This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, July 14, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The twin nuclear threats of North Korea and Iran have been complicated further

by the illness and secession plans of dictator Kim Jong-il

and the election-driven unrest in Iran.

How should the U.S. respond?

Ted Gailin Carpenter, the Cato Institute's Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy

Studies, comments.

The prospects for successful negotiations with regard to North Korea have been fading badly.

They were never all that great.

But given the questions about the succession in North Korea, given Pyongyang's actions over the past three months or so.

The various missile tests, the nuclear tests, the announced withdrawal from the six-party talks, the rescinding, at least officially

of the Korean armistice, all suggests that the North Korean government is determined to become a nuclear weapon state and that

negotiations are not likely to dissuade that country.

With regard to Iran, the prospects for negotiations may be even worse. The

negotiations have been going essentially nowhere for a long time. The United States and its allies insisted that Iran renounce its

nuclear enrichment program and that was essentially a deal breaker in all cases.

And now with the domestic turmoil there,

the apparent victory of the clerical hardliners

and the suppression of the opposition,

it is domestically awkward to put it mildly

for the Obama administration to even talk about negotiations with Iran.

...