclear-armed ICBMs is simply unacceptable. It’s unacceptable at the global level because a pariah state can’t be allowed to hold a sword over the head of the international community. And at the regional level, an emboldened North Korea will destabilise Northeast Asia—corroding the US’s Asian alliances and likely begetting a new wave of proliferation by latent nuclear states.

In brief, if North Korea keeps going down the path it’s currently taking, the outcomes are intolerable. A North Korea that had a slow-moving nuclear-weapons program boasting only limited reach was a tolerable threat. Regional nuclear competitions are relatively common—not to the point where we can become blasé about them, true, but still relatively common. Today’s North Korea has morphed into something much more deadly. It’s the sole nuclear-armed state outside the P5 that seeks intercontinental-range destructive capabilities. And yet it’s the nuclear-armed non-P5 state with the least equity in the international order.

Some argue that North Korea seeks nuclear weapons because of insecurity; that it’s fear of attack and invasion that’s the principal driver of Pyongyang’s WMD programs. Frankly, that argument’s not convincing. Security concerns might be sufficient to drive a small nuclear-weapons program, but not the one that now confronts us. Rather, Pyongyang seeks nuclear weapons as a status symbol, as the price of entry to the only one of the world’s exclusive clubs to which it might actually gain admittance. ICBM-equipped nuclear powers number only four: the US, Russia, China and North Korea. Kim Jong-un seeks international recognition on the basis of the only achievement his regime can boast—the development of a capability to pull down the global order on a day of his choosing.

Reversing that development is now an issue of urgency. I’d like to think that doing so might offer an occasion for international cooperation, because responsible great powers should share the judgement that having intercontinental-range nuclear weapons in the hands of a pariah state is an unacceptable condition. Still, the prevailing geopolitical winds scarcely seem conducive to such an outcome. And there’s a fair degree of slack in the steering wheel of US global leadership with President Trump in the White House.

But if we’re prepared to admit North Korea into the ranks of the world’s ICBM-equipped states, what’s the basis for denying that status to any future proliferator? Some years back, Robert O’Neill observed that ‘the bomb’ had successfully escaped the hands of first the superpowers, and then the great powers, to come to rest in the hands of the world’s underdogs. Accepting that the underdogs can wreak nuclear havoc at intercontinental ranges seems to drag us even closer to the abyss.

In one important respect, of course, nothing has changed after the sixth nuclear test: we still don’t have any easy options for reversing North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. Kinetic options look costly, non-kinetic options ineffective. But doing nothing will be worse. A crisis postponed is not necessarily a crisis averted. A future North Korea would have more and better nuclear warheads, greater numbers of delivery vehicles, and proven nuclear technologies ready to be sold to the highest bidder.

With every tweet or meeting with a foreign leader that US President Donald Trump completes, American officials find themselves struggling to reassure allies that the United States remains committed to their security. Nowhere is this truer than in Asia, where longstanding US strategic engagement, backed up by the world’s most advanced military, has maintained the balance of power for decades.

Trump’s signature Asia policy—his pledge to stop North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons—should be a clear-cut example of American military resolve. Unfortunately for the region, it has proved to be anything but that.

In early June, Defense Secretary James Mattis tried his best to convince Asian counterparts gathered in Singapore that US support was unwavering. The presence of two US aircraft carriers off the Korean Peninsula—the first time in 20 years that US naval maneuvers included two carrier groups—was meant as a ‘message of reassurance’ against any aggression by North Korea.

But neither Mattis’s speech, nor the muscle flexing at sea, did much to bolster US credibility in South Korea, or to restrain the North’s nuclear ambitions. The problem wasn’t Mattis’s speechwriters, or the US Navy’s ‘show the flag’ naval exercise. It was Trump himself.

From threatening military strikes on the North while all but inviting Kim Jong-un to a Mar-a-Lago tête-à-tête, to threatening to tear up trade and defense pacts with South Korea, Trump has thoroughly confused America’s Asian allies. The effects of his contradictory statements will come home to roost later this month, when South Korean President Moon Jae-in visits Washington, DC. Moon is crafting his own approach to dealing with Kim, while Trump’s behavior could hardly be undermining US influence more.

