President Donald Trump’s handling of North Korea has been among the two or three bitterest foreign policy disappointments of the administration’s first two years. The president began with sympathy for the regime’s victims and bellicose rhetoric—“fire and fury”—aimed at its leader. It was a high-risk approach, at points irresponsible in its execution, but it was a refreshing departure from decades of self-deluding conciliation. After just two years, however, Trump finds himself in the opposite position: lauding Kim Jong-un in speeches, boasting of a supposedly “historic” agreement with the regime, and extolling “peace” even as the North Koreans surreptitiously flout every vague promise they made to the United States.

The change began with the president’s decision to meet with Kim himself. After the June summit in Singapore, Kim declared his “firm” and “unwavering” commitment to “denuclearization.” The event began months of optimistic rhetoric and compliments from Trump to the North Korean leader. Hours after the summit, Trump said: “He trusts me and I trust him.” The next day, in a tweet: “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” And on September 29: “I was really tough and so was he, and we went back and forth. And then we fell in love, okay? No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.”