U.S. officials continue to pursue some key foreign policy objectives that are utterly detached from reality. Such behavior perpetuates a trend that has characterized Washington’s behavior during much of the 20th century and into the 21st—and that has proved to be both embarrassing and counterproductive. Two egregious examples of such “magical” thinking stand out: the belief that Ukraine can prevail militarily against Russia and the assumption that North Korea can be pressured to give up its nuclear weapons.

Magical thinking, case number 1: Ukraine can win its war against Russia, and do so without the United States and its NATO allies becoming full-fledged belligerents in the conflict.

A myth about Ukraine’s “impending victory” surfaced during the earliest stages of the Biden administration’s policy of providing financial aid and weaponry to Kiev to help repel Russia’s February 2022 invasion. During Ukraine’s initial counteroffensive, as Russian forces failed to take Kiev and became bogged down on other fronts, optimism about its prospects ran high among governing elites in the United States and Europe. In early March, barely two weeks into the fighting, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other officials praised the “extraordinary resilience” of the Ukrainian people and expressed confidence that Ukraine ultimately would be victorious. “Of course they can win this,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters at a news briefing on April 6, 2022. “The proof is literally in the outcomes that you’re seeing every day.”

Daniel L. Davis, a senior fellow at Defense Priorities, has documented how numerous retired generals became wildly positive about Ukraine’s chances of victory. Retired Army General Ben Hodges said that Ukraine had already “achieved irreversible momentum” and that there were “no bright spots on the horizon for Russia.” Former General David Petraeus said Russia can’t win and there is “nothing he [Putin] can do” to stop Ukraine from winning. Former General and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster went so far as to starkly claim that Putin was at the precipice of facing “really the collapse of the Russian army in Ukraine.”

Such confidence in Ukraine’s military prospects proved to be excessive, but the gap between myth and reality has persisted and even widened with the passage of time. Predictions of eventual victory continue from both Western officials and policy analysts. Such confidence is unwarranted. The Kremlin is not about to allow Ukraine to join NATO. Russian leaders (and not just Vladimir Putin) know that such membership for Kiev would lead to a major NATO military force in Ukraine perched on Russia’s border. Rather than accept such a strategic defeat and geopolitical humiliation, Russian leaders appear willing to continue waging their meat grinder of a war in Ukraine indefinitely.  

While Kiev and its allies celebrate occasional tactical successes, such as the June 2025 “Spiderweb” drone attacks on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, Russian forces continue to pound targets in Ukraine from the air and advance on the ground. Overall, Moscow is winning this war, albeit at great cost.

This outcome should not be surprising. Russia has a much larger population than Ukraine, as well as a larger, more potent military. Ukraine has been able to stay in the war only because of extensive financial and military aid from its NATO sponsors. That assistance goes well beyond providing money and weaponry. It also involves giving crucial intelligence, such as targeting data, to Ukrainian units conducting operations against Russian forces.

Because there is virtually no chance that Ukraine can win its fight against Russia, pressure is growing among some NATO officials to greatly increase the alliance’s involvement in the conflict. Reckless proposals now circulate in influential circles to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine and shoot down even manned Russian aircraft that enter the country’s airspace. Even proposals to send NATO “peacekeeping” troops into Ukraine are no longer automatically dismissed.

U.S. and NATO officials must abandon their magical thinking about a Ukrainian victory over Russia and accept the reality, however disagreeable, that if the war continues then Moscow will eventually win. The alternative is to risk World War III by transforming NATO’s current proxy war into a direct, full-scale conflict with Russia.

Magical thinking, case number 2: North Korea can be compelled to relinquish its goal of becoming a nuclear-weapons power.  

Washington has pursued that chimera since George H.W. Bush’s administration in the early 1990s. Officials in President Bill Clinton’s administration even seriously contemplated resorting to airstrikes to eliminate Pyongyang’s embryonic nuclear program in 1994. Fortunately, cooler heads eventually prevailed, and former President Jimmy Carter helped negotiate a peaceful resolution of that crisis.

The notion that the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) could be enticed or compelled to return to nuclear virginity was unrealistic even during the 1990s. The objective is utterly preposterous now that Pyongyang has developed a nuclear weapons program. Even the most cautious analysts believe that Pyongyang already possesses at least two dozen operational nuclear weapons. Experts at the U.S. Arms Control Association are even more alarmed, estimating that North Korea has assembled approximately 50 deployable warheads. The DPRK has even built an increasingly capable ballistic missile system to deliver such weapons. Over the past several years, evidence emerged that North Korea already has tested missiles that have sufficient range to reach the continental United States.

DPRK leaders no longer even pretend that they are willing to negotiate about rescinding or limiting their country’s nuclear program. In April, Kim Yo Jong, North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un’s sister and influential adviser, warned: 

“If the U.S. and its vassal forces [Washington’s East Asian allies] continue to insist on anachronistic ‘denuclearization’... it will only give unlimited justness and justification to the advance of the DPRK aspiring after the building of the strongest nuclear force for self-defense.”

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In late July, Kim Yo Jong warned that any attempt “to deny North Korea status as a nuclear power “will be thoroughly rejected.” She added that the North’s “capabilities and geopolitical environment have radically changed” in the past few years. Kim likely was referring to Pyongyang’s growing military ties to Russia and the prospect of Moscow’s greater support for the DPRK’s nuclear aspirations in exchange for the military aid that Pyongyang is giving to Russia in its war against Ukraine. The North Korean regime shows no interest in holding a summit meeting with President Donald Trump at this time—and once again, Washington’s denuclearization demand is cited as the main reason.

North Korea has now barged into the ranks of global nuclear weapons powers, and it does no one any good to deny such an obvious reality. Indeed, it is worse than useless to ignore the larger implications of Pyongyang’s new capabilities in the nuclear arena. Although an inter-Korean hotline between Seoul and Pyongyang has existed since 2021, Washington still needs to establish a reliable hotline of its own with North Korea to guard against miscalculations resulting from a lack of communication in the midst of a crisis. Beyond that specific operational step, it is imperative to begin to establish formal diplomatic ties with the DPRK and try to develop something akin to a normal relationship with that country. Persisting in Washington’s current magical thinking about a denuclearized North Korea has a disturbing potential to end in disaster.

U.S. leaders and the American people need to abandon their fondness for viewing the world how we would like it to be. Instead, we must embrace realism and restraint, crafting prudent policies for dealing with the world as it is. That change needs to happen immediately with respect to relations with both Russia and North Korea, before America’s magical thinking leads to a nightmare for the world.