Wrong ideas

North Korea hasn’t yet tested its new long-range missile, but some bizarre ideas have already started flying around Washington about the best way for US to respond — including a proposal by two Democratic experts to launch a pre-emptive attack. While that isn’t likely to inspire greater sobriety in Pyongyang, it has made the Bush’s less strident preparations for a possible military response look statesmanlike by comparison.

What would be better still would be for the White House to heed a call by senior Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for direct talks with North Korea on the issue. The US needs to keep two fundamental goals in sight. The first is to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and long-range missile programmes. The second is to make sure that neither Pyongyang’s feints nor Washington’s responses touch off a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia.

This is all very symmetrical, except that time is clearly not on America’s side. Now North Korea is renouncing its missile test moratorium, which it had agreed to in the hope of negotiations on that issue. This gathering crisis is dangerous enough on its own terms. But if mishandled by US, it could have potentially disastrous regional consequences, driving a further wedge between Japan and China. — The New York Times