Moon’s desire to take a different tack with the North should come as no surprise. A long-time advocate of a softer line, he acknowledges the North Korean threat, but believes that the South has time to seek a solution by reviving economic ties and dialogue. The strategy harks back to the South Korea’s decade-old ‘Sunshine Policy,’ former president Roh Moo-hyun’s unsuccessful outreach to the North, which Moon supported. Today, Moon is entertaining a range of similar ‘soft’ options—such as reducing military tensions, increasing people-to-people contacts, and offering more humanitarian aid—to help shift course gradually.

More fundamentally, Moon believes that the US has steered the alliance’s North Korea strategy off course. He wants South Korea to be in the driver’s seat, with his government as mediator between the US and North Korea. Moon laid down his marker on June 7, when he announced a freeze on deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) US anti-missile system in South Korea, because of his questions about allied decision-making. The freeze, which includes an ‘environmental review,’ is a none-too-veiled signal to expect more assertiveness on national security and North Korea policy.

Moon is well positioned to capitalize on Trump’s self-inflicted wounds—which have included threats of unilateral military action, protectionist mantras, and the abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. Moon, who was elected to boost jobs and curb corruption, campaigned on sweeping away his predecessor’s policies, including her hardline approach toward North Korea. Even if sparks fly in Washington later this month, Moon is unlikely to pay a political price at home. South Koreans broadly support a strong relationship with the US. But they also follow American politics closely, and these days, many regard the dangers of erratic leadership as no longer being confined to Kim’s regime.

Indeed, Trump’s statements about the US-South Korean relationship have ranged from the impolitic to the bizarre—such as accusing the South of unfair trade deals and then threatening to send South Korean leaders a bill for the THAAD system. He has also issued unnerving military pronouncements, like an April prediction of a possible ‘major, major conflict‘ on the peninsula. Those comments, made during an interview with Reuters, seemed to overlook the deployment of 700,000 North Korean soldiers just above the demilitarized zone, which would make any war with the North devastating to the South.

Trump’s approach to the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula has produced equally troubling knock-on effects. China, South Korea’s leading trade partner, is a case in point. With South Korea’s economy struggling to sustain growth, China is leveraging its position by registering its opposition to THAAD. Calling the system a threat, the Chinese have been boycotting South Korean goods, stalling investment, and curbing what had been a booming tourist trade.

How hard Moon presses Trump for a different approach to North Korea remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: Trump’s standing among South Koreans won’t be what keeps Moon mum. According to the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, a Seoul-based think tank, Koreans gave Trump exceptionally low approval ratings during his 2016 presidential campaign, and his popularity remains at rock-bottom levels. Even with China’s recent THAAD-related arm-twisting, Chinese President Xi Jinping rates more favorably among South Koreans than Trump.

Moon will have many questions for Trump about US leadership in Asia—questions that Mattis was unable to answer. Given the risks posed by an unpredictable US president, South Koreans’ unease is easy to understand. Before Trump, 11 US presidents helped maintain stability on the Korean peninsula by building alliances, using diplomacy, calibrating their rhetoric, and deploying American military strength. Since the end of the Korean War, no president has even casually, much less flippantly, called the US role on the peninsula into question. None, that is, until now.

Australia has only one agreement that automatically commits us to war and it isn’t ANZUS. At the signing of the armistice in Korea in 1953 we agreed, with South Korea’s allies, that we would defend the South in the event of an attack by the North. It had nothing to do with the US alliance, but rather is a UN commitment. It was associated with a set of non-aggression pacts which were repudiated by North Korea in 2013. At that time a UN spokesperson said the pacts couldn’t be unilaterally repudiated under terms registered with the UN and that Pyongyang was considered bound. The stakes for Australia are high indeed.

President Trump has been gripped by the North Koreans’ steady progress towards an ICBM that could reach the continental US. His ‘never going to happen’ pledge publicly established a ‘red line’; it will be a litmus test of his credibility. The issue’s unique status is underlined by the president’s apparent willingness to read all related briefs and intelligence reports. If diplomatic efforts, ramped up sanctions and Chinese persuasion fail, then Trump has made clear that military options will be seriously considered.

