I've seen a fair amount of commentary discussing whose foreign policy is more to blame for North Korean nukes, Bill Clinton's or George W. Bush's.

I argued a few months back that this illustrated the ludicrous, America-centric view of world policy that's come to dominate international discourse.

So who's to blame for North Korean nukes?

I don't know, maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but how about blaming fucking North Korea for their clandestine nuclear weapons program? And after them, the next three most directly responsible are not countries like ours that actually tried to forge nonproliferation agreements with them. No, it would be the grossly irresponsible nuclear powers that assisted North Korea with their secret nuclear program. Why the hell would anybody do such a thing? Strategically, many countries ascribe to the notion of aggressors-by-proxy. That is, if we nuclearize countries like North Korea, or Iran, that'll keep the Americans' hands full, and they'll tie up enormous resources dealing with these rogue states. Again, who would do such a thing? Russia, China, and Pakistan have all been implicated as probable accessories to aiding North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

So let's recap, for the analytically-impaired. Those states, in order, that are most responsible for the nuclearization of the Korean peninsula are:

1) North Korea
2) China
3) Russia
4) Pakistan

And where does the U.S. rank? The country that was trying, through diplomacy and humanitarian aid, to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons?

You figure it out.