I don’t know if the Biden administration set out to recreate that scene from Team America World Police, but it could hardly have done better with this ridiculous message to North Korea.

“The United States strongly condemns the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) for its launch using ballistic missile technology, which is a brazen violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions, raises tensions, and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region and beyond. This claimed space launch involved technologies that are directly related to the DPRK intercontinental ballistic missile program. The President and his national security team are assessing the situation in close coordination with our allies and partners. We urge all countries to condemn this launch and call on the DPRK to come to the table for serious negotiations. The door has not closed on diplomacy but Pyongyang must immediately cease its provocative actions and instead choose engagement.”

Really? The door has not closed on diplomacy.

I’m sure the Kims and the Norks are shaking in their boots. The United States has spent generations laboriously conducting pointless diplomacy with Pyongyang with the same inevitable result each time.

Pyongyang understands that our endless open door on diplomacy will never close, perhaps barring a nuclear weapon being detonated on American soil. Our diplomacy is not, as Clinton or Obama pretended, a statement of strength, but an admission of weakness. Much like the Iran Deal, we don’t intend to do anything about North Korea’s nuclear program, even as it makes its way to Muslim terror states, and so we ask for negotiations as a face-saving gesture for the world power that we occasionally still pretend to be.

In response to North Korean provocation #1610, our response is to offer diplomacy and then try to convene a bunch of states to dilute responsibility, and then offer a joint statement warning that we (but no individual member state) mean business and we will not tolerate these shenanigans much longer, but the “door to diplomacy has not closed.” And, much like a 7-11 or a brothel, will never close.

If we don’t intend to do anything about North Korea’s nuclear program (which we don’t) we could at least spare ourselves the empty posturing and the humiliating diplomacy, and draw a red line on whatever we actually won’t accept (nuking D.C., nuking Seoul or Tokyo) while ending the foreign aid and the outreach.

North Korea is China’s weapon against us. It’s a Communist death cult. Let’s close the damn door on diplomacy and then lock it behind us.