So, the Bush administration has offered to break with its self imposed silence towards North Korea, and begin negotiations on defanging Pyongyang’s nuclear capabilities. This is, of course, a very public win for Kim Jong-il and his pals in the fugly Korean vampire club. It means that, at the very least, he’ll be keeping what weapons he already has for use as future blackmail. Plus he’ll get generous food and energy aid, all on Uncle Sam’s dime.

Now, your average, only moderately insane, tyrannical regime would take this deal and run with it. You’ve outfoxed those damn Yankee Imperialists swine yet again comrade, now it’s time to cash out and leave the casino. Surely this is what Kim wanted all along, right?

Well, we’re going to cave and start talking to the NoKo’s, even after they blatantly broke our earlier agreement, and have withdrawn from the Non-proliferation treaty; a clear reward for threatening us. And they respond to their victory by leveling paranoid accusations and making more unreasonable demands.

This is a tough nut, because North Korea really is batshit crazy. The country’s leadership is paranoid, the military is aggressive, and the population starving. They’re a cornered animal ready to strike.

We’re not going to be using our conventional forces to deter the North Koreans, because we’re not willing to take the chance of Seoul being destroyed (the north could shell it to rubble using only conventional weapons) if a ground war starts. We don’t want to use our own nuclear weapons, for obvious geopolitical reasons. Diplomacy is ultimately ineffective with a regime that doesn’t honor its agreements. A payoff may buy us a few months, or maybe a year at most. Orson Scott Card’s piece on China’s role echoes some of my recent thoughts. Relying on Beijing to pressure Pyongyang is, unfortunately, the only reasonable non-military, non-payoff approach, but I have my doubts that the Chinese will go along with it, even if we apply significant pressure.

We have no good long-term solutions, other than wishing upon a star that Kim dies and the regime collapses. Even if Iraq wasn’t an issue, this would be the case, and we would still be buying them off. Bush will buy off Kim again, because all other solutions are worse or probably won’t work.

However, I don’t see how delaying the Iraq attack, which also seems to be in the administration’s plans, will help this situation. We’re committed to Iraq, and pulling back now to face North Korea would weaken our position in both theaters. Hopefully our diplomatic / bribery plans will buy us another six months of the status quo in North Korea, but the sooner we’re done with Iraq, the better for us to deal with any further craziness coming from Pyongyang’s pack of inbred syphilitic mobsters.