Listening to the radio as I drove into the office just now, I heard NPR’s reporter in Seoul explain the diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea. (I didn’t catch the reporter’s name, but I was listening to Weekend Edition.) What happened, he said, was that the Bush administration created a standoff–and that the intervention of the Chinese finally persuaded both sides to relent.

George W. Bush and Colin Powell have produced a diplomatic triumph, persuading the North Koreans, the Chinese, and other Asian nations to engage in the very multilateral talks on which the administration has been insisting ever since the the beginning of the North Korean crisis–and NPR’s reporter is giving the credit to… Beijing?