Senior Fellow  John R. Bolton

As the Bush administration enters its last months, its pursuit of a "legacy," especially in foreign policy, becomes ever more frenetic.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's travel schedule is packed. State Department "signing ceremonies" are blossoming, even for agreements that would not have attracted high-level attention just last year. Editorial writers are being quietly encouraged to laud administration successes.

While neither unique nor unexpected, the legacy frenzy masks what should be our real concern until Jan. 20, 2009: the risk of a vulnerable administration making significant, unforced errors and concessions that will burden America well into the future. As our attention turns to a presidential election in two short months, the U.S. is entering a period of vulnerability made more dangerous by the administration's provocative weakness.

Consider first what the State Department sees as one of its greatest successes: North Korea's nuclear weapons program. True to form, Pyongyang recently complained that the U.S. had not taken the final steps to remove it from our list of state sponsors of terrorism. Sadly, but also typically, State Department insiders believe that North Korea has a point, given the waterfall of concessions State has already made.

Pyongyang stopped disabling the crumbling Yongbyon reactor, braying that it might well undo steps already taken and put Yongbyon back in service. Surprisingly, State did not bend its flexible knee immediately, so the North did as it promised, moving--even if only symbolically at first--toward re-enabling the reactor. Many observers believe that Pyongyang is simply waiting for an Obama presidency to make the next round of concessions. That's possible, and is certainly a backup strategy. But the North's real aim is based on its reading of the Bush administration's psychology.

In their view, Secretary Rice fears the North Korean "success" slipping away and the deal itself threatened, if the North causes trouble because it remains on the terrorism list. Thus, as the administration's days dwindle down to a precious few, to quote a famous song line, Ms. Rice will inexorably grow more anxious to "save the deal."

In Pyongyang's judgment, this in turn will lead to "delisting," even though the North has come nowhere close to agreeing to the "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement" of its nuclear program--which was where the administration started six years ago.

Mr. Bush's course here is clear: He must not generate another Niagara of concessions to Kim Jong-il in his remaining months. If an Obama administration wants to start off by bending its knee to Pyongyang, don't do them a favor. And if a McCain administration is in the offing, don't cripple its possibilities by losing what little leverage the terrorism listing still provides us.

On Georgia, the administration, after a distressingly slow start, has at least now reached the proper rhetorical pitch. The real problem ahead is strengthening the resolve of our European allies. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's recent comment (politely described by the White House as "not rational") that we "created this conflict deliberately to create tension and help one of the candidates in the U.S. presidential campaign" will unfortunately resonate in certain Western European circles.

However, the first efforts to translate the president's rhetoric into action--such as at NATO's recent foreign ministers' meeting--have been disappointing. Ms. Rice did not even propose reversing NATO's earlier rejection (at the Bucharest summit in April) of Mr. Bush's proposal to put Georgia and the Ukraine formally on the path to NATO membership.

That rejection undoubtedly weighed heavily in Moscow's calculus to invade Georgia. It could be likened to Secretary of State Dean Acheson's failure to include South Korea within America's Pacific defense perimeter--which was followed by North Korea's invasion of the South in June 1950.

NATO's meeting in December provides another opportunity to reverse the Bucharest mistake, and administration diplomacy should focus urgently on so doing. Washington must also take other decisive steps--including withdrawing all proposals for missile defense and nuclear cooperation. We should also quickly enhance training and equipment programs in current NATO members bordering on or proximate to Russia. Visible U.S. diplomacy, such as the $1 billion Georgia reconstruction program, would go far in reversing the provocative weakness that fostered the debacle in Georgia--and the risk of even greater Russian adventurism, both within the former Soviet Union and beyond.

Unfortunately, Ms. Rice's diplomacy is focused on castigating Israel's settlements on the West Bank, and her continued pursuit of a "peace process" begun at the Annapolis, Md., international conference last November. That process was doomed from the outset, given the ongoing collapse and dissolution of the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Bush's heart never seemed to be in this effort; now would certainly be a good time to abandon it, and the clear misallocation of scarce administration time and resources that process represents.

This is especially true as Iran continues its unimpeded pursuit of nuclear weapons. Any hope of a fourth Security Council sanctions resolution (let alone, finally, a meaningful one) disappeared in the dust kicked up by Russian tanks entering Georgia. U.S. diplomacy failed on Iran long ago, and the real issue now, for well or ill, is what, if anything, Israel decides to do militarily.

Mr. Bush has been Israel's greatest friend in the Oval Office, and he may now have one more chance to prove it. Instead of rejecting Israeli requests for support, as press reports indicate the Pentagon is doing, Washington should at least be quietly helping Israel increase its defensive readiness.

Pushing back North Korea, standing up to Russia, and supporting Israel against Iran: now there's a real Bush administration legacy. That is the President Bush who was actually elected in 2000, not the one now being lauded by the high minded for his second-term policy reversals. Those people are mostly interested in laying the foreign policy foundations of an Obama administration. Let's hope that President Bush hasn't left the building yet.

John R. Bolton is a senior fellow at AEI.