I’m just a loose nut behind a keyboard. Here is the opinion of the foremost foreign policy expert in America today;
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121115528610702289.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
Chris, pay attention to this;
“Negotiation is not a policy. It is a technique. Saying that one favors negotiation with, say, Iran, has no more intellectual content than saying one favors using a spoon. For what? Under what circumstances? With what objectives? On these specifics, Mr. Obama has been consistently sketchy.”
What Mr. Bolton is dancing around is the well established fact that the other 1% of diplomacy is called “WAR”. War is a diplomatic tool. It is what gives your enemy the incentive to negotiate in the first place.
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”
- Chairman Mao Zedong (Tse-tung)
“Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.”*
*
_Mao Zedong
Without getting deeply into Conflict theory, to end State sponsored terrorism (IE; win the War on Terror) it will be necessary to force regime change on ALL states that support terrorism. At this time the State department has a list;
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/c14151.htm
EVERY state on that list will need regime change. Since making war on all those states would be a waste of resources, diplomacy will need to do most of the heavy lifting.
It shouldn’t be that hard.
To the DPRK you send Kim a sales brochure for a nice little mansion on the south coast of Fwance. Next door to ‘baby’ Doc or Roman Polanski maybe. You also send him a DVD of Saddam being hung. Then you tell him to make a choice. That is called Diplomacy.
For the Mad Dog Mullahs, you move US troops from German and Korea to Iraq. That will bump up US forces there to about 300,000 or an Army sized formation. Then you tell the Mad Dog Mullahs that the UN is going to go where ever they want and inspect what ever they want whenever they want ( which Iran already agreed to when they signed the NPT) and that their escorts will be Iranians or Americans. Choose.
Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘nice doggie’ while looking for a big rock. When you already have a pocket full of big, deadly rocks, it’s a waste of time saying ‘nice doggie’.
