Nicholas Eberstadt has written an exceptionally bad op-ed in The New York Times about North Korea. Here is a sample:

Yet many in Washington and various media outlets seem ready to blame Mr. Kim’s latest move on an American president they detest rather than on the time-honored North Korean playbook from which it is so obviously drawn. Blinded by their loathing of Mr. Trump, these people cannot see that his North Korea denuclearization policy has been more serious — and more promising — than those of previous administrations.

It goes without saying that the North Korean government is responsible for its own actions, but it has to be stressed that the coming crisis with North Korea was avoidable and the Trump administration squandered a major opportunity to lock in the testing moratorium that Kim just ended. One can say many things about Trump’s North Korea policy, but to call it serious simply isn’t credible. From the empty photo-op summits to the ongoing campaign to deceive the public about what North Korea has agreed to, the administration’s handling of North Korea has been equal parts frivolous and reckless. They have pursued an impossible goal and they have given North Korea no incentive to make any meaningful concessions. Trump’s phony “diplomacy” couldn’t have succeeded, and a real effort to find a mutually acceptable compromise was never made.

The president chose to meet with Kim on three different occasions. There is nothing inherently wrong with such meetings, but when these high-level meetings take place first before anything has been worked out they predictably lead nowhere. A year and a half later, he has absolutely nothing to show for any of that. Trump’s predecessors didn’t achieve denuclearization, either, but that is because the goal of eliminating North Korea’s arsenal is a fantasy. Trump’s failure is persisting in chasing after that fantasy long after it became clear that it was never going to happen. Instead of settling for a more modest compromise that might have restricted North Korea’s arsenal, he wasted the opening created by South Korea’s engagement policy and congratulated himself on his non-existent success. Now that Trump’s failed North Korea policy is blowing up in his face, the president certainly deserves a large share of the blame for his pseudo-engagement that yielded nothing of value. Even now he keeps imagining that North Korea signed a “contract” that obliges them to do something, but in reality they made no binding commitments.

Eberstadt’s recommendations are as bad as his analysis of how we got here:

What is needed now, in the words of David Maxwell, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is “Maximum Pressure 2.0.”

It is a sure sign of sanctions addiction when someone looks at the abject failure of “maximum pressure” and then concludes that the answer is even more economic warfare. For the true believer, “maximum pressure” cannot fail, it can only be failed. So Eberstadt treats us to a lecture about the need to “paralyze” North Korea’s economy, and to prove just how unhinged his proposal is he also suggests a missile buildup to threaten North Korea even more:

Now that the United States is out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, why not start placing medium-range missiles within reach of North Korea?

As a practical matter, this is almost certainly a non-starter since none of our allies would want to host such weapons, but the proposal shows just how unserious this entire argument is. If the U.S. started a missile buildup in the region, would that make North Korea more likely to give up part of its arsenal or would it encourage them to deploy more missiles of their own in response? We already know it is the latter. If the administration followed this terrible advice, it would make the crisis with North Korea much more dangerous and it would take us closer to the brink of conflict.