On the Axis of Evil, danger and opportunity are two sides of the same coin

■"Bush Says Iran Speeds Output of A-bomb Fuel, by David E. Sanger, New York Times, 21 November 2004, p. A1.

■"Mongolia Under Pressure to Serve as haven for Refugees, by James Brooke, New York Times, 21 November 2004, p. A13.

Bush in Asia sitting down with a host of New Core leaders: he talks some scary noise on both Iran and North Korea, right up to mimicking Reagan's call to Moscow to "tear down that wall" in his pointed remarks to Kim Jong Il ("Get rid of your nuclear weapons programs.").

But no matter how harsh the rhetoric, even some of Bush's senior people are beginning to see the writing on the wall:

But Mr. Bush's quickness to seize on the Iranian production of uranium hexafluoride was driven, administration officials said, by a sense among his national security aides that there is still time to stop ran from actually producing a weapon. "We're past that point with North Korea," one senior adviser said recently. "With the North, it's a question of unwinding what's already happened."

Instead of asking which one is easier to stop, shouldn't we simple deal with the situation that's far worse? There is no deal to be made with North Korea, because that regime has nothing to offer. With Iran, there are clear things that country could offer in terms of better regional behavior that would be worth a lot to us right now, trapped as we are in Iraq. With Kim, it's just a nutcase with nukes, so disconnected from the global economy that the only way he makes money to prop up his regime is through criminal activity.

To me, the sequence of future events seems clear. If you believe China is the rising threat to peace, don't you focus on things that could bring war between you too first, while understanding that China is going to be making energy deals the world over to accommodate its massive development trajectoryólike with Iran?