Argument:  By opting out of bilateral talks with North Korea, President Bush missed an opportunity to pressure China to exert maximum regional power to block the North Korean nuclear program.  A true American president could have maneuvered China away from ambivalence and closer to a 'missile crisis' mentality.

I'm not surprised by President Bush's failure to contain North Korea (it fits into a pattern of foreign policy incompetence unprecedented in American history).  But I'm mystified by the apparent ambivalence of the Chinese.  Though they've made some ineffective noise, you could hardly compare China's handling of North Korea with the moderated ruthlessness and skill of President Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Can we conclude that the Chinese are as pathetic as President Bush?  I think not, since China is on the ascent while America, under President Bush, is blundering towards 'former superpower' status.  It is more likely that the Chinese have not gone 'ballistic' over North Korea because they see an upside to North Korean nuclear weapons that offsets the obvious troubles their plutonium-empowered little neighbor can now cause.

This is not a consensus in Beijing, but there may be elements in the Chinese government who view a nuclear North Korea as a powerful ally in their evolving long-term strategy to assert power over the United States.  The Chinese can use their mushrooming economy to influence the North Koreans indefinitely; the North Koreans fear America more than China; the Chinese fear America as well.  At some point in this century, American and Chinese vital interests will come into intense conflict.  The Chinese may believe that a rogue nuclear ally economically dependent on the yuan could prove vital in persuading the United States to surrender its superpower position peacefully.

Nuclear chess is not a game for normal people.  It is only a game for madmen who are not afraid of atomic weapons, men and women willing to dance on the brink of ungodly catastrophe.  What kind of man could even dream of putting nuclear missiles in Cuba?  Our own great President Nixon threatened to use nuclear weapons in Viet Nam, and
encouraged Japan to acquire nuclear weapons as a way of pressuring China to the bargaining table.  This is how the game is played; this is how the Chinese play the North Korean card today.  They want to knock off the United States in this century.  No one could dream of such a thing unless they were willing to take bold, mind-boggling risks.  The Chinese are willing to risk the worst that Kim Jong-Il can do because they dream of imposing the will of China on the United States.

Compare the simplistic Bush foreign policy concept (you are 'either with us or against us') to the advanced strategic mastery of Nixon.  Nixon played the Russians against the Chinese, the Chinese against the Japanese, the Japanese against the Chinese, in a dazzling display of trilateral virtuosity that averted war with the Communist bloc while setting up the Soviets to lose the Cold War.  In today's North Korean affair, the Chinese are both with us and against us, just as the Chinese and the Russians are both with us and against us--with Iran and against Iran--in that other, even more dangerous front of nuclear diplomacy.  A President who is bewildered by such complexity is not qualified to lead America.

Just as the Chinese agenda is clearly more complex than simply blocking nuclear proliferation, the American agenda vis-a-vis North Korea should be multi-faceted.  The North Koreans ask for bilateral talks with the U.S.  They want to shut China out of one aspect of negotiations because they want America to compete with China for influence in Pyongyang.  They want to start a bidding war.  If Bush had opted to compete with China for influence in North Korea, this could have weakened the confidence of the Chinese that they can control NK in the future.  This lack of certainty would have dissipated the Chinese upside, and thereby magnified the downside for a nuclear NK in China's region of influence.  By refusing bilateral talks with North Korea, Bush missed an opportunity to clarify the danger to China of a nuclear NK.  A skilled President could have used bilateral talks with NK to intensify the pressure on the Chinese.

By contrast to Bush's strategic mistake, Nixon would have exploited bilateral talks with NK in order to screw China; it is straight out of the playbook by which 'Tricky Dick' shattered the Communist bloc.  Foreign leaders were known to suffer dizzy spells and often needed psychotherapy after dealing with Nixon's multi-pronged booby traps and double-bind diplomatic maneuvers (the Nixon 'Shokku' or 'screw job').  This is what true American Presidents have always done!

Effect of Iraq Invasion

How much risk is China ready to take to contain American military power?  During the Cold War, if the U.S. had invaded Iraq, the Soviets would have responded with full scale war, possibly even a nuclear launch.  We would have done the same, of course, if the Soviets had seized the Iraqi oil fields.  The Iraq invasion was no less provocative simply because there is no military power in the world today that can challenge America.  The Iraq War can provoke a passive-aggressive response from other nations--particularly the Russians and the Chinese--indirect but every bit as dire and extreme as our response would have been to a unilateral move into Iraq by the former Soviet Union.  If the Chinese are willing to accept nuclear weapons in the hands of Kim Jong Il as a strategic buffer against American military power, what other risks will they take?

James Baker,  Secretary of State to George H.W. Bush (infinitely better in foreign policy than his son George W. Bush), says that the United States is more feared around the world today because of the Iraq invasion.  I don't think that's a good thing.  We weren't exactly pacifist saints before Iraq.  Only the psychotic braintrust of Al Qaida were stupid enough to threaten the U.S.  The Chinese were already sufficiently afraid of America - we gain nothing by intensifying their fear.  In fact, by invading Iraq, we frightened China into a posture of passive-aggressive desperation, a posture that has confused their national interest in containing both North Korea and Iran.

We can add both the North Korean and the Iranian nuclear proliferation to the price tag of the American invasion of Iraq.  Iraq is the biggest strategic blunder in our history.

The need for new leadership and a new political environment in America is stark and stunningly clear.