Chris Nelson on the North Koreans and the U.S./global reaction, which clarifies a great deal, but still leaves much information and action wanting:

Today, some 36 hours after the dramatic change in the strategic picture for N. Asia which the DPRK’s nuclear test now clearly represents, there are many critical questions, but very few answers beyond the preliminary.

US officials from the President thru UN Amb. John Bolton, and Asst. Secretary Chris Hill, are all on the same page in warning that if nothing else, there is now a clearly articulated “red line” for the DPRK...test if you will, and we will try to sanction you, possibly unto the death, and we will try to get China and S. Korea to come along.

Continued after the jump, including whether the test was a fake, dud or fizzle.

Continued:

But if there is even a hint of proliferation, then it gets really personal...you cannot underestimate the risk, the US is saying. Hill made that clear last week, even before the test. And he seemed confident that in the event of a test, China and S. Korea would, finally, reluctantly, unhappily, perhaps...move closer to the US, if only from fear of what the US might do if panic ensues.

So cooperation is expected, so long, that is, as the US keeps things at the United Nations level, and doesn’t go haring-off into the strategic unknown with overly ambitious sanctions. Note the Chinese using the word “prudent” to describe what they are willing to support.

Having said that, sources well connected in China say there are serious Leadership discussions about a real, and not merely symbolic, suspension of heavy oil shipments...for a while.

The Chinese have not merely lost face, which is bad enough. They are genuinely angry and really worried about the long-range strategic implications, sources repeatedly confirm. There are strategic implications to this development, and they are potentially very positive for US-China relations, some sources add.

China’s current apparent goal? To reactivate the 6 Party talks, now that the real issues have been dramatically “clarified” for all to ponder.

Pyongyang, for its part, seems to be saying that it will come back...this was the claim even before the test, via long-time messenger Sig Harrison. Today there were statements saying that the DPRK will keep the Sept. 19 agreement to pursue denuclearization of the Peninsula...but only if the US keeps its part of the bargain by moving to diplomatic recognition, and suspending sanctions.

As one observer of US decision-making since 2001 put it, “We’ve tried every other thing possible, except real, unconditional negotiations...maybe it’s time we took Sig’s advice”. (That was a sarcasm.)

To which another Administration source responds, “And reward Kim Jong-il’s bad behavior? Never!” (That was not a sarcasm.)

In short, the internal divisions which have made coherent US policy impossible for 6 years continue, observers fear.

So once again, China’s task, backed by S. Korea (?) is seen as trying to find a way to persuade both Washington and Pyongyang to stop playing games with each other and deal, seriously, before something really dangerous happens.

To be frank, not many observers here think either the US or the DPRK are really capable of changing course, at this point. More on that later.

On whether the test was a fake, dud or fizzle, Nelson says:

Another question today is whether the DPRK’s bomb actually exploded...or, exploded, but not with its full potential. At first, there were indications that US intelligence thought it might be a dud, a “fizzle”, as one arms control expert said. But later analysis of public resources for measuring such events seems to indicate that at a minimum, “the DPRK has tested a nuclear weapon, and thus has taken the critical step toward becoming an acknowledged nuclear weapons state.”

So don’t be fooled by stories trying to guess kilotonnage, or not...”it may turn out that the DPRK’s nuke was not a full-bore success, but whatever it was, it was a test with an explosion of sufficient force to make us take it seriously”, an informed observer says.

Several commentators have noted that India’s first test was not, in fact, a success, but no one challenges their membership in the nuclear club, certainly not Pakistan.

What about Japan?

while we await more leaks on the science, it has taken a great many mistakes, reaching back three US presidents, to get to the nuclear crisis now unfolding. George Bush has made many of them, but he didn’t make all of them. The record will show that China, S. Korea, Japan, Russia...and N. Korea...have all played roles which history is not likely to forget.

Today there is much gloom in official Washington, claims that the negotiating process with N. Korea is now “dead”, and that only vast new sanctions through the UN, if China and Russia will allow, are the way to deal with the DPRK.

There is also much really sloppy thinking. We are now hearing from “Administration sources” that China and S. Korea had better fear Japan’s rearmament, even to the point of “going nuclear”. Since this would represent the end of every basic tenet of post WW-2 US security policy in Asia, specifically, “Japan’s decision to end the US alliance and go it alone...you have to wonder what our folks are thinking by apparently urging this on Japan?”, comments one incredulous observer.

But underneath the official gloom, often led by players who have never had a serious grasp of reality on the Peninsula, there are experts arguing that in fact, the DPRK bomb test has had the useful effect of clarifying the really important issues...and as such represents as much an opportunity to move forward as it does the utter defeat of US policy.

Is there a silver lining to North Korea's nuclear test?

The great utility of the 6 Party Talks process is that, for all of the frustrations and failures, it has helped build a sense of North Asian strategic community, especially as China grew more and more from an observer into a full participant, experts argue.

Just listen to what the leadership in China and South Korea have said in the past 24 hours...the sudden new reality of DPRK defiance of China, and presumed assumption of world nuclear weapons club membership...is forcing a dramatic reappraisal of policy at every level, as noted above.

And just what of the Chinese in all this:

Sources in China and amongst China-watchers here have said for weeks that the Leadership has been increasingly preoccupied with its failed N. Korea policy, and that a process of re-evaluating what China does, and how far it will...will...cooperate with the US is now fully underway.

