I was catching up on reading State Department transcripts and ran across “this”:http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2004/39717.htm response from spokesperson Richard Boucher to a question regarding the stalled six-party talks.

Given that North Korea is free to continue working on its nuclear weapons programs, it is troubling that there’s not even another round of talks scheduled. Even if this state of affairs is more North Korea’s fault than anyone else’s (as is probably the case), you’d think this would be kind of a problem.

Boucher agrees, but not necessarily for the reason you’d think:

bq. North Korea keeps finding reasons to delay. They keep missing out on the opportunity of solving this and the other opportunities that would arise by solving this.

That is certainly one way of looking at it. But when I said “problem” I meant “For the United States.” I think we might be “missing out” on a few things as well.