The Trump red line hasn’t been extended to shorter range missiles or the nuclear program generally. However, military pre-emption associated with it would significantly raise the prospect of a North Korean response making consideration of even broader pre-emption necessary. That could spell devastation for South Korea and cause massive damage both to Japan and to US bases in Japan and Guam. A major war would result; minimising those consequences would be the main task for the allied military. A subsequent North Korean attack on the South would engage Australia’s 1953 armistice obligations.

Trump’s red line is drawn on a situation Asia understands well. He has put American credibility on the line. To the North Koreans he has said that he would be ‘honoured’ to engage Kim Jong-un in discussions on nuclear matters, making clear that regime change in Pyongyang isn’t on his agenda. Nonetheless, North Korea presses on.

With the Chinese, Trump has deployed a range of carrots and sticks, all of which carry their own implications in the minds of Asian leaders. The stick is that China, a longstanding enabler of North Korea’s program, faces the prospect of a war on its border and a harsher American attitude on bilateral issues. The carrots have been extraordinary: a walk-back on Taiwan, a trade agreement, a retreat from freedom-of-navigation patrols in the South China Sea, and an effective enhancement of China’s regional status (the opposite of Trump’s stated intention in the presidential election campaign).

Despite paying close attention to briefings, Trump appears not to have grasped the regional context. The ally most affected is South Korea. Seoul has been roiled by an apparent presidential indifference to South Korea’s fate in all this. Nothing the president has done has allayed local concerns at what they call the ‘Trump risk’.

Consider here the extraordinary series of comments and initiatives by Trump in the last month of the South Korean presidential campaign. First was the announcement that a carrier task force—an ‘armada’ in his words—has been dispatched as a signal that Pyongyang’s actions could draw a military response. Fear, then ridicule, was the reaction in South Korea when its appearance was delayed.

Second, Trump erroneously opined that South Korea had once been occupied by China, reinforcing a South Korean view that he knew nothing about them. He also indicated that it might be necessary to renegotiate or repudiate the US–ROK free trade treaty.

Finally, having deployed the THAAD missile defence system—a controversial move in South Korea and heavily related to the defence of American troops in the region—Trump claimed that South Korea should pay. All of Trump’s interventions roiled a South Korean presidential election campaign in which Moon Jae-in, the overwhelming winner, sought to reset the Seoul–Pyongyang dynamic.

The risks of a pre-emptive strike are acceptable to Trump. However, the red line is limited. A freeze of the contemporary position with strong verification might just be possible (though it isn’t on the table currently). Such a deal would stop North Korea’s nuclear weapons program short of an ICBM, but it would massively complicate the global non-proliferation regime. The Iran deal was doable in part because Tehran’s public position was that it didn’t want a nuclear weapon. Kim Jong-un is way beyond that. Fig leaves would be necessary. Somehow North Korea’s six-party commitment not to proceed to a nuclear weapon would have to be in any agreement.

China will underperform. Beijing won’t get the North Koreans to a complete rollback or to a negotiation focused on achieving that goal, so vital to the non-proliferation regime. It isn’t vital to Trump, who is overwhelmingly motivated by perception. North Korea not proceeding with an ICBM gets him there domestically.

For the rest of the region, it’s important to cool the situation. Lessons, however, have been drawn. South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are developing their own local defences and defence industries. This experience will accelerate that trend. Lessening dependence on the US military is now on the agenda in all three countries. But that is long term.

In the meantime, the trio seek breathing space. Return the US deterrent to a latent status. It shouldn’t be at the forefront of diplomacy but credible enough should Pyongyang consider a more active approach to its nuclear ambitions. Seoul, Tokyo and Taipei now hope they can lift the threshold of that eventuality.

Connecting the strategic dots between Afghanistan, Syria, and North Korea has become an unavoidable task. Only by doing so can the world begin to discern something resembling a coherent, if misguided, approach to US foreign policy by President Donald Trump’s administration.

Start with the military strike on the airfield in Syria from which a chemical attack was launched by Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Was the barrage of Tomahawk missiles intended simply to send a message, as the Trump administration claims? Does it suggest a more interventionist approach to Syria’s seemingly intractable civil war?

One might wonder if that strike indicates a more muscular foreign policy in general. Shortly afterwards, the US military, having received ‘total authorization’ for action from its commander-in-chief, dropped a massive ordinance air blast (MOAB) bomb—the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal—on Afghanistan. The immediate goal was to destroy a tunnel network being used by the Islamic State. The question is whether that is all the MOAB was meant for. North Korea’s penchant for burying its military installations deep underground is well known.

