By decade’s end, the United States will be spending more to service its debt annually than on national defense.

In the Alice in Wonderland world of U.S. policy toward the Hermit Kingdom, all the White House can summon itself to do is "condemn" North Korea's attack on Yeonpyeong.

Ever since its founding in 1948, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has maintained an aggressive and bellicose international security posture. Today, fully two decades after the end of the Cold War, North Korea's external defense and security policies look arguably more extreme and anomalous than ever.

This is no time for conciliation. Wars happens neither because America talks tough nor because the White House makes it clear that it will spare no effort to defend its allies against external threats.

In the transition from an old dictator to a new one, some observers were losing faith in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, believing it had lost its magic touch in the arts of dissembling. Others had deeper faith, though, and they were rewarded last week when the State Department proudly announced the umpteenth breakthrough toward the goal of denuclearizing North Korea.

While DPRK founder Kim Il Sung was powerful enough to impose his son, no guarantees exist that the North's military, the real power, will meekly accept rule by his utterly inexperienced grandson.

Kim Jong Il was nothing less than an economic catastrophe for North Korea. His political ascent, in fact, tracks almost precisely with that ill-fated nation's shift to economic stagnation and then its frightening free-fall into abject mass misery.

Despite having little demonstrable interest in giving up its nuclear weapons, North Korea is once again headed for a negotiating table to do just that. That the North Koreans have been invited at all is a testament to the strange desperation of both the Obama administration and the South Korean Lee Myung-bak administration to return to the Six Party Talks.