Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Somebody Call Hans Blix

North Korea detonates second nuclear device

Actually, a better idea would be to call John Bolton. Bolton called what happened last week in the Wall Street Journal piece I've linked. Here's the money part:

If the next nuclear explosion doesn't derail the six-party talks, Kim will rightly conclude that he faces no real danger of ever having to dismantle his weapons program. North Korea is a mysterious place, but there is no mystery about its foreign-policy tactics: They work. The real mystery is why our administrations -- Republican and Democratic -- haven't learned that their quasi-religious faith in the six-party talks is misplaced.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently rejected "linkage" in Russia policy as "old thinking." Disagreement in one area, she argued, shouldn't prevent working on "something else that is of overwhelming importance." Whatever the merits of linkage vis-à-vis Russia, de-linking a second North Korean nuclear test from the six-party talks simply hands Pyongyang permission to proceed.

Joe Biden predicted that Barack Obama would be tested. The blue exam book just hit his desk.

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