The art of the bluff: why Kim is not Saddam.

• Author: Bremmer, Ian

WITH MAJOR combat operations in Iraq consigned to the history books (we hope), the United States can now give greater focus to North Korea's rogue regime. Kim Jong-il has captured public attention as a dangerous lunatic in the Saddam Hussein mold, and therein lies an error. Kim is not the next Saddam. This has serious policy implications, for the U.S. strategy that removed Saddam is not the most advantageous way to deal with Kim.

There is no mistaking Kim's--ahem--eccentricities. He claims to have been born atop a sacred mountain, under a double rainbow. In the 1970s, Kim ordered thugs to kidnap his favorite South Korean director and forced him to make films celebrating the glory of his regime. Meeting with then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Kim propounded the Swedish model for his country's development. He traveled nearly a month by sealed railroad car to see President Putin in Moscow. He favors dark glasses and platform shoes. Clearly, Mr. Kim has issues.

The similarities between North Korea and Iraq are equally obvious: a despicable authoritarian regime, an impoverished and oppressed population, a history of flouting international obligations, and a penchant for weapons of mass destruction. But there is one critical difference. When it comes to the survival of his regime, Kim Jong-il is risk-averse.

This was not true of Hussein. When he thought the odds were right, Saddam was often ready to roll the dice on the future of his rule. The decision to tear up the Treaty of Algiers and invade Iran in 1980 was based on Hussein's assessment that the United States, its allies, Iraq's Warsaw Pact backers and the Arab Gulf states would, at least tacitly, support him. In this he was right. In his expectation that Iran would crumble militarily, he misjudged catastrophically. Such was also the case when Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1990. This time, he misjudged American tolerance for Iraqi adventurism against an ally rather than an enemy. His tendency to run irrational risks was also at the center of his 1993 plot to assassinate the elder President Bush, which would certainly have initiated his regime's demise had he succeeded. Again and again, Saddam ran regime-threatening risks based on little more than his own flawed judgment.

Leaving aside Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction and its dubious links to Al-Qaeda, this was President Bush's primary reason for ousting the Iraqi leader. In a region of critical strategic importance for the United States--marked by increasing political instability and a growing tendency for that instability to reverberate beyond the region--leaving a risk-taking Hussein in power was unquestionably dangerous. It was far more preferable to remove him earlier, when he was relatively weak, rather than later, because here was a leader who, given enough time, would take...