North Korea says it has manufactured weapons-grade plutonium, and solved all the technical problems in making nuclear weapons, blaming the decision on threats by the United States to its sovereignty.
Most of the states involved in negotiations with North Korea say this confirms what they already know. They believe the ailing Stalinist state will still attend the next session of talks to engage it with offers of economic aid, alternative uses of nuclear energy and security guarantees, which this announcement is probably designed to bolster.
Nonetheless, the announcement dramatically illustrates the dangerous risks involved in such a game of cat and mouse - not least the possibility that North Korea could be tempted to sell some of its nuclear weapons technology to other states more willing to use it, an intention it has once again denied. These dangers fulfil the criteria for pre-emptive intervention set out by the Bush administration in dealing with rogue states. North Korea, along with Iraq and Iran, made up Mr Bush's celebrated axis of evil. But the US set its face resolutely against taking on North Korea in the lead-up to the Iraq war, going along with the strong preference of China, South Korea and Russia, the other negotiating states, for a multilateral engagement with the North Koreans. The US is now in no position to threaten intervention, as its Iraqi difficulties and costs mount up.
The question that has to be asked, therefore, is whether the pre-emptive strategy has made the situation worse, not better. Classical deterrence and containment doctrine is precisely designed to deal with such threats from pygmy states to great powers, and there are still 37,000 US troops stationed in South Korea. Threats of intervention which will not be delivered upon only encourage North Korea's tactical brinkmanship and reduce the new strategic doctrine's credibility.
The problem is best addressed by a more determined effort in the multilateral talks to provide North Korea with security guarantees and aid in return for abandoning its nuclear weapons programme. It can hardly withstand pressure along these lines from such powerful neighbours, along with the US. There is a compelling argument for concluding an agreement as rapidly as possible, and every likelihood this can be done if the right conditions are made. The alternative course implied by the new US pre-emptive policy is too uncertain and dangerous to contemplate realistically. Indeed the North Korean experience, together with that of Iraq, provide ample evidence that the previous policies of multilateral deterrence are safer and more sure.