Word: pyongyang
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...issue of North Korea gave Bush an early opportunity to show off his foreign-policy mettle and break from his predecessor's strategy. The neocons had long suspected Pyongyang of cheating on a landmark 1994 deal to freeze its nuclear program. Yet Clinton had sent Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Pyongyang in October 2000 and considered making his own visit. Vice President Dick Cheney summed up the Bush Administration's more muscular approach: "We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat...
...Tough talk was no substitute for policy, however. As Washington ratcheted up the pressure, so did Pyongyang, a longtime master at playing a weak hand brilliantly. North Korea threw out international inspectors and restarted its weapons program, once again reprocessing plutonium from spent fuel rods. Pyongyang even upped the ante by hinting that it had a uranium-enrichment program paralleling its plutonium one. And it chose to end eight years of a self-imposed moratorium on missile testing on July 4, 2006 - American Independence...
...Three months later it exploded a nuclear device, joining the élite club of seven other known nuclear states. Years of "warnings, threats, sanctions, muscle-flexing and half-hearted diplomacy" had made North Korea more, not less, dangerous. Chinoy quotes one U.S. policymaker comparing Washington's policy toward Pyongyang to "a six-year old playing checkers," with no ability to look beyond the next move...
...tantrum comes for two very specific reasons. In return for finally providing what was supposed to be a full accounting of its nuclear facilities and bombs earlier this summer, the Bush administration said it would, among other things, take North Korea off its list of state sponsors of terror. Pyongyang, sources say, was led to believe that the formal delisting would come August 11 - a deadline that has come and gone. U.S. and South Korean officials have said privately that the delay is a result of disagreements over how, exactly, the North's compliance with the nuclear deal...
...part, is doing what the State Department always does: It's working the problem. The Chinese have offered a compromise plan on verification that is now under scrutiny in Washington. Though anti-nuclear deal hawks remain in the Bush administration, and are adamantly opposed to meeting in the middle, Pyongyang has a vote, too, and it votes to stop complying. With his time running out, and his desire for a deal with North Korea obvious, most analysts expect another compromise from President Bush. And then - bet on it - watch Kim Jong Il angle for a better deal with whomever...