U.S. Policy on 'Axis of Evil' Suffers Spate Of Setbacks

President Bush's campaign against what he once termed the "axis of evil" has suffered reverses on all three fronts in recent days that underscore the profound challenges confronting him 3 1/2 years after he vowed to take action.

First, multilateral talks orchestrated by the United States to pressure North Korea to give up nuclear weapons adjourned last week after 13 days without agreement. Then Iran restarted its program to convert uranium, in defiance of the United States and Europe. Finally, negotiators in Iraq failed to draft a new constitution by Monday's deadline amid an unrelenting guerrilla war against U.S. forces.

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None of these developments may be fatal to Bush's policy goals, but the quick succession of setbacks has left his national security team privately discouraged and searching for answers. Whereas Bush in his first term vowed to reinvent foreign policy with a new doctrine of military preemption to deal with rogue states, he has largely dropped such talk since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Instead, he has favored diplomacy with Tehran and Pyongyang and nation-building with Baghdad -- yet the old-fashioned improvisation has yielded similarly murky results.

Administration officials publicly have put the best face on the situation, finding hope in the fact that Iraq's sectarian leaders remain at the negotiating table and that neither Iran nor North Korea has ruled out further talks. Unlike in Iraq two years ago, U.S. officials note, this time they are working more or less in tandem with European and Asian allies.

"These are difficult issues," national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley said in an interview last week after the Iran and North Korea setbacks. "They're going to take some time. But the main thing is to keep the international community focused."

Iran's new hard-line president has said he has ideas to discuss with European Union powers Britain, Germany and France -- the "E.U. Three" nations that have taken the lead in dealing with Tehran -- and his new national security chief said yesterday that negotiations will continue. The six-party talks involving North Korea and the United States along with China, Japan, South Korea and Russia are due to resume in Beijing the week of Aug. 29.

Seeking cause for optimism, Hadley noted that the latest round of talks on North Korea ended a 13-month boycott by Pyongyang. "They were basically testing us to see if they could split the [other] five . . . and they failed," Hadley said. "Similarly now, the Iranians are trying to test the E.U. Three to see if they can split them."

Yet in the broader picture, the fitful pace of talks in both cases belies the urgency Bush has expressed in the past, and some Bush supporters believe the time has come for a more robust approach.