I had an op ed on Sunday in the Washington Times about what to do about North Korea:
Although deeply injurious to U.S. interests, nothing that Kim Jong-il has done is irrational, crazy or, that old orientalist favorite, inscrutable. The North Koreans have repeatedly stated that they would abandon their nuclear weapons for a normal relationship with the United States. In pursuit of this goal, North Korea seems to be following the simplest — and most effective — strategy from game theory: tit for tat.
[snip]
As a strategy, however, tit for tat is not perfect. “The trouble with tit for tat,” as [Political Scientist Robert] Axelrod wrote, “is that once a feud gets started, it can continue indefinitely. … The injuries can echo back and forth until the original violation is lost in the distant past.”
[snip]
The solution in this case is neither to continue the escalation — that’s how we got the North Korean nuclear test in October 2006 — nor to ignore the provocation.
Rather, the solution is to develop a policy that, in effect, returns only a fraction of a tit for a tat. This means provocations are punished, but the “echo” of retaliation is dampened.
There is a companion piece by Heritage’s Bruce Klingner who, as you might imagine, prefers a rather larger TAT than I do.