nuclear diplomacy

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/06/27/northkorea.explosion/index.html

So yeah, that's about 15 years after they should have figured out how to do this, but at least it's something. We seem to have forgotten how things like the original Korean War were handled: international coalitions. In this case, the advantage is that the burgeoning Chinese economy has little interest in seeing a nuclear war right on its doorstep, certainly not one they're not involved in.

Prior cases, dealing with the PDRK in say the Clinton administration, basically relied on this misguided belief that the US was a powerful enough agent to act unilaterally in order to get what it wants from other nations. We've used that thinking against Cuba for decades.. .it hasn't worked, same with Iran. We didn't use that thinking against the USSR directly, but certainly with its satellites. Going around and trying dictatorial impacts on other nations affairs, even when those impacts are supposedly democratic reforms, hasn't worked either. I think maybe establishing a bit of international opinion might be a more favorable environment. Similar to the post-9/11 days that we squandered by going with "If you're not with us, you're against us", and other bunker mentalities from the Cold War thinking. The post-Cold War world has a large assembly of nation-states that aren't quite aligned with any one power any longer. It's a much more fluid and flexible environment and probably a lot less unstable as a result, if only the major powers have the wit to use it that way.