If you’ve ever wondered how a President Kerry foreign policy would have turned out, look no further than the state of play with the two axis states who weren’t dealt with in the “Bush unilateral way” – Iran and North Korea. President Bush has been following the Democrats’ multilateral route with those two. He’s allowed the Europeans to take the lead in dealing with the mullahs and has been working with Asian countries in negotiating with Kim Jong Il. Both tracks have failed, but you wouldn’t know that from the silence of the Democrats. After deriding President Bush for “going it alone” and “not working with our allies” against Iraq, there is little for them to say when he follows their policy and it fails.

The Europeans who have been entrusted with America’s safety in dealing with Iran – Britain, France, and Germany – have been offering Tehran a series of political and economic bribes to stop building atomic weapons. Iran took the carrots and continued with its program. The Europeans have been responding by voicing different levels of concern (it’s now at “serious concern”). The mullahs continue ignoring the Europeans – they know the biggest stick the Europeans carry is the threat of deferring the matter to the United Nations Security Council. The Russians, who have been helping the mullahs build their nuclear program, have a veto, as does Red China, an ally of Tehran.

Such a multilateral strategy has come at a cost. It has emboldened the mullahs and allowed them to edge closer to a bomb. It also has sent the wrong message to other would-be nuclear states: You’ll be rewarded for trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Actually punishing states that break commitments, as President Bush did with Iraq, sent the opposite message. After Saddam was overthrown, Libya’s tyrant, Muammar Gadhafi, surrendered his secret nuclear program, fearing Saddam’s fate. Fear of being deposed has now been eroded among rogue states as they watch America become tied down by the “multilateral” approach.

The mistake of trying to bribe rogue states has already been demonstrated with North Korea. President Clinton offered Kim Jong Il an arms control agreement, known as the “Agreed Framework,” that plied him with light-water reactors and billions of dollars in aid to not pursue a nuclear program. Mr. Kim accepted the bribes and continued with his program anyway, which was not discovered until 2002. Now he’s back demanding more bribes, and he’s in a stronger position because he is presumed already to have a bomb.

Why it doesn’t threaten world security that America, Britain, and India have nuclear weapons, while it matters that North Korea and Iran don’t, is obvious: The problem isn’t the weapons, but who wields them. Iran and North Korea are undemocratic and repressive states. Communist Korea has communist-type concentration camps; the mullahs imprison people demanding freedom. They’d have no qualms with using nuclear weapons on others or passing them on to terrorist groups. Iran has long helped terrorist groups across the world.

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported last year that an Iranian Revolutionary Guards official, Hassan Abbassi, said Iran had developed a strategy to destroy “Anglo-Saxon civilization.” He outlined its plan: “There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West. We have already spied on these sites and we know how we are going to attack them.” The defeated “moderate” candidate in the recent sham presidential elections, Hashemi Rafsanjani, has declared that Iran needs nuclear weapons to destroy Israel.

The Democrats’ multilateral strategy has been played out. We’re living in a Kerry world vis-a-vis Iran and North Korea, and it’s more dangerous than Iraq. While there is still much that needs to be done in Iraq, Saddam is no longer playing games about his nuclear intentions, and the Iraqi people are no longer being oppressed. The American people didn’t vote for a President Kerry. They voted for a President Bush. So the logic is growing for President Bush to assert his policy approach in respect of the remaining two members of the axis. The Democrats have had their chance and it failed.