It would be easy to be sceptical about the six-nation talks that opened yesterday to defuse tensions over North Korea's nuclear ambitions. We have been here before.
Pyongyang has promised, and promised ... and then disappointed again and again. But there is no alternative to the long, slow process of diplomatic engagement.
The last talks, between the US and North Korea in April, are remembered for the latter's admission that it already had nuclear weapons and was reprocessing fuel rods from a nuclear plant to make more - an announcement that contributed to the current sense of crisis.
But the impoverished Stalinist dictatorship's real capabilities and intentions are matters largely of conjecture. Western intelligence agencies have repeatedly asserted that the regime has reprocessed sufficient plutonium to manufacture one or two weapons. Last year a US intelligence report to Congress claimed that "the US has assessed since the early '90s that the North has one or possibly two \ weapons."
Why the fuss? North Korea is surely a classic Maoist "paper tiger" - all sound and fury, signifying nothing? And, crucially, deterrable from using what weapons it has by the massive US response capability in the South. Not so, says the US - classical deterrence theory presumes rational actors and Kim Jong-il cannot be depended on to behave rationally if he believes his survival is at stake; and the emergence of non-state terrorist actors to whom a cash-strapped Pyongyang may be tempted to sell weapons represents a deadly new danger.
The other parties to the talks that began yesterday, North Korea's neighbours, China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia, share that rationale and fears for regional stability. The hope is that their presence may make more realisable a deal which will trade nuclear disarmament for economic aid and security guarantees. It will not be easy, although reports suggest Pyongyang is reconciled to giving up its nuclear weapons ... at a price. The US Administration is under domestic pressure not to be seen to reward North Korea for fulfilling broken promises agreed in 1994, and may have to swallow the pill of accepting formally "regime change" is not on its agenda.
Such concessions will not come easy to the current White House, but the option of opening another front in the "war against terrorism" is simply not on, particularly when its regional allies, South Korea and Japan, are such strong supporters of dialogue. That North Korea cannot be trusted to honour any agreement is a given - a tough inspection regime will have to form part of any agreement. But that is not a reason for not trying.