HONOLULU -- Some people are scratching their heads over the standoff over North Korea's clandestine nuclear-weapons development program. They point out that by the early 1990s, it was thought that Pyongyang already had one or two nuclear warheads. They note that the fundamental strategic calculus has not changed: North Korea's use of those weapons would mean the end of the regime and the state as it currently exists. In other words, deterrence still works. Finally, they argue that the United States has said it won't attack North Korea and North Korean leaders know that attacking the South would be suicidal, so the risk of a nuclear war is nonexistent.

So what's the big fuss? The North Korean crisis threatens to expose as a myth an idea that has served as the foundation of the international order. The idea is that nuclear weapons have no utility. Since the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, came into effect, governments have maintained that nuclear weapons have no real use or value; thus, there was no point in developing such arms -- and spending and wasting all that money. If such weapons have no utility, then giving them up, in exchange for peaceful nuclear technology (which is part of the NPT deal), was easy. But if they do have value, then the bargain starts to look lopsided.

The big danger is that the North Korean crisis shows that those weapons do indeed have value. North Korea has been caught cheating on its international obligations; it has chemical and biological arms, is a known missile proliferator and has been tied to terrorism and criminal activities in the past. Iraq is suspected of many of those things, but hard evidence is lacking. And yet, war drums are beating in the Middle East, while the U.S. downplays the military option on the Korean Peninsula.