So, this is analysis?

I'm working like a slave at work, so posting is still going to be light, but I simply must point out that I will be responding to this article, but a one Thomas P.M. Barnett that Instapundit linked to this morning. North Korea got nukes, but the castor oil is fed not to the enablers of the tyrannical despots who propped up this disaster but, in what is becoming geopolitical chic lately, to the Bush Administration:

Beijing isn't ready, in large part, because we haven't prepared them well to emerge as a trusted great power ally. This administration keeps hedging its bets, sort of treating China like a military enemy, sort of treating it like a diplomatic ally, sometimes demonizing it and sometimes indulging it. Our "separate lanes" policy of trying to compartmentalize our relationship with China has been a disaster in my opinion, keeping us trapped in an immature strategic relationship with Beijing that makes it harder for us to deal with rogues like Iran and North Korea.

That's been the worst strategic failure of the Bush team: as they wade deeper into this Long War, they keep adding enemies without divesting themselves of old ones that should be left behind--in the Cold War. The upshot is that we're undergunned, not outgunned. We don't face bigger threats (on the contrary, they get smaller in aggregate each year), we just suffer from having too small a team on our side.

I'll respond with a fully developed argument once things ease up here at work, but in in short, it takes a severe lack of maturity and a myopic and egocentric view of history to think that this undesired result has to to do with whether our current Adminstration who, because not enough people "like us" in the world, was was unable to "deal" with the North Koreans.

North Korea's objective of attaining nuclear status was much greater than any diplomatic pressure that could have produced otherwise. This article isn't analysis, it is a verbose way of throwing blame at an easy target without even coming close to solving the problem of living in this 21st Century, where tyrannical despots who, given enough time, can acheive nuclear status without 1st world resources.

Nukes are regime insurance for oppressors.

But, I guess it's just easier to blame Bush.