Heres one way to

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Here’s one way to understand the current North Korea situation. A month ago the North Koreans were pursuing a clandestine uranium-enrichment program that everyone thinks was years away from making actual bombs. Now they’re back online with a plutonium production program which will produce bombs in months.

Confronting an aggressor often leads to setbacks in the short-term. So for instance, after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the US’s refusal to negotiate with the Iraqis or accept the invasion as a fait accompli led the Iraqis to further entrench themselves in Kuwait. Had we cavilled with them perhaps they would have withdrawn from part of Kuwait as part of some deal. But we rightly refused to do that. Point being that confronting aggressors often leads to what can be characterized as short-term setbacks or escalated tensions.

But in Iraq, of course, we had a plan. That was to threaten and eventually to follow through on forcing the Iraqis out of Kuwait. One might make a similar point about Kosovo in 1999. Confronting Milosevic and moving toward the military option led Milosevic to accelerate the ethnic cleansing. But the US had a plan which we followed through on: we reversed what he’d done. By doing so, we also helped bring about his fall from power.

In this case, however, we demonstrably don’t have a plan. Because of that lack of a plan, the fact that the North Koreans are now months away from cranking out nuclear weapons really is a big national security set-back for the United States and its allies in the region. How and why exactly did the US let that happen? Now we’re reduced to saying we’re willing to accept what we were previously never willing to accept: a nuclear North Korea. Chris Nelson had it right last week. They caught the bad guy. But they botched the arrest. Big time.

Tough criticism? Yeah. But it’s a bigtime screw-up. And in Northeast Asia it’s been going on for two years. It’s time for the Bush administration to take some responsibility and explain how we got here.

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