Word: pyongyang
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...real news is that it's not all bad. Now that Pyongyang has confirmed what everyone suspected, it may find it has a less leverage to play the U.S. off against the other parties in the dispute. Everything about China's response to the North Korean test suggests that the Chinese are furious with Kim. The same appears to be true of South Korea, which until now had been pushing to make nice with the North. In in the wake of the test, it's almost impossible to see how Kim can avoid action by the U.N. Security Council...
...Shortly before the nuclear test, CNN had reported that North Korea had indicated to China that it might be prepared to hold off on testing a weapon if the U.S. agreed to direct talks. Presumably, Pyongyang will continue to pursue that diplomatic goal, hoping that the crisis it has created by testing a nuclear weapon will bring pressure on the U.S. to abandon its own refusal to deal directly with North Korea. Until now, China and South Korea, in particular, have urged the United States to engage in such a dialogue. It remains to be seen whether the nuke test...
...timed to disrupt two landmark summit meetings between new Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his counterparts in Beijing and Seoul. The test reportedly occurred as Abe was flying over the Korean peninsula, on his way from Beijing, where he spent Sunday, to Seoul. Yet in the short term, Pyongyang's provocation may have actually served to smooth the summits, giving the three estranged countries something they could all agree on: the need to deal with a nuclear North Korea...
...Bolton's almost cheerful description of what he called a "remarkable" Security Council session reflected a surprising reality - the North Korean nuclear test may actually be a boon to the U.S.' long-frustrated efforts to achieve consensus on how to deal with Pyongyang. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has done her best to leave behind the Bush Administration's go-it-alone cowboy diplomacy of the first term and build real international coalitions, but until the test she had no success convincing China and South Korea, the North's primary trading partners, to leverage their economic relationships into serious pressure...
...they may be right. As angry and concerned as they may be about the test, Beijing and Seoul will likely remain a lot more worried about the collapse of the Pyongyang regime and chaos on their borders than about the murky state of the North's weapons programs. "The challenge for the administration is, can they get China to do enough?" asks Green. "The Chinese don?t want to go so far they create a whole another nightmare for themselves with North Korea falling apart." Pike thinks China won't take the risk. "That's why we're not going...