For all its tough talk, the Bush administration wants to avoid any conventional war with North Korea, or any major military clash that carries the risk of escalating into a full-scale war. And it is likely to want to continue to seek to avoid those options for at least the next four or five years.

U.S. military planners and top U.S. civilian military analysts are now warning that the U.S. Army will probably need to retain a presence in Iraq at its current levels of 141,000 men at least till the end of 2008 and even through 2010 before the Iraqi government and the new Iraqi army and related security forces will be capable of functioning on their own.

The last thing U.S. military planners will therefore want to have to deal with is a full-scale military confrontation in another theater more than a quarter of the way around the world from Iraq on the other side of Asia at the same time.

And U.S. military planners take very seriously the initial threat they would face from the North Korean army if it attacked South Korea and U.S. forces stationed in the South.

Lt Gen. John Kimmons, U.S. Army deputy chief of staff for intelligence, told the Association of the U.S. Army conference in Washington on Oct. 9: "A million-man army is not an opponent you can dismiss. They've been postured very far forward, close to the demilitarized zone, with a huge army not particularly modernized but still very lethal, very capable."

President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have made clear they regard North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons as unacceptable. But they have also made clear they are seeking to cooperate with China and other nations in bringing economic pressure to bear on the impoverished North rather than seeking or risking any military confrontation.

However, Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president of foreign policy and defense studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian Washington think tank, and co-author of "The Korean Conundrum: America's Troubled Relations with North and South Korea" said in a statement that China would only consent to cooperate in enforcing such a policy if Washington was ready to give it important concessions in return.

"The best option would be to encourage China to oust Kim Jong-Il's regime," he said. "Beijing has been reluctant to take that step because it fears that the North Korean state would unravel and China would then face a U.S. military presence on its border."

Therefore, "Washington should assure Beijing that, if China subverts Kim's government, the United States will withdraw its forces from the Korean Peninsula and end its alliance with South Korea," Carpenter said. "Such an offer might prove irresistibly tempting to China, and it would be a painless way of ending the North Korea nuclear problem," he said.

The United States continues to refuse to deal with North Korea unilaterally on a direct one-on-one basis. Official U.S. policy remains to try and reconvene the ponderous and so far entirely ineffectual six-party talks in Beijing with China, Russia, South Korea, North Korea and Japan.

The European Union and its leading nations also support the six-party talks.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed that transatlantic consensus on Oct. 9.

"The North Korean government is taking another false step towards self-isolation," he said. "...It is now incumbent upon the U.N. Security Council, pursuant to its obligations as set out in the U.N. Charter, to resolutely respond to this provocation by North Korea."

"The aims pursued by the North Korean government can only be achieved through dialogue," Steinmeier said. "The Federal (German) government and the international community therefore expect North Korea to return to the six-party talks without delay."

Doug Bandow, a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy and the author of "Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World," wrote in National Interest Online, Oct. 10: "The best hope ... is a package of sticks and carrots."

The "sticks," or pressure on North Korea, Bandow wrote, "would be a coordinated program of economic pressure: international limits on international trade; South Korean restrictions on investment, commerce, and even humanitarian aid; Japanese termination of financial transfers from its ethnic Korean community; and Chinese reductions in food and fuel assistance."

"Combined with penalties would be a promise of full-scale international engagement, including recognition by Washington and trade with America, should the North return to international talks and agree to a verifiable process of denuclearization," he wrote.

However, Bandow acknowledged, "no one knows if it is still possible to peacefully halt the North's nuclear program. But if it is, Beijing -- not America -- is the key player."

Carpenter dismissed arguments by U.S. hawks that the U.S. Air Force could "surgically" destroy or "take out" North Korea's nuclear sites without setting off any wider war.

"Some hawks have previously suggested that the United States launch air strikes against North Korea's nuclear installations and missile sites," he said. "That would be an incredibly high-risk strategy. Pyongyang might well respond with attacks on targets in South Korea and Japan, thereby triggering a general war in East Asia.

"Proposals to impose an air and naval blockade on North Korea are almost as reckless," Carpenter continued. "A blockade is considered an act of war under international law. Moreover, the paranoid North Korean leadership might well consider it a prelude to a U.S.-led attack and react accordingly."