The geopolitical charade known as the six-party talks--the international diplomatic game in which North Korea pretends to consider denuclearizing, while five other countries at the table pretend to believe Pyongyang is serious--seem to have entered a new and surreal phase. By many yardsticks (to pick just one: the amount of plutonium in Kim Jong Il's nuclear arsenal), the North Korean nuclear problem is decidedly more acute today than it was before the negotiating process began two years ago. Thus far, the fourth round of talks has been as fruitless as the previous three. After 13 days of meetings without substantive progress, negotiations were recessed until the week of August 29. The participants--North Korea, the U.S., South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia--have yet to reach even the most basic accord. Still, none of the governments committed to this exercise in conference diplomacy is willing to admit failure.

The time to grant an honorable burial to the six-party talks was June 2004, at the end of the third round. At that session, North Korea categorically rejected the U.S.-backed objective of "complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization." Pyongyang countered with its own preferred resolution, which would provide the North with energy and other aid, plus security guarantees and diplomatic recognition, in return for freezing its nuclear programs. Because that proposed freeze covered only plutonium-based weapons (Pyongyang has never publicly acknowledged its secret uranium-enrichment program), North Korea's proposal amounted to international payments for a temporary--and only partial--halt. The proposal wasn't an ambitious opening bid in a denuclearization negotiation, or even an argument about "the shape of the table"--it was a boldfaced assertion that the table right in the middle of the room did not exist.

Under such circumstances, meaningful discussions were impossible. But not even the supposedly unilateralist Bush administration was willing to declare the talks finished. So Pyongyang was free to press ahead in its race to develop and amass nuclear weapons, confident that it would be able to return to "denuclearization" discussions at a time of Kim Jong Il's own choosing. North Korea finally agreed in June to go back to the table, but only after a promise of half a million tons of free rice from South Korea. And in the months leading up to the current talks, North Korea did not exactly signal its wholehearted enthusiasm for denuclearization. Instead, Pyongyang announced that it was proceeding apace with plutonium reprocessing and with "weaponizing" its plutonium; it also claimed that it had "manufactured nukes," and declared that "these weapons" would be "kept for self-defense under any circumstances."

Once the fourth round got under way, it quickly became apparent that Pyongyang's position had not changed. Denuclearization, in any normal meaning of the term, was not going to be on the agenda. Never mind the secret uranium program that Pyongyang still publicly avers is nonexistent. North Korea says it will not sign a joint statement endorsing eventual denuclearization because it wishes to preserve the option of peaceful nuclear-power development. Instead, the North has tried to turn the talks into an international forum on U.S. military disengagement from South Korea. Although Washington has not based nuclear weapons in the South for nearly 15 years, Pyongyang is insisting that the U.S. drop its defense umbrella, hence severing the long-standing military alliance between the two countries. And if that step were taken, clearing the way for a peace treaty between the U.S. and North Korea, would Kim abandon nuclear weapons? The North is promising nothing.

The time has come for the U.S., which acts as a regional balancer in North Asia, to provide some balance. The first step: the U.S. should declare the bankruptcy of the six-party process. Then Washington should impose real-time penalties on Pyongyang, the world's most aggressive and flagrant nuclear proliferator. The Bush administration recently finalized its North Korea dream team of diplomats with John Bolton's appointment as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The roster is now in place for the administration's hard-liners to move beyond the gab factory.

Diplomacy, to be sure, will still figure prominently in reducing the North Korean nuclear threat. But the emphasis will have to be on mending the relationship with Seoul and establishing better rapport with Beijing, North Korea's two main financial backers. The North should be penalized, not rewarded, for its campaign of international nuclear menace. The country is highly vulnerable to economic pressure, and a coordinated strategy could expose its weak points. Would such a strategy be risky? No doubt. But could it really be riskier than a new round of talks?

Nicholas Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at AEI.