Let's put to bed the the idea that Kim is a madman. It's neither useful nor accurate.

The United States declared three countries part of an axis of evil and invaded one. So the other two countries started ramping up their nuke program. Why? Because countries with nukes don't get invaded. Saddam was invaded because he didn't have WMD, not because he did.

And, of course, North Korea is really, really, really poor. Back in the nineties Clinton bribed the North Koreans to slow down their program (well, ostensibly they were supposed to stop it, but they didn't. However doing it in secret massively slowed it down.) When Bush got into power he ended the bribes and decided not to talk to North Korea. So they restarted the program. And guess what, doing it out in the open is a lot faster than keeping it secret.

You can sell nuclear technology. And did I mention that North Korea needs hard currency, bad? A man, or a country, who responds to financial incentives isn't behaving irrationally.

The problem with North Korea having nukes is less that they will use them, than that when the North Korean collapse comes (and it's only a question of when, not if) all those materials, scientists and technologists will be up for grabs. Who knows where they'll land.

And in the meantime, who knows who Kim will sell technology to? You can be sure he won't sell the materials (that stuff is traceable, thanks, and Kim is rational enough not to want to die when the US nukes North Korea to cinders), but the technology does matter and there are a lot of people willing to pay in cold hard cash by the dumpster-full in order to get their hands on it.

There are two countries today whose nuclear programs need to be dismantled - North Korea and Pakistan. Because they are proliferators. (And a serious President would have a heart-to-heart with both China and Israel, neither of whose hands are clean.)

But that would require actually acknowledging the problem, acknowledging that those countries have reasons for having nukes, and finding ways to convince them their self interest includes not having them. (And, honestly, bombing Pakistan into rubble in 2002 would have made a lot more sense than invading Iraq.)

In the meantime: no, North Korea is not irrational. But George Bush is impotent, and they know it. A smart president would throw up his hands, find out the price for stopping the program, round up the money from allies, and pay.

Since, however, we have Bush, I'd get used to North Korea having more nukes.

Wonder where they'll land?

Update Terry Welch rescues something from the memory trap. Seems before Bush decided to stop paying, he trusted without verifying and paid...

Lest we forget, he tossed a bunch of money at the third leg of the "Axis of Evil" and said, "Hey, don't worry about it. We don't need to know what you're doing with it ."

The US Government has announced that it will release $95m to North Korea as part of an agreement to replace the Stalinist country's own nuclear programme, which the US suspected was being misused.
Under the 1994 Agreed Framework an international consortium is building two proliferation-proof nuclear reactors and providing fuel oil for North Korea while the reactors are being built.

In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework's requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors.

President Bush argued that the decision was "vital to the national security interests of the United States".