Salon.com -- Bush's illogical foreign policy

The nuclear threat from North Korea reveals the limits of the Bush administration's preemption doctrine.

Forward air bases, Army infantry units, a hospital ship and docile yet combat-trained reporters are all being readied for a "regime change" war against Iraq promoted as a way to rid the world of an arsenal Saddam Hussein doesn't seem to have.


Under the Bush doctrine, North Korea should have been preemptively attacked by now because it actually has weapons of mass destruction, including two nuclear weapons by CIA estimates, and is a rogue outlaw state. Does Bush have a yellow streak or, more sensibly, does he not believe his own words?

Feeling safe yet? You shouldn't be.

Washington's foreign policy is now less logical than that of Pyongyang. A starving dictatorship's clumsy blackmail attempts at least make some twisted sense, in that the Bush administration has refused, from its very first days, to even discuss North Korea's persistent request for a nonaggression pact with the United States.

The administration plan is to isolate this paranoid excuse for a nation, as if it isn't already the most isolated place on earth. If we can't make peace with an utterly defeated nation like North Korea, we're in trouble. From Columbine to Weimar Germany, humiliating those with nothing to lose is always a recipe for disaster.