Kim has made the first move. Rather than act, he merely indicated his willingness to do so. Thus, he left Washington room to respond by shifting in the other direction. The administration should take advantage of this opportunity for restraint.

The U.S. should start by explicitly responding to Kim’s charge of American hostility. Washington should end the ban on visitors both from and to North Korea. That would repeal a measure that can only be seen as hostile and would symbolically invite greater contact between the two nations. This step also would cost Washington nothing, since the prohibition is ill-conceived and hampers humanitarian work.

Washington also should directly address the North’s security concerns. Persistent threats of military action, the president’s recent admission that he considered preventative strikes in 2017, and Washington’s record of regime change wars all give credence to Pyongyang’s fears. The president should offer his vision for the peninsula, which would be grounded in peace. He should assure Pyongyang that he has no offensive intentions toward the DPRK.

Moreover, the administration should address Kim’s desire for a “durable peace-keeping mechanism” by picking up proposals prepared for last year’s Hanoi summit, opening liaison offices and approving an end of war declaration. The former would benefit America by opening additional communication channels with an unpredictable and dangerous government; the latter would recognize a reality for the last 69 years. Both would advance a peace narrative.

The president should respond to Kim’s complaint about the lack of reciprocity for his testing moratorium by offering to formalize the end of testing by the North and military exercises by the U.S. and South Korea. Limiting missile and nuclear development is a major plus for America and worth paying for. The president should indicate that he views this as merely the first of a series of agreements that could be reached, with meaningful steps towards disarmament traded for sanctions relief.

Along the way Washington should engage Beijing and Moscow, urging their support for this initiative. Trump should indicate his willingness to make concessions on sanctions, as they have proposed, if the DPRK limits arms development and deployment. Failure to live up to the agreements would, however, result in the return of sanctions.

Of course, Kim might prove to be more like his father and grandfather than the West would like and reject such overtures. But the only way to know is to make them. And he is markedly different from his predecessors: educated overseas, focused on economic development, skillful in diplomacy, internationally engaged. There is greater hope than before in reducing if not eliminating the threat posed by his regime.

Even if Pyongyang proves receptive an especially speedy denuclearization is highly unlikely. The North has invested too much, is too vulnerable, and trusts too little. Nevertheless, even limited arms control would make the Korean peninsula more stable and secure. Two years without the U.S. and North Korea insulting and threatening each other, arguing about the size of their respective buttons, and making menacing deployments was an improvement over the past. Continuing this status quo would be in both countries’ interests.

The path to disarmament on the Korean peninsula is narrowing. But the opportunity remains. Washington needs to abandon its expectations and find small areas of agreement with the North to move forward. Toward the DPRK, at least, American policy should be based on “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World and co-author of The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea.