Pakistan, June 17 -- During President Trump's first term, tensions between the U.S. and North Korea soared to their highest danger level in decades. Many feared that the two countries were perilously close to war. The crisis peaked in mid 2017. North Korea accelerated its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs while the U.S. responded with increasingly forceful rhetoric and military pressure.

Yet, regardless of Trump's September 2017 threat at the United Nations General Assembly that North Korea would be met with "fire and fury like the world has never seen" and the belief that "little rocket man" Kim Jong Un was a certifiable global menace, Trump later "fell in love" with the Korean dictator.

Despite three meetings between Trum...