O

nce more North Korea throws its nuclear baby-rattle out of the crib. Yet again it checks whether the adult world will continue ignoring its cries.

This is the way it goes in Pyongyang: By acting like an infant, it reestablishes its reputation for conducting public diplomacy the only way it knows how. It now vows to re-engineer its nuclear program while ordering international inspectors to leave the worker's paradise of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. So there, world! Get out of my life!

To this latest salvo, the world needs to react with urgency but not alarm. There is a crucial difference.

The real profound urgency is on the side of North Korea's leaders.They keep going over the top emotionally because they are bottoming out economically. They keep sending up rockets because not many North Koreans have much of an anything left in their pockets.

It cannot go on like this forever. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea will become the governmental equivalent of the woeful commercial airline that goes out of business because its plane crashes kill off its customers. More or less, this is precisely the amazing manner in which Pyongyang has mismanaged the North Korean economy: It has chosen to take a crash course.

Alarm comes from Tokyo. Recall that the history of Japan's overall relations with the Korean Peninsula has been anything but snuggly and convivial. When North Korean plans for a missile launch were made known, Tokyo trumpeted its intention to shoot down any missile "debris," not to mention the projectile itself, should it swarm over Japanese airspace.

One perhaps could have sympathized, so long as the Japanese didn't get trigger-happy. Uh, oh; they did: The government announced its radar screens had picked up a North Korean launch - but this "detection" occurred well before the actual launch. Yes, its military radar had made a mistake. The panic button had been activated. This is not a healthy operational precedent.

What's really needed is a sensible and proportionate reaction and global policy that goes beyond alarm. As pathetic as it is, the government of the so-named Democratic People's Republic of Korea will be there until it falls, which of course someday it must. But some day could be a near-eternity, especially if you're a starving child of North Korea born into a cruel world you could not have wanted and could not possibly deserve.

The only sensible and proportionate policy toward North Korea is one that tries to help the helpless and accepts that the current government is probably hopeless. The more that government acts against humanity, the more the world needs to respond with the un-ideological largesse of humanitarian aid. This means the West must encourage and fund all the humanitarian aid that will get to the ill-fed and ill-clothed people of the North.

Western intelligence agencies must cease trying to slip agents inside those non-governmental aid organizations willing to soldier up north to feed and clothe people. They aren't fooling anyone, especially the North Korean government, and so only compromise the aid mission. The Western focus needs to be on feeding people and saving lives, not worrying about trying to topple the regime which will fall whenever it is ready to collapse - unless the West is prepared to strike militarily, which it isn't.

At the same time, all low or middle level efforts at negotiations will probably prove a waste of everyone's time. Sure, the Six Party Talks can be started yet again: there's no value in discouraging China, which is their parent. But the mid-level special-envoy approach, now spearheaded for the US by Fletcher School Dean Stephen Bosworth, will get us nowhere. The American Foreign Service doesn't have a more capable or indefatigable diplomat than Dean Bosworth, but what North Korea needs is not a Dean but perhaps a President.

That President could be an Obama or it could be a Clinton; or maybe a Secretary of State Clinton would suffice. But nothing will be achieved unless and until the US commits to sending a very high-level VIP to Pyongyang with full latitude to cut a final nuclear-disarmament deal.

Even then, the ineptitude of the North Korean government may prove enduring. Especially now, it's a bit confusing to be sure who is in charge. The health of Kim Jong-il is obviously frail; perhaps the edgy military establishment (the DPRK's largest governmental department) is now more or less calling the shots, pending a succession shakeout. But a US superstar-to-Pyongyang approach is probably worth a try, especially if it allows Western aid greater access. The North Korean dilemma is not an easy one to work out, but it continues to be a tragedy worth our best caring, professional and proportionate efforts.