A new rival to 'regime change'

"Qaddafi wanted to be certain that [the US] goal was not to kill him or to end his regime," notes one European diplomat, drawing a parallel between the Libyan and Iranian cases. "Until the day [the US] says that, we may be in a stalemate," says the diplomat, who asked not to be named because of the ongoing nature of the talks.

But nonproliferation experts say the recent steps on Libya and renewed debate on North Korea may mean the Bush administration is moving toward separating its political ideology from one of its top national-security goals, which has been to stop the spread of WMD to troublesome countries - especially those supporting international terrorism.

"If the US is signaling it is no longer mixing regime change and its nuclear nonproliferation objectives, that would be very useful," says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington. The US approach to North Korea is "not working," Mr. Kimball says, as evidenced by Pyongyang's continued buildup of its nuclear arsenal since talks in September. He says that fact and the lack of options on Iran may be pushing the administration to consider new options.

"They may have learned their own lesson from Libya," Kimball says, "that the most effective way to persuade a rogue state to dismantle its WMD program is to assure that state that its government won't be overthrown."

Of course, not everyone agrees that's the lesson of Libya. Mr. Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center says the Libyans gave up WMD because "they were convinced they were next on the list" after Iraq. "If you don't have something to hold over these regimes," he adds, "it can be seen as weakness."

Indeed, in part because of the prevailing support for that argument, other experts discount suggestions that the Bush administration is turning its back on regime change. Robert Einhorn, a former diplomat in nonproliferation affairs now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says he sees no sign the White House is heeding building pressures to engage with WMD foes.

He cites a recent Washington Post column in which Henry Kissinger recommends the US enter into talks with Iran - or face a destabilizing expansion of the world's nuclear club. "But I don't see the administration buying into that perspective," he says, "any more than I see them giving the nuclear problem parity with their other concerns about these regimes."

But others place the North Korea and Iran issues in the context of an ongoing foreign-policy debate in the administration - and they see the rise of those in the Kissinger vein as having an impact. "We're seeing the ascendency of the pragmatists over the ideologues, but we don't know yet if that rise is anything definitive," says Joseph Cirincione, an analyst at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

Pointing to the administration's internal debate over extending an olive branch to North Korea, he says, "It may be about more than North Korea: It may be the first step in a reorientation of US proliferation policy."

For that to be the case, however, Mr. Cirincione says it would take acknowledgment that regime change is off the table - something not all White House quarters appear ready to do. "The day Vice President Cheney gives a speech about negotiating with the North Koreans," he says, "then it will be a done deal."

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