And South Korea, where are they in all this?

S. Korean president Roh now says he must “reassess the Sunshine Policy”, and has gone so far as to meet with his living predecessors (opponents, nearly all!) to try and chart a more realistic ROK approach, one which does not conflict with the US at almost every step, sources confirm.

Of course, all arrows (and fingers) are pointing towards DC and the hardliners in President Bush's Administration:

There is not a lot of time for these agonies to bear fruit, observers here worry. For now, at least, hard-line elements in the Bush Administration are in the ascendancy, and all focus appears to be on pushing China, Russia and S. Korea at the United Nations.

The apparently born-again US Ambassador John Bolton is joyously spinning scenarios of the US Navy, with Security Council permission, stopping on the high seas all shipping to and from N. Korea...that’s the way to enforce real non-proliferation sanctions, and to punish the DPRK for defying the international will, Bolton argues.

(As one stunned State Department expert put it, privately, “So from now on, around 3 a.m. every night, I have to wake up in a cold sweat for fear that we’ve been involved in an incident at sea which could easily start a war...”)

No one expects to see the Chinese Navy out patrolling anytime soon, but S. Korean officials need to make a decision on this very quickly, US experts say. “If the ROKs want to have any leverage on us at all, in the event of a crisis at sea, they had better be out there with us,” one observer warns.

Neslon also takes a nice swipe at David Frum, the coiner of the notable and perhaps someday to be infamous phrase, "Axis of Evil." Nelson makes mention of Frum's op/ed in the uber-liberal New York Times today:

We’re not going to even attempt to outline his points, except to say we at first thought it was a satire, then, as misconception built on idiocy, we realized he must be serious. Why the Times ran the piece is beyond reason...unless that WAS the reason. That is, does the Times have reason to think that Frum’s discussion is what really takes place in the Bush White House, when the doors are shut?

Kill it with sunshine, in other words? Frum’s essay puts a new perspective on the increasingly lamented failures of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, we’d further add, and today’s Times has a review of Washington Post reporter Karen DeYoung’s new biography of Powell to underscore the point.

To quote one sentence from DeYoung, noted by the Times reviewer (pg B-9, Oct. 10) “The portrait of the Bush White House that emerges from this volume ratifies those drawn in many other recent books: it is an administration in which traditional policy-making channels are subverted, expert advice is frequently ignored, and substantive debate and discussion are avoided.”

DeYoung quotes Powell (he gave her three extended interviews) as being exceptionally critical of his successor, Condi Rice, as a “willfully blind” National Security advisor, one who “tended to echo back to the president what she thought he wanted to hear rather than what he needed to know.”]

Why take a shot at Frum? Nelson writes:

We offer this as we think it is not digressive, but reinforces the bipartisan concerns of players throughout Washington that they cannot trust the basic communication process in the Bush White House...not simply what did the president know and when did he know it, but...even IF players have the integrity to tell him the bad news, and then to try and honestly figure out what to do...is the basic discussion insane?

I'd simply note that I am reading Woodward's book, State of Denial, and that's the White House he describes. (Buy the book, you won't regret it.)

But back to North Korea:

On N. Korea, this question is increasingly shaping up as possibly one of life and death...unless you are of the school that Bush and VP Cheney long ago gave up on negotiations with N. Korea, and Kim Jong-il long ago gave up on negotiations with the US...with the result that both “sides” are simply dedicated to out-waiting the other.

We think this interpretation is entirely too cynical, and as increasingly concerned critics on Capitol Hill point out, it is in any event unacceptable.

Actually, other than squeezing the NorKs tighter I think this is the whole of Bush's policy on North Korea. Let me rephrase: If the Bush Administration can get away with squeezing the NorKs tighter they will do so until the regime collapses. That's my read.

But back to Nelson and the role China has played and will continue to play:

Last but not least, for tonite: for many in the US...and not just hard liners and neo-cons...the nuclear crisis with N. Korea has, since the inception of the Bush Administration, really been all about China. That is, will Beijing seriously risk it’s own concept of national interest, vis a vis the DPRK, to help the US keep N. Korea in line?

China, all during that time, has claimed, or warned, depending on your point of view, that its days of influence in Pyongyang are long gone, and that even when China does send “signals”, such as a temporary cutoff of oil, modifications in DPRK behavior are minimal, even counter productive.

This summer, we saw that China’s public warnings on a missile test worked not at all, and in recent weeks, China has been almost strident in declaring it’s dismay at the possibility of a nuclear bomb test.

Since yesterday, Beijing’s language vis a vis Pyongyang has, experts point out, assumed some of the same rhetorical levels previously restricted to class enemies in the US and Japan.

The genius of Bob Zoellick’s “stakeholder” argument was that it gave both the US and China a rational way to assess Beijing’s acceptance of responsibility for the commons, and its performance in helping determine the degree to which US-China regional and national interests coincide.

In the course of the 6 Party Talks process, it turned out that the national interest met at several points more than a tangent, hence China’s increasingly strident, public “warnings” to Pyongyang not to fire a missile, then not to blow up a bomb, and now, to come back to the 6 Party Talks and be good little negotiating partners, after all. Or else...

And that’s the big question for this week...in both Washington and Pyongyang...or else what?

What else is there?