As North Korea fires a missile bolt, the United States holds on to a mix of pressure and offers of dialogue, but US leaders are resigned that little they are doing is likely to change Pyongyang’s course.

Eager to avoid another global crisis alongside Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden’s administration has focused on a narrower goal of reassuring allies that the United States will defend them.

North Korea, whose leader Kim Jong Un has met three times with Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump but failed to reach a lasting agreement, has fired a record number of missiles in recent days and Western officials say Pyongyang is preparing for a seventh nuclear weapons test.

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do to stop North Korea,” said Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst on Korean affairs who is now director of the Asia program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.

“If I were Kim Jong Un’s advisor, I would say yes, go ahead,” she said.

“They couldn’t come to an agreement with Trump, and what will they get from the Biden administration? They know that. The only thing they can do is take their program to the next level.”

The United States has responded to North Korea by expanding drills with South Korea, including deploying a strategic bomber, and Biden is likely to offer strong support to South Korean and Japanese leaders during summits in Southeast Asia this month.

Biden is also widely expected to meet President Xi Jinping of China, Pyongyang’s key ally, who joined Russia in May in vetoing a US-led bid to tighten sanctions on North Korea at the Security Council.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, told an emergency meeting on Friday that China and Russia had “empowered” North Korea, but also reiterated the Biden administration’s willingness to talk to the totalitarian state.

US officials say North Korea has shown no interest in talks, and privately some believe the Kim regime is in one of its periodic cycles of escalation and that there is no choice but to wait.

Under the last Democratic administration of Barack Obama, some concluded that the United States made a timing error in February 2012 when it reached an agreement that quickly collapsed when North Korea was already poised to conduct a satellite test.

For Biden, who is focused on Ukraine and may face a more hostile Congress after the midterm elections, diplomacy with North Korea presents high risks and limited chances of success.

“They don’t really want to deal with North Korea. There’s a lot of North Korea fatigue,” said Frank Aum, a former Pentagon adviser on Korean affairs who now works at the US Institute for Peace.

But Aum said that while the chances of a breakthrough are limited, diplomacy has at least managed to ease tensions.

He said Biden could offer specific gestures and incentives, such as announcing a moratorium on the use of other strategic military assets or proposing sanctions relief.

“Any conciliatory tactic would be perceived domestically in the US as appeasement or a reward for bad behavior,” Aum said.

“But empirical evidence clearly shows that North Korea does not respond well to pressure, and conversely, when we look at North Korea, they tend to behave better.”

He questioned the effectiveness of Biden’s strategy of leaning on China to apply pressure, noting that Beijing “absolutely disagrees with that approach.”

The increasing tensions have led to a once-taboo discussion, at least among experts, about whether North Korea should be accepted as a nuclear state.

Arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis said last month in a New York Times opinion piece that sparked widespread debate that the United States has already essentially accepted that North Korea will never get rid of its nuclear arsenal and should focus on the risk reduction discussion .

“It is time to cut our losses, face reality and take steps to reduce the risk of war on the Korean peninsula,” he wrote.

The State Department reiterated that its goal with North Korea was “complete denuclearization,” and some experts said a postponement would send the worrying signal at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin is threatening a nuclear attack in Ukraine.

“It does you no good and freaks out your allies,” said Victor Cha, senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Cha, who advised former President George W. Bush, said the Biden team must draft a North Korea policy that is beyond the talking points.

“Maybe that will come after the seventh nuclear test,” he said.