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The search for a viable US response to North Korea’s intercontinental nuclear program has been underway for decades. US intelligence knew of Pyongyang’s ambitions as long ago as the 1970s, and the US quietly removed over 100 tactical nuclear weapons from its arsenal in South Korea in the early 1990s, in part because the North had signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. In spite of almost constant diplomatic efforts from the mid-1990s onward, the North withdraw from the nonproliferation treaty and, in 2006, conducted a nuclear test. The rest is history.

It’s also fairly simple calculus. Whatever anyone says, possession of a nuclear weapon has taken certain options off the table. The nuclear club was once thought to be exclusive. But everyone has known for decades - at least since the Israeli's snuck past the gate with the US and France holding open the door - that no great scientific obstacle was going to keep a determined would-be member out. And once they're in, it is really quite impossible to show them the door.

So North Korea, which crashed the gate over 10 years ago, is not as prone to threats of annihilation as it was before its nuclear test precisely because it has a credible capability to annihilate back – at least against South Korea and possibly Japan. What we referred to during the Cold War as “Mutually Assured Destruction” or “MAD” has never seemed more apt.

So what actually can be contemplated to at least incentivize moderately responsible behavior in North Korea? Further talks are the preference of many, backed with inducements – perhaps economic, perhaps a lifting of sanctions. Some in the South even suggest a roadmap toward unification, which is what both sides claim to want anyway. But the North’s record of breaking any agreement it chooses makes critics of this route credible, too. And having come this far, would the North really give negotiate away the ultimate guarantee of its regime’s survival? I think that’s pretty unlikely.

The fact is, deterrence may be the least worst option. War will result in the deaths of tens of thousands – and perhaps millions. Talk has proven futile. Sanctions only work when a nation’s leadership is vulnerable, and when it cares about the plight of the population.

There may have been openings for more creative approaches in the past. But that is the past. If we survive the reckless threats currently going back and forth over the Pacific, the least best option may be to learn to live with a nuclear North Korea. And that may also mean living with a nuclear South Korea and a nuclear Japan, too.

This is adapted from my weekly podcast for the World Policy Institute.