The cognitive dissonance around the North Korea predicament is fascinating but also dangerous.    One manifestation is the surprisingly high OpEd page volume and comparatively low Administration talking point volume on the subject.  And, in my case, my own Blog volume (this being my 3rd post almost in row on the subject).   It's a difficult problem with counter intuitive potential solutions and deep strategic games. 

In discussing Iraq (and, earlier, Afghanistan) a wider latitude of black and white options were/are available, and thus the debates tended to quickly boil down to underlying moral positions and philosophical stances on questions like Just War.   There was/are differences of opinion no doubt, but those differences become axiomatic far quicker than similar discussions about North Korea.  And once the root philosophical battle lines are laid out, there's surprisingly little vacillation in the ranks from one position to the other.

By contrast, the nuke question and DPRK's xenophobia mean that our options are both bounded and magnified.   They're bounded because DPRK has the ability to inflict significant cost on Seoul -- a city we certainly have an interest in.   But they're also magnfied -- small course corrections have little impact on the Iraqi situation but have significant impact on North Korea.   One of my favorite international affairs writers, Fareed Zakaria, has been uncharacteristically focused on North Korea of late.   He brings us back to back editorials from his perch atop the Newsweek International Bureau & comes out somewhat negative towards the Bush administration's "ambiguous" treatment of the situation

In the Jan 13 on-line issue, Zakaria writes that Morality is not a Strategy for dealing with North Korea.   He credit's the administration's moral stance but argues that we aren't done yet:

President Bush is right about one thing—North Korea’s Kim Jong Il is an evil man who runs one of the most barbaric regimes in the world, suppressing and starving its own people. In the back-and-forth of diplomacy around the current crisis we should not forget this fundamental fact. The problem, however, is that in foreign policy you need not just moral clarity, but also strategic clarity.

Zakaria is particularly aggressive about primacy of diplomacy and the fundamental belief that the final game is a matter of simply outlasting the bastards:

At the next National Security Council meeting Colin Powell should ask that the group all hold hands and repeat after him, “Diplomacy is not appeasement,” swallow its pride and get to work. If the administration negotiates well, using a mixture of sticks and carrots, it could significantly improve on the Clinton deal, which had some flaws and blind spots. We don’t just need to cap but to reverse North Korea’s nuclear program. Ronald Reagan said of Gorbachev’s Russia, “Trust but verify.” With the North Koreans, I suggest a simpler motto, “Verify and verify.”

Eventually this grotesque regime will fall and President Bush will be well remembered for speaking plainly of its evil. But between now and then we do need a policy.

Later, in the Jan 20 issue, Zakaria adds more flesh to his diplomatic prescription in an article titled Sweet Peas for North Korea.  While not the root cause of the current "crisis"  (that would be North Korea's lunacy and its leadership's megalomania), he does fault the administration for providing the proximate cause:

...American behavior was part of the problem. At the very time that the administration was apparently moving toward dialogue, the president was telling Bob Woodward that he was happy to topple the North Korean regime. The administration’s careless “Axis of Evil” rhetoric over two years spooked the North Koreans—who cheat and blackmail as a way of life—into thinking that the assurances of nonaggression they got from Clinton were dead.

The administration is, thankfully, steering the ship in a direction that Zakaria approves of -- a diplomatic solution based on "carrots":

...The only short-term solution is to start talking to North Korea about the benefits of de-escalating and starting a new relationship. We want this regime to do something—or rather to stop doing something. Pressure might work, so might incentives. We have no option but to try both.
        Besides, the administration is already giving North Korea the assurances it has been seeking. The White House now says twice daily that it has “no hostile intentions towards North Korea.” This, after all, is what the North is seeking—a declaration of nonaggression. Why not write it down and get something in return? Sure, it will look as if the administration is rewarding the North for its bad behavior. But that’s where diplomacy comes in. Perhaps we can call them sweet peas instead of carrots.

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