John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the U.N. and Abroad,” forthcoming this fall from Simon & Schuster, has written the following, “Pyongyang’s Perfidy,” for the WSJ (via emailed, sorry no link) on North Korea’s reneging of the 13 February deal and how the example is weakening America’s position internationally:

Over a month has passed since sweetness and light were due to break out on the Korean Peninsula. . . The first step, 60 days after ratification, was to be that North Korea “will shut down and seal for the purpose of eventual abandonment” the Yongbyon nuclear facility, and readmit inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

[. . .]

Instead, observers — especially Iran and other nuclear weapons aspirants — have witnessed embarrassing U.S. weakness on a supposedly unrelated issue, unmentioned in the Feb. 13 agreement. That issue involves North Korea’s widely publicized demand that approximately $25 million frozen in Macau-based Banco Delta Asia (BDA) accounts be released and transferred to Pyongyang.

[. . .]

While the Bush administration denies a direct link, the North Koreans have said publicly that they will not comply with the bilateral agreement until the BDA funds are safely under their control. This obvious quid pro quo is not only embarrassing, it sets a dangerous precedent for other regimes that would blackmail the U.S. What are the consequences of the BDA meltdown?

First, the timetable of the Feb. 13 agreement is already shredded. President Bush said at the time of the deal: “Those who say that the North Koreans have got to prove themselves by actually following through on the deal are right, and I’m one.” Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill, the deal’s U.S. architect and chief negotiator, said: “We need to avoid above all missing deadlines. It’s like a broken-window theory: one window is unrepaired, and before you know it you’ll have a lot of broken windows and nobody cares.”

Those statements were correct when made, and they are correct today. Sadly, however, they no longer seem to be “operative.”

Second, by making secret side deals with North Korea, the State Department has left itself vulnerable to future renegotiation efforts. This is the North’s classic style: Negotiate hard to reach an agreement, sign it, and then start renegotiating, not to mention violating the deal at will. America’s serial concessions on BDA simply confirm to Pyongyang that State is well into the “save the deal” mode, which bodes well for future North Korean efforts to recast it. Consider the sequence of administration positions on BDA: Initially, the criminal investigation and the nuclear issue were not supposed to be connected, but the North insisted and the U.S. gave in.

Then, North Korea moved the renegotiation into high gear, demanding the return of the funds as a precondition to complying with its own commitments. Unwilling to “just say no,” the Bush administration tried to distinguish between “licit” and “illicit” funds, returning only those that were legitimate. (This, of course begs the question whether anything that the criminal conspiracy running North Korea does is “licit.”) Even the “licit” funds returned, however, were to be used only for “humanitarian” projects in North Korea rather than returned to Kim Jong Il’s grasp — although how in an age of the U.N.’s “Cash for Kim” program the State Department thought this was to be verified remains a mystery.

Nevertheless, North Korea was not satisfied, insisting that all the funds had to be returned to the actual account holders, with no restrictions on their use, even though all agree that at least some were acting illicitly. This, too, State accepted.

[. . .]

But even this was not enough for North Korea, which, sensing U.S. weakness, continues to press for more. Although conflicting stories abound, North Korea may be seeking not just the return of the BDA funds, but something much more significant: guaranteed access to international financial markets, even through an American bank. Indeed, this week Wachovia Corp. confirmed that it had been approached by the State Department to assist in the transfer of funds.

Here, the issue is inescapably related to North Korea’s nuclear program. The North’s access to international financial markets to launder its ill-gotten revenues is critical both to continued financing of its nuclear regime and to keeping Kim Jong Il in power. If this is even close to what the State Department is prepared to do, who will ever again take us seriously when we threaten financial strangulation of rogue states and terrorist groups? Granting this North Korean demand would make U.S. concessions on BDA look paltry by comparison.

[. . .]

How these issues play out will have ramifications far beyond North Korea, particularly for Iran. Some say the Bush administration entered the Feb. 13 deal because it desperately needed a success. One thing is for certain: It does not need a failure. The president can easily extricate himself from the deal, just based on North Korea’s actions to date. He should take the first opportunity to do so.