Kim's game
Jim Hoagland:
"North Korea's Kim Jong Il can claim no more than a temporary and tactical success by having drawn President Bush into talking publicly about possible U.S. security guarantees for North Korea. That's fine by Kim. He'll take temporary and tactical any day.
"Kim buys time to survive a little longer, the paramount goal for a regime that seems to perch endlessly on the doorstep of oblivion. He must pray to his Stalinist gods that Napoleon was right when he said that nothing endures like the temporary.
". . .This represents a serious challenge for the Bush administration, which seems to alternate in foreign policy between tactical and strategic phases -- rather than putting the former consistently at the service of the latter. The State Department does process, the White House and Pentagon do substance, and somehow the twain are supposed to meet."
Jim Hoagland:
"North Korea's Kim Jong Il can claim no more than a temporary and tactical success by having drawn President Bush into talking publicly about possible U.S. security guarantees for North Korea. That's fine by Kim. He'll take temporary and tactical any day.
"Kim buys time to survive a little longer, the paramount goal for a regime that seems to perch endlessly on the doorstep of oblivion. He must pray to his Stalinist gods that Napoleon was right when he said that nothing endures like the temporary.
". . .This represents a serious challenge for the Bush administration, which seems to alternate in foreign policy between tactical and strategic phases -- rather than putting the former consistently at the service of the latter. The State Department does process, the White House and Pentagon do substance, and somehow the twain are supposed to meet."
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