Driving a Hard Bargain.(North Korea's nuclear weapons plans)

It's never easy divining Pyongyang's intentions from its pronouncements--especially when it's talking out of both sides of its mouth. Late last week North Korea's Foreign Ministry indicated it might consider multilateral talks over its nuclear ambitions, if the United States were prepared to make a "bold switch-over" in its policy toward the North. On its face, the overture might look like a diplomatic breakthrough that could ease tensions on the peninsula. But just days earlier, as the Stalinist state became the first of 188 countries to pull out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the North vowed to build a "tremendous military deterrent force powerful enough to beat back an attack... by any ultra-modern weapons."

The growing fear among Pyongyang watchers is that--talks or no talks-- North Korea has already made the fundamental decision to develop a nuclear arsenal and no longer intends to treat its nuclear program as a bargaining chip to be bartered away in exchange for money and pacts. "It's possible North Korea has crossed the Rubicon," says Prof. Ashton Carter of Harvard University. "The regime may now believe it has to have nuclear weapons for its own security."

If that is the endgame, then how might a nuclear North flex its muscle? One surprising model is Israel, an undeclared nuclear power since the late 1960s. Pyongyang sees advantages to Israel's "neither confirm nor deny" posture. In ...