Already, Trump has ordered a US Navy aircraft carrier group to sail to waters off the Korean Peninsula, amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear and missile tests. In this context, it seems that former President Barack Obama’s policy of ‘strategic patience’ toward North Korea may be about to be replaced.

But while Trump is leaning on spectacular displays of hard power more than Obama did, he seems not to have settled on any overarching diplomatic approach. After eagerly sending Obama’s diplomatic appointees packing on Inauguration Day, Trump has yet to fill key posts, including US ambassadors to South Korea, Japan, and China.

Whatever modicum of diplomacy there is—such as Trump’s recent summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping—seems to exist only to support military solutions. It should be the other way around: military force should be used to support diplomacy. As the Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz famously observed, war is a serious means to a serious end.

Consider the situation in Afghanistan. The late Richard Holbrooke, arguably America’s greatest diplomat at the turn of this century, sought to negotiate with Taliban insurgents. Though not all Afghan Taliban would be open to talks, he believed that enough of them could be engaged and pacified to weaken the most extreme factions. His was a smart strategic approach that goes back to the Roman Empire: ‘divide and conquer.’

The US military under Trump, by contrast, dropped the ‘mother of all bombs.’ It may be that the Trump administration envisions a unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan, as the Obama administration once did. Under Trump, however, the US may drop a few more MOABs on the way out.

The Trump administration seems to be aligning with its predecessor on another strategic goal: the removal of Syria’s Assad from power. But what would come next? Would the Sunni Islamists who comprise the majority of the opposition on the ground really just turn in their weapons, shrug off all that pesky extremism, and embrace life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness under a democratic government?

In any case, we may never find out, because Assad is still winning. He has the support of powerful allies, including Russia and Iran, and the opposition is hopelessly divided. Even the Free Syrian Army is really several armies that have little prospect of unifying—and even less hope of toppling the regime. The most plausible option for ending the fighting in Syria is US engagement with global powers—including Assad’s allies—that agree on the need for a diplomatic settlement, based on power sharing and decentralisation of government.

North Korea also suffers from an autocratic leader with no plans to go anywhere. But, unlike Assad, Kim Jong-un could detonate another nuclear device any day now.

Yet here, too, there are constraints on what a military approach can achieve, though that didn’t stop Vice President Mike Pence from saying recently that ‘all options are on the table.’ For his part, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spent all of his time on the ground in South Korea last month with the US military commander there, rather than visiting with his own employees: the diplomats posted at the US embassy.

Senator Lindsey Graham has gone so far as to recommend launching a strike against North Korea now—before the regime can develop the missiles needed to deliver nuclear weapons to the US. No matter, apparently, that the North can deliver them to its southern neighbor. Graham considers himself a pragmatist; but there is nothing pragmatic about destroying the trust that underpins the US-South Korea alliance.

Few in the US seem to have Graham’s stomach for military action that would put 20 million South Koreans in imminent danger. Some advocate making a deal with the Kim regime: a moratorium on weapons tests, in exchange for curtailment of US-South Korea military exercises. But that approach would also weaken America’s critical alliance with the South—albeit less severely—while doing nothing to suppress the North’s appetite for nuclear weapons.

The circumstances in Syria, Afghanistan, and North Korea vary widely, but they have some things in common. All represent serious foreign-policy challenges for the Trump administration. And none can be resolved without comprehensive diplomatic strategies.

It is often said that 80% of life is just showing up. In diplomacy, however, the key is following up, in order to transform senior policymakers’ overarching vision into a coherent strategy that gives structure to the day-to-day work of protecting the interests of the US and its allies around the world. That is not something that the military can do alone.

International relations sometimes turn on points of deep uncertainty. One of the hottest current debates concerns the capabilities of the AN/TPY-2 radar associated with the THAAD system being deployed in South Korea. The question of how far the radar can see into China ranks up there with great mysteries, such as the fate of the crew of the Mary Celeste and the air-speed of an unladen swallow. The headline of a Reuters column captured the dilemma neatly: ‘China wary about US missile system because capabilities unknown’.

