Required Reading

Today it’s Fred Kaplan, and why the upcoming talks with North Korea will be Washington’s Excedrin Headache #238. Here’s a little taste to get you started:

His negotiating strategy, like his political rule in general, is built around generating an air of perpetual crisis and brinkmanship, constantly probing for divisions among the diplomats on the other side of the table, and ceaselessly demanding further concessions until he is convinced that there’s nothing more to be wrung.

There is a pattern to this set piece, as revealed in a series of negotiations in the mid-’90s