Let Its Neighbors Deal With North Korea

After nearly two years of a deep freeze between Washington and Pyongyang, the Obama administration has embarked on a new round of nuclear negotiations.  “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war,” Winston Churchill rightly observed.  But Washington should step back from the Korean peninsula, shifting responsibility for the North Korean “problem” to the North’s neighbors.

The Korean peninsula never was a vital American interest.  The U.S. opened relations with the kingdom of Korea shortly before it was swallowed by imperial Japan.  Despite Koreans’ plaintive pleas for help, Washington refused to challenge Tokyo.