United States Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell gave an understated assessment of the Obama administration’s Burma policy last week, characterizing the lack of positive results from engagement with the junta as “not what we hoped for.” His admission came as the junta denied his recent request to visit the country and announced deeply problematic new regulations for upcoming elections. “Smart power,” it seems, has run headlong into the street-wise tactics of the hard men in Naypyidaw.The question now is, what next? There are worrying signals that frustrated U.S. officials may start to focus more narrowly on an area where they feel they have a better chance of success: Burma’s increasing coziness with Pyongyang. An anonymous senior State Department official was recently quoted in the Washington Post as saying, “Our most decisive interactions have been around North Korea. We’ve been very clear to Burma. We’ll see over time if it’s been heard.”

Privately, administration officials have indicated that the junta’s burgeoning relationship with Pyongyang was a driving force behind the shift toward engagement. Given the junta’s clear rejection of Washington’s overtures regarding domestic political processes, North Korea is quickly becoming the primary reason for continued direct contacts.

It would be a strategic error for the Obama administration to make North Korea the centerpiece of engagement with Burma. That’s not to say that Naypyidaw’s exchanges with Pyongyang aren’t extremely worrying. The growing trade in conventional weapons—including reports of Burmese purchases of North Korean-made short-range ballistic missiles—and increasing evidence of nuclear cooperation is deeply troubling. These are clear violations of United Nations sanctions on North Korea, and the U.S. should be clear about the costs of continuing this cooperation with Pyongyang.

But the U.S. also runs the risk of playing to the generals’ diplomatic strengths by focusing too narrowly on the Burma-North Korea relationship. The Burmese regime has a history of adeptly manipulating and methodically wearing down its interlocutors. The junta is expert at doing just enough to keep the pressure off, engaging in sporadic unproductive talks with officials from the U.S. and the U.N., well-timed manipulations of the confinement of Aung San Suu Kyi and other political detainees, and endless machinations around the promised 2010 elections. Such moves have tantalized the international community for decades, but all have ultimately proven fruitless, as they merely obscured the regime’s determined efforts to institutionalize and legitimize military rule.

Engaging the regime on the basis of its relationship with North Korea would be no different. Burma’s generals would use their contacts with Pyongyang as leverage to win U.S. compromises on issues that are arguably of greater importance to them: removal of sanctions, and lessened support for Burma’s democracy movement. Far from fearing U.S. opprobrium, junta leaders are thrilled to talk to the Americans about North Korea, because such a conversation by its nature excludes Ms. Suu Kyi. Prioritizing bilateral concerns about North Korea would also exacerbate the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ tendency toward inertia, undermining years of effort to push Burma’s neighbors toward a more forward-leaning posture on political reform.

The U.S. should recognize the junta’s nuclear gambit for what it is: a symptom of unaccountable and illegitimate rule. If Burma had an elected, accountable government concerned with providing for the basic needs of the Burmese citizenry, it is highly unlikely that nuclear cooperation with North Korea would be on its agenda. The best, most sustainable means of eliminating the threat posed by Burmese-North Korean cooperation is movement toward a more representative, responsible Burmese government, difficult though this may be.

As Mr. Campbell has said, the path to improved U.S.-Burma relations and improvement in the situation in Burma lies through “the immediate and unconditional release of Ms. Suu Kyi and all political prisoners, an end to conflicts with ethnic minorities and gross human-rights violations, and initiation of a credible internal political dialogue with the democratic opposition and ethnic minority leaders on elements of reconciliation and reform.”

It’s time for the Obama administration to follow up on those words. The White House needs to make clear that it is not interested in cutting a deal with the Burmese regime to end nuclear cooperation with Pyongyang in exchange for accepting the perversely labeled “roadmap to discipline-flourishing democracy.” They can start by strongly endorsing U.N. Human Rights Rapporteur Tomas Ojea Quintana’s proposal to convene a Commission of Inquiry to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma, and by putting meaningful Security Council consideration of Burma back on the agenda.

The Obama administration must stay focused on working with other democracies, particularly Asean members, to establish benchmarks for the systemic, irreversible domestic political changes Burma needs. This must be backed up by sanctions that are broadly supported and narrowly targeted. As decades of “constructive engagement” have proven, abandoning principle and attempting to cut out the democracy movement to negotiate directly with the junta has never worked with Burma’s generals. Instead, it just plays into their hands.

Ms. Currie is a senior fellow with the Project 2049 Institute, a Washington, DC-based think tank.