Just as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was arriving in Asia this week, Pyongyang was threatening to test a long-range missile. That’s its way of saying, “Don’t ignore us!” North Korea’s nuclear program is not in the top tier of foreign policy issues facing the Obama administration. The new team in Washington believes it has to deal with other priorities – the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the global economic meltdown, climate change and Middle East peace – before it can address the North Korean conundrum.

But North Korea isn’t waiting patiently for its turn in line. Its economy is in lousy shape. It has difficulty feeding its population. Its leader Kim Jong Il is reportedly recovering from a stroke, and no one knows who will be the next head of state. Firing a long-range missile is one way that North Korea can prove that it’s still alive and wants a deal now.

It’s rather disturbing that, for example, when — when the incoming secretary spoke about Afghanistan, she talked about her own view of — in support of what appears to be president-elect Obama’s plan to double the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and then engage in a serious strategic discussion to figure out what to do.

To me, that sounds backwards. It seems to me that you figure out your strategy first, before you send additional troops. So, I think that this notion of soft power is very important, but I heard too many parts of her testimony today where she sort of said the opposite when it came to the specifics.