Bill Clinton rejoins the merry-go-round

US President Barack Obama's decision to send Bill Clinton to North Korea will be seen as a gamble by both fans and critics of the US administration's policy of engagement with 'states of concern'. While Clinton's primary aim was to secure the release of two American journalists arrested last March - and he achieved that - this unexpectedly bold demarche will inevitably be viewed strategically as yet another attempt by Washington to bring the enigmatic panjandrums of Pyongyang in from the cold.

US policy towards North Korea is more circular than linear, resembling a not so jolly merry-go-round that sooner or later carries the diplomatic traveller back to the place he started. As president, Clinton came close to bombing suspected nuclear weapons-making facilities before shifting tack and seeking normalisation of state-to-state ties through the 1994 Agreed Framework. In 2000, he sent his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, to Pyongyang, in a vain bid to boost the process.

Under George W. Bush and his hawkish arms control envoy, John Bolton, relations rapidly regressed and the framework fell apart in 2003. Tougher international sanctions followed. But North Korea doggedly pursued its atomic ambitions and, in October 2006, detonated a small nuclear device, thereby joining the 'nuclear club'. It had also become a prime proliferation risk in terms of its proven or presumed collaboration with Pakistan, Libya and possibly Iran.

Like its predecessors, and realising that pressure tactics were not working, the Bush administration came full circle. It sought to induce North Korea through the so-called six-party talks process to abandon its nuclear activities in return for economic and energy assistance and a general thaw in relations. For a while the policy seemed to be working; Pyongyang decommissioned its main Yongbyon reactor and allowed international inspections.

But then, for reasons that remain unclear, the deal soured. Perhaps the cause was the harsh impact of continuing financial sanctions on the regime's private finances; perhaps it was an internal power struggle over the succession to the ailing Kim Jong-il, the Dear Leader; or perhaps its was the advent in Washington of a new, untested president to succeed Bush.

Whatever the reason, North Korea's behaviour began to deteriorate rapidly earlier this year. It exploded a second atomic bomb in May, fired ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, and declared the six-party talks to be dead and buried. It is rumoured to be preparing a long-range missile launch into the Pacific, in what would be a blatant attempt to intimidate the US. It was during this period of growing confrontation that the two journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who work for a television company co-founded by Clinton's former vice-president, Al Gore, were arrested, charged with spying, and sentenced to hard labour.

With Bill Clinton's visit to Pyongyang, the merry-go-round appears to have turned full circle once again. The former president was reportedly feted on arrival by senior officials, including the country's chief nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye-gwan. He also met with Kim.

And it is a likely assumption that, while he holds no official position as a US envoy, Clinton would have carried a private message from Obama for the Dear Leader suggesting, in the style of Obama's dealings with Iran and Syria, that it is better to talk than exchange threats and insults.

Given the North's always unpredictable behaviour, this is a huge gamble.

Kim and his cronies have tried to exploit the situation, portraying their visitor as a supplicant come to apologise for past misdeeds. They may interpret his presence as a sign of US and Western political weakness; it may actually encourage their defiance of the international community, as expressed through last June's UN Security Council Resolution 1874 (which condemned the May nuclear test and imposed additional sanctions). In this scenario, the release of the two journalists may be characterised as an act of great magnanimity by the Dear Leader. That is the risk Obama is running.

Many on the American right feel that Pyongyang is being rewarded for bad behaviour. But as always, there is a contrary view balancing the merry-go-round. It may just be that Clinton, unlike Albright and Jimmy Carter (who visited in 1994), was able to genuinely break the ice, convince the North's leadership that the benefits of dialogue and detente outweigh the costs of confrontation - and that a return to a negotiating table groaning with attractive incentives for good behaviour is in their interests. The thinking in the White House can probably be summarised along these line: Bill wants to go, it's worth a try, nothing else has worked, so let's do it.

Quite how this fits with the hawkish views expressed by Clinton's wife, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during her tour of the region last month is not entirely clear. The secretary of state publicly took a much more aggressive line than her husband, comparing the North Korean leadership to unruly children who had brought punishment down on their own heads. The North Koreans' responded angrily to this scolding, calling her "vulgar" and "less than clever".

Reports from the Association of South-East Asian Nations summit described her tone as unyielding. Pyongyang had shown no interest in a dialogue. But it would have to take "complete and irreversible" steps towards fulfilling US demands before receiving any economic or political incentives, she said.

Now, possibly to her surprise, a very large, unsolicited political incentive has turned up in Pyongyang in the shape of her very own husband, Bill. This coincidence must have made for an interesting conversation when he returned home.