That will make Kim a respectable interlocutor for President Bill Clinton, who is expected to visit too in the waning weeks of his term. It will also make it much harder for Clinton’s successor to justify putting in phase one of a limited national missile defense, a policy the president has long been ambivalent about, since North Korean hostility has long been the chief reason for it. Many issues still lie between the two nations–missile and nuclear proliferation, and Pyongyang’s presence on the U.S. list of terrorist-sponsoring states–and officials expect no major accords to come out of Albright’s visit. But the rapprochement, if it continues, will reduce America’s list of rogue states by one. And it may well remove a major threat to peace in Asia.
