Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

The tentative deal with North Korea on its nuclear program reflects a huge and welcome shift in U.S. policy. The pact could still falter because Pyongyang is notoriously fickle. But if the deal goes through, it would represent a 180-degree shift for the Bush White House.

Gone is the effort to promote “regime change” for this charter member of the “axis of evil.” Instead, this deal resulted from direct diplomacy of the kind the White House scorned during its first term. Clearly, an Iraq-chastened President Bush finally recognized that North Korea wasn’t about to implode and the use of force to remove its weapons wasn’t an option.

One can only wonder what this shift means for U.S. policy toward the other extant member of Bush’s axis – Iran.

Just consider the stunning reversal of policy represented by this pact. One of President Bush’s earliest moves was to repudiate Bill Clinton’s efforts to seek a grand bargain with North Korea. Such a bargain would have exchanged U.S. recognition for the end of Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

The Clinton administration had negotiated an Agreed Framework with Pyongyang in 1994 that swapped energy assistance for a freeze of North Korea’s plutonium reactors. But Bush claimed he had a “visceral reaction” to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il for starving his own people. The president blocked Colin Powell from picking up negotiations where Clinton left off.

The White House let the Agreed Framework die after learning that North Korea was pursuing a secret uranium enrichment program. North Korea then restarted its frozen plutonium reactors. The result: Since 2002, experts believe, North Korea has produced enough fissile material for six to 10 weapons, and it recently conducted a nuclear test. However, most experts doubt that the uranium enrichment program has made much headway.

The Bush administration eventually returned to multilateral talks with North Korea. But, until recently, the White House rejected any direct U.S.-North Korean negotiations.

Why the shift now? Clearly it’s linked to the shift in administration personnel. The weak Powell is out, replaced by Condoleezza Rice, who seems to have regained her “realist” bent. Donald Rumsfeld is gone, and so is one of the harshest critics of direct talks with North Korea (or Iran), former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton. Thus, Ambassador Christopher Hill has finally been able to negotiate directly with the North Koreans.

Bolton decried the pact recently on CNN, fulminating that it “is the same thing that the State Department was prepared to do six years ago. If we are going to cut this deal now, it’s amazing we didn’t cut it back then.”

Amen. Had we done it back then, North Korea would not have those six to 10 nuclear weapons. The fact that past opportunities were missed doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seize them now.

No one has any illusions about the repulsiveness, or reliability, of the North Korean regime. Of all the ugliness I’ve witnessed as a correspondent, few things have moved me as much as my meetings in Seoul with North Korean defectors: With their glazed eyes and awful memories, they were like dead people walking.

Yet no one should imagine we can bomb Pyongyang into disappearance, or that the regime will collapse soon.

So the question becomes how best to try to prevent the North Koreans from destabilizing their neighborhood, or selling their plutonium to the highest bidder. This deal has benchmarks: North Korea has to freeze its main nuclear complex immediately and let U.N. inspectors back in, then reveal all its other nuclear facilities. Then it must negotiate the details of disarming. In return, it gets about 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil.

The big carrot at the end is normal relations with the United States and more economic aid. China, North Korea’s main backer, will be pressing Pyongyang, in tandem with Washington, to move forward.

Does this deal reward North Korea’s bad behavior? Somewhat. Can we be sure North Korea won’t renege? No.

Does it make sense, in light of these risks, to let North Korea continue producing bomb material – if there is a potential alternative? No. Is it wiser for us and our Asian allies to try to corral North Korea, but with the United States offering the juiciest carrot? Yes.

This is the calculus that apparently convinced realist Rice. And she apparently persuaded her boss. (Perhaps Dick Cheney is so certain the process will fail he isn’t objecting.)

In the end, the chance to change North Korea’s behavior trumped the White House dream of regime change. Is it possible this calculus will yet be applied to Iran?

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial board member for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers may write to her at: Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101, or by e-mail at [email protected].