Really? (a) It's not Mehlman's agenda. He does not set foreign policy
(b) There is no military solution . If they mount missiles capable of hitting the US onto their platforms we can shoot them down. But there is no feasible military solution that doesn't kill millions of people for the broader picture.
By drawing other parties into the talks we have toughened S Korea which reduced supplies to NK, toughened Japan which will surely change its constitution and begin building nukes and enlarging its military, toughened China which is largely restrained by fear of millions of NK's crossing their border as refugees.
A multi-national solution after what Clinton left us (a NK well on its way to nuclear arms) is all that's left.
There is a tool toward a solution. Our economic relationship with China. If China was told that was on the table, North Korea's nuke program would be dead. That relationship, in terms of economic benefit is oneway, in China's favor, because as far as cheap foreign production for U.S. and European companies go, there is no lack of people or willing partners all over Asia.
But, we are dealing with a forty-year myth that the economic changes in China will produce Chinese "moderation", in the political and human rights realms, in spite of twenty-plus years of evidence that demonstrate not a single instance of either one.
We are dealing with self-deception about China - delivered and turned into a mantra from our State Department - that is as insidiuous and self-serving as the self-deception they had for forty years about the origins of Islamic terrorism.