maccennedi1       It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,  To puff and look important and to say;  Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.  We will therefore pay you cash to go away.  And that is called paying the Dane-geld;  But we've proved it again and again, That once you have paid him the Dane-geld  You never get rid of the Dane.   Rudyard Kipling, “Dane-Geld"

Kipling's verses, written at the dawn of this century about the tribute the Saxons paid to the Danes a millennium ago, capture the conservative view of history as a recurring pattern of problems and competing solutions. The latest manifestation of the Dane-geld folly is the Clinton administration's policy toward North Korea.

The development of weapons of mass destruction an attractive course for despots clinging to power in failed states.