A reader with a plausible explanation for those admin. announcements that annoy me so much, the ones declaring that “we will not allow” this or that country to be nuclear:

“Dear John—I have to wonder if it is at all fair to judge the chess games that the administration are playing when all we can see are the center squares. Take North Korea for example – is the big problem N. K. itself, or the fact that the Chinese are for all intents and purposes shielding the North Koreans as they have built up their nuclear program. As long as the Chinese are willing for whatever reason to do that, there seems little we can do to N. Korea short of quietly letting the Chinese know that we consider them responsible for whatever fallout the Korean nuclear program has, and are becoming less averse to letting Japan take whatever defensive measures (very broadly construed) it needs to take. In that sense, is it not possible that the public pronouncement might be for Japan’s benefit? I know this is speculation, but it is speculation that doesn’t assume the kind of rank cowardice that you suggest is at play in an administration that has risked everything to deal with an emergent nuclear threat in Iraq.

“The broader question of course, is can the administration do much more than the American public wants it to do? … The American people almost followed its inner lemming over the cliff with Kerry, who wanted us to wage a more sensitive war and congress is tied up in knots. Can any executive accomplish much more than the Bush administration has when almost half the population wants to be terminally silly? I fear it might take the ‘bright white flash’

before we are willing to do whatever it takes to deal with the problem. For now, I think we can be grateful that the administration is sticking to its guns in N. Korea and is refusing bi-lateral talks. By making pronouncements that seal us in our position, we are signaling to the other powers in negotiations that they have to stick with us (and their own stated

positions) rather than be in the position to play good cop to our bad cop.

If China wants to obstruct efforts to deal with N. Korea, then let China openly receive the opprobrium for doing this, rather than allow it to quietly, behind the scenes encourage the N. Koreans while we do all the heavy lifting.”

There’s some good sense there. I doubt, however, whether the Chinese give a fig about “opprobrium” — or whether the chattering classes of the world are even willing to apply “opprobrium” to any nation not big, rich, and run by white Anglo-Saxons. The reader’s main point, though — that the admin. is constrained by what the U.S. public will stand for — is of course a truism, and makes all the more pertinent the Perry/McNamara point about widespread public insouciance towards the nuclear threat.