Bush turns diplomatic in handling Korean crisis

In a phone conversation on December 13 with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, President Bush said he won't allow "business as usual to continue," but promised to seek a diplomatic settlement to North Korea's decision to restart a nuclear program. The question of why the US is preparing to go to war against Iraq but seeking a diplomatic solution in North Korea underlines the limits of American power. Asked to explain the difference of approach toward Iraq and North Korea, both of whom are members of what the president has called the ‘Axis of Evil’, the White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said: "The world is not, cannot, just be treated as a photocopy machine where policies in one part of the world need to be identically copied for another." The fact is that despite their both being despotic countries, they pose different kinds of threat to the US and their neighbors. Unlike oil-rich Iraq, North Korea is an impoverished nation but is heavily armed with 15,000 artillery pieces ready to fire into and across the demilitarized zone with South Korea. The capital Seoul is just 35 miles from the border. Proliferation is a global problem that needs a local solution. - YaleGlobal.