The Bush Administration's holiday campaign of continued pressure against Iraq, presaging a possible invasion, ran into an unwelcome and impossible-to-ignore distraction. North Korea, certified rogue state and charter member of the Axis of Evil, having proudly announced it had violated its 1994 Framework Agreement with the United States and was developing nuclear weapons from enriched uranium, spent a couple of weeks threatening its neighbors and generally raising hell, apparently in an effort to get assurances from Washington that we weren't going to blow them off the map any time soon. Pyongyang also wants big sacks of cash from Uncle Sam in exchange for living up to the agreement it has violated.

We're not the first to note the similarity of contemporary North Korea with the fictional Grand Duchy of Fenwick in the classic 1959 movie, The Mouse That Roared, in which an impoverished country declared war on the United States in order to secure post-war economic aid. But Kim Jong Il's regime isn't just shaking us down to compensate for a Stalinist economy that produces little other than rocks and serfs (as William F. Buckley once said of Albania). It's engaged in full-scale nuclear blackmail, an unsubtle form of high-stakes, state-sponsored terrorism. The Administration was right not to respond positively to North Korea's threats, and should not agree to any talks until Pyongyang agrees to shut down its nuclear weapons program once and for all.

But while the blame for the current crisis rests with Kim Jong Il, the President and his advisors have contributed to it significantly with their habit of unilateralism, and with all their talk over the last year of a unique U.S. right of "pre-emption," which the North Koreans have correctly interpreted as applying first and foremost to themselves. Much of the recent wave of anti-American sentiment in South Korea is rooted in the belief that the Bush Administration is uselessly -- perhaps even absentmindedly -- panicking the North into what could become a revival of the Korean War. And Seoul is right to be upset: The threat of a pre-emptive strike against a country with nothing to lose at the expense of an ally with everything to lose is dumb diplomacy at its worst, at the service of a dubious doctrine that's already done far more damage to U.S. influence around the world than it's worth.

Unfortunately for the Administration, it can't safely get us out of this morass by pretending North Korea is Grand Fenwick and just dissing them, or by returning to a policy of vague threats of pre-emptive action. Nor can the President continue to pretend we understand South Korea's interests better than the South Koreans do. On the contrary, the Administration needs to abandon the unilateralism of past policy towards Pyongyang and quickly engage South Korea, Russia, China and Japan in regional talks aimed not only at containing but in reducing the perennial danger posed by a bankrupt state with loopy leadership and loose nukes.

These five-way talks should begin with ensuring the shutdown of North Korea's nuclear program, but should quickly encompass a broader deal in which U.S. troop levels in South Korea are scaled down in exchange for a stand down of North Korean artillery and rockets aimed at its neighbor. Moreover, the talks should focus on a deeper solution to North Korea's economic problems that will not leave Pyongyang perpetually rattling a saber with one hand and rattling a cup with the other. Economic assistance from the United States or from anywhere else should be made strictly conditional on two things: an end to North Korea's one big export program -- dangerous weaponry -- and an agreement to emulate China's free enterprise and trade zones, opening up a semi-medieval country to fresh winds of change and genuine economic development.

Whether it's bred by fear, desperation, or stone craziness, Kim Jong Il's bid to become the Mouse -- or perhaps, given the Dear Leader's perfidious record of violating agreements, the Rat -- That Roared cannot be ignored or rewarded. It's time for a comprehensive, multilateral solution to the North Korean problem, and it's time for the Bush Administration to move in that direction no matter how much it has to backtrack on the rhetoric of unilateralism and the empty "right" of pre-emption.