Actually, it did work. The problem was that America, as happens all too often, welshed on the deal. The NK promised to suspend their operations and did. The US promised to supply oil and food... and didn't. Eventually, George W. Bush tore up the deal... at which point, the NK went ahead and built their nukes.

Fool me once, indeed.

It's a pity this blog did not generate a more wide-ranging discussion as it lies at the heart of the incredible disaster this administration has unfurled.

War, any war, is a hugely destructive, costly and unpredictable process both in the action and the aftermath. And those measures are not just in material, money and life.

The most revealing aspect of the destruction visited upon Iraq is that both the administration and the military in charge had no reserves or plans for any exigencies that fell outside their exceptionally rose-tinted choreography of events. It is as if they expected the whole of Iraqi society to get up the next morning and carry on as if nothing had happened. The lack of imagination and reality beggars belief, only matched by the generals' willingness to abandon all training, doctrine, and historically accumulated experience concerning invasion and occupation in the face of civilian bullying. And, if Cheney still thinks that not imposing a government of ex-pat Iraqis immediately is the fount of all our problems, that lack of imagination and reality still exists.

Unlike war, diplomacy actually allows what might be movement in the wrong direction to be reversed and adjusted at little cost. Misunderstandings and misconceptions can be cleared away, prejudices and biases overcome. Rubicons do not often have to be crossed and, even in the case of signed treaties, room is left for adjustment and renegotiation.

Not only has the disastrous war against the Iraqi people had repurcussions well beyond it's borders, indeed well beyond the Middle East, but this administration's unravelling of almost all the nuclear arms limitation and anti-proliferation treaties, their undermining of the UN and almost all international organizations, their resistance to all controls environmental, and their preference for ego-centric one-on-one or small-group negotiation where they can more effectively use a US bully-inducement approach to get better-for-the-US but not necessarily fair treaties, all these approaches, and the ideology, unrealism and ignorance underlying them, make the US a less trusted, liked or respected member of the international community.

This is not good for the US or the rest of the world. It leads to other countries making policy and decisions based on what they see as a less friendly, less embracing, less trustworthy community. Hence, perhaps, some of Putin's concern about US actions, or, for others, the perceived need to make bombs -- IED to nuclear.

George W. Bush's legacy, given it's lack of diplomacy and child-like estimation of the costs of war? It's only a question of just how bad.

And no one can predict that.