Well That Was Quick

Now that's funny. I was just doing a Google News search so that I could cite an article about the "good news" from North Korea, and instead I find this.

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons until the United States provides civilian atomic reactors, Pyongyang said on Tuesday in a statement that significantly undermined a deal reached just a day earlier.

Six countries, including the North and the United States, had agreed on Monday to a set of principles on dismantling the Pyongyang's nuclear programmes in return for aid and recognising its right to a civilian nuclear programme.

Sceptics had said the deal was long on words, vague on timing and sequencing and short on action: the North's comments made clear just how short.

At 2:50 PM EST Kevin Drum asked

Are conservative bloggers avoiding the story because they don't want to admit that Bush caved in on issues he said he would never cave in on? Are liberal bloggers avoiding it because, after all, it will be a considerable success for the Bush administration if it pans out?

Where's the chatter?

By my count, that question was asked about five hours before this news was posted on Reuters. In answer to Kevin's question: Well, I was at school. But I was also waiting for the other shoe to drop.

There's a wider point here (as usual.) The US is kind of screwed. In any region you point to - Iran, North Korea, South America, Africa, China, etc etc - the US increasingly has few to no options. Iran is the best example of this: the US is soooo screwed. Iran has it's own supplies of Uranium, and indigenous technical expertise (with likely help from outsiders as well.) The only thing they might lack is money, but the US can't realistically mount an embargo of an OPEC member while oil is at $65 a barrel. Even if they could, there would be so much cheating (oil for food, anyone?) that the effect would be minimal. In any case, India and China aren't going to stop consuming oil or natural gas just because the US asks not-so-nicely.

Nor can the US attack Iran. The attack itself is liable to be pointless, as Iran's facilities are widely believed to be well-dispersed and even underground. Meanwhile, the Iranians have the ability to make a really bad idea in Iraq. Iraq's Shia population might not welcome the Iranians - except in contrast to the Americans.

And it's worth remembering that Iran (probably) doesn't even have nuclear weapons yet. Zoom over to North Korea, which (probably) does, and the options go from a few bad ones to zero. You negotiate, period. And if you're serious about avoiding a nuclear exchange in North Asia, then you start giving the North what they want. Given that Bush has already started by affirming that the US has no intent to attack (not the same as a non-aggression pact) the rest should be chump change.

It's also worth noting that the country doing the heavy lifting is China. If things don't go to hell in Asia, it's going to be because of Chinese level-headedness. It'd be nice if Donald Rumsfeld would remember that next time he starts trembling at the thought of a Chinese blue-water navy.