By Daniel DePetris

To say that President-elect Donald Trump has a lot of plans for his second term would be a gross understatement. He has vowed to implement the largest deportation operation in American history, secure the U.S.-Mexico border and negotiate a peace settlement between Ukraine and Russia.

Yet for Trump, all of these items may be minor when compared to one other issue: resolving the North Korea nuclear conundrum. Taking Pyongyang’s nuclear program off the board is Trump’s proverbial white whale, a feat that none of his predecessors managed to accomplish. Members of Trump’s inner circle told Reuters in late November that the next president was already talking about restarting the personal diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that had begun during his first term.

If Trump enters office thinking he can easily resurrect his relationship with Kim, then he’s going to set himself up for disappointment. Resolving the North Korean nuclear issue was hard five years ago, but it will be even harder today.

During his first term, Trump was able to push for personal engagement with North Korea’s head of state despite resistance among his national security advisers. This was the right move at the time. After all, bottom-up attempts by the Bush and Obama administrations to negotiate with Pyongyang proved to be both laborious and unsuccessful.

After nearly a year of fire-breathing rhetoric and talk about a “bloody nose” strike that would scare Pyongyang into talks, Trump opted to gamble on direct diplomacy. This was partly because his other options — more economic sanctions or military action — ranged from ineffective to disastrous, and partly because the South Korean president at the time, Moon Jae-in, was able to convince Trump that a direct channel of communication to Kim might be the key to cementing a nuclear deal of historic importance.

Despite three Trump-Kim meetings, face-to-face diplomacy failed to produce anything over the long-term. While Trump managed to get North Korea to suspend missile tests for a year — no small accomplishment given its past activity— the flashy summitry ultimately crashed and burned.

U.S.-North Korea diplomacy has been dead ever since. So on Jan. 20, the perennial North Korean nuclear problem will be as thorny as ever. And probably thornier: Kim is far less desperate for a nuclear agreement and an end to U.S. sanctions now than he was during Trump’s first administration.

First, Kim hasn’t forgotten his previous meetings with Trump. He sees the summitry of 2018 and 2019 as a waste of time at best and a personal humiliation at worst. This shouldn’t be a surprise; the North Korean dictator staked significant capital on negotiating an agreement to lift U.S. sanctions and to normalize Pyongyang-U.S. relations. His entreaties failed on both accounts.

Kim will be more cautious this time around. “We have already explored every possible avenue in negotiating with the U.S.,” he said in November. And in a December speech, he promised to deliver the “toughest … counteractions” against the U.S., an expression of his commitment to resisting what he perceives as a hostile bloc underwritten by Washington.

The geopolitical environment has evolved as well. Back in 2018-2019, North Korea was isolated, and the suspension of U.S. sanctions was seen as a critical to its economic growth.

But now Putin’s war in Ukraine has provided the Kim regime a golden opportunity to diversify its foreign relations away from China by cozying up to Moscow, not least by sending thousands of North Korean troops to the Ukraine-Russia front lines. Russia, which used to be a partner in the United States’ desire to denuclearize North Korean, is now using North Korea as a way to frustrate America’s grand ambitions in East Asia.

For Kim, the advantages of his relationship with Russia are equally clear: Putin needs arms and men; Kim needs cash and military technology. And thanks to Russia’s veto at the U.N. Security Council, additional sanctions are a pipe dream for the foreseeable future.

None of this is to suggest that Trump shouldn’t try another diplomatic foray with North Korea. Regardless of the criticism he received at the time, Trump’s decision to shake things up and go straight to the source was an admirable attempt to manage an issue that has defied U.S. presidents for more than three decades.

Given the continued improvement of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, any agreement the U.S. signs with the Kim regime will be less impressive than it could have been in 2019 — assuming we get an agreement at all.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs commentator for the Spectator. He wrote this column for the Chicago Tribune.