If high-stakes international diplomacy were a Peanuts cartoon, the United States would be Charlie Brown and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il would be Lucy holding the football. We have no reason whatsoever to take Kim at his word on anything, much less his promise to disclose and dismantle his nuclear weapons program. But we keep doing it. And we keep ending up flat on our backs, red in the face, wondering what happened.

Can classical music liberate North Korea? Probably not. It's a slave state, after all. A completely closed society. But the New York Philharmonic has oddly high hopes for its performance Tuesday night in Pyongyang. More likely, the North Korean regime will exploit the concert's propaganda potential for all it's worth, which is quite a bit.