It seems a core tenet of Bush administration policy is that we can’t negotiate with countries that act against U.S. interests — that diplomacy is appeasement. Glenn Greenwald writes about
what’s left once diplomacy is eliminated:
It is this “reasoning,” as much as anything else, that has placed us in the weak and vulnerable position we are now in. Where a country like North Korea is engaged in conduct that we would like to stop, we have three options:
(1) wage war against them;
(2) engage in diplomacy and attempt to reach a negotiated solution; or
(3) do nothing.
If we remove option (2) from the list — as Bush followers want to do in almost every case and as the administration repeatedly does — it means that only options (1) and (3) remain. And where option (1) is not viable — as is the case with the U.S. vis-a-vis North Korea (mostly because we already chose option (1) with two other countries and are threatening to do so with a third) — then the only option left is (3) — do nothing. That is exactly what we have done while North Korea became a nuclear-armed power, and we did nothing because we operated from Rubin’s premise that diplomacy and negotiations are essentially worthless, which left us with no other options.
The chickens are coming home to roost.
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