Estimates of the radar’s range vary widely—blurred in part by the fact that it can be used in two modes. In its forward-based mode, the radar is deployed in reasonable proximity to the probable launch point. It detects and tracks all classes of missiles in their launch/boost phase, and subsequently hands off its data to the wider Ballistic Missile Defence System. In its terminal mode, itmonitors incoming missiles and warheads to enable interception by its THAAD battery.

Many of the arguments about the radar in South Korea assume it’ll be used in its forward-based mode. Chinese commentators, in particular, are concerned about its ability to degrade the effectiveness of China’s strategic missile arsenal, either by providing more granular data on Chinese missile testing, or by contributing early trajectory data to the broader US Ballistic Missile Defense System. But in South Korea, the principal mission will be to guide terminal interceptions by THAAD. It’s primarily going to be used in the terminal mode. True, the hardware’s the same for both modes and swapping the software seems to take only a matter of hours.

Still, with the radar configured to its forward-based mode, the THAAD interceptors in South Korea would be largely useless. An AN/TPY-2 operating in forward-based mode can support cueing for another AN/TPY-2 operating in terminal mode, but it can’t replace it.

With that caveat, let’s have a closer look at range estimates. Back in September 2012, US scientists George Lewis and Theodore Postol calculated the radar’s range as 870 km for simple detection, and 580 km for discrimination. Lewis and Postol spell out in detail the assumptions upon which their calculation is based. One of those assumptions, for example, is that the target is ‘a conical warhead with a radar cross-section at X-band of 0.01m².’

The Lewis and Postol estimate coincides broadly with the figure used later by Jaganath Sankaran and Bryan Fearey, who argue that ‘a THAAD radar would have a maximum range of approximately 800 kilometers under even highly optimistic conditions’. Sankaran and Fearey use that estimate to point out that the radar would have almost no capability to detect and track Chinese ICBMs.

In July 2016, a commentator on a missile defence blog separated out a range of different estimates—from about 480 km to 3,000 km—and explored the reasoning behind them. The range is  shortest when the radar is in terminal guidance mode, and at its (uncertain) longest when in the forward-based mode. That makes sense. The range of the THAAD interceptor is about 200 km. There’s little point in having a radar with an excessively long range if its primary function is to guide interceptors to targets in the demanding terminal phase.

So let’s assume 800 km is approximately right for the radar in its forward-based mode. Yes, the range would be longer if the target were bigger—if the radar were looking at a warhead from side-on, for example, rather than front-on. And, yes, the radar will get better over time. It’s currently being upgraded from gallium-arsenide to gallium-nitride components: the benefits, apparently, include enhanced range, and increased detection and discrimination performance. The software’s getting better too.

But I think the Reuters headline is wrong on one important point: Chinese analysts are concerned about the radar not simply on the basis of what they don’t know, but on the basis of what they do. They only have to look at the record of testing by the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to know that the AN/TPY-2 radar, operating in its forward-based mode, is frequently a featured sensor, even in relation to intercepts of longer-range missiles. See, for example, this brief video of FTG-05, a test conducted in December 2008. The AN/TPY-2, deployed in Juneau, Alaska, acted as the forward radar in relation to the tracking and interception of a missile launched from Kodiak, Alaska.

Then there are tests for which little unclassified data is available. In relation to the ‘Fast Aim’ test in August 2013, for example, the US Director of Operational Testing and Evaluation wrote only: ‘In Fast Aim, the MDA demonstrated a capability of the AN/TPY-2 (FBM) radar to support a potential new BMD capability against ICBM threats’. Teasing, don’t you think?

So China does have a case that AN/TPY-2s in the forward-based mode can support the interception of ICBMs. The flaw in that case doesn’t really rest on the capabilities of the AN/TPY-2 radar, nor even on the fact that the South Korean radar will likely operate principally in terminal mode. It rests on China’s assumption that it’s entitled to a guaranteed second-strike nuclear capability. No such guarantee exists in international security. Yes, Mutual Assured Destruction was—and is—a key feature of the US-Russian nuclear relationship. But MAD evolved from technological facts; the facts did not evolve from it. Here, the facts are pulling in a different direction. It’s up to China—not the US—to ensure it has a second-strike capability.