Dancing with the Devil. Michael Rubin
Iran has been inattention to the circumstances in which it is initiated. Diplomacy toward Iran works only when the costs of intransigence have grown too great for the Islamic Republic to bear. In 1981, Khomeini released the hostages not because of Carter’s persistence, but because Iraq’s invasion had increased the cost to Iran of its own isolation and because Reagan’s election signaled a resolve that Carter lacked. Likewise, Khomeini agreed to end the Iran-Iraq War only after the cost of continuing the stalemate grew too great. He likened his grudging about-face to drinking from a poisoned chalice.
Channeling diplomacy through the United Nations can compound the problem. By embracing a UN framework, Obama diluted his threat to impose harsh sanctions.274 Red lines matter. Wars in the Middle East are not caused by oil or water, but by overconfidence. When adversaries believe they can overstep red lines with impunity, they will. In 2006, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged that had he understood Israeli red lines, he would not have launched the attack that led to war.275 The willingness of American officials to ignore their own red lines signaled to Iranian leaders that they could accelerate their nuclear and missile programs and even kill American troops without consequence.
American outreach bolsters the Iranian leadership’s perception of its own strength relative to the United States. Just as revolutionary authorities became more resolute with each Carter administration overture, so too did they grow defiant in the face of Obama’s outreach. In September 2010, Ahmadinejad used his bully pulpit at the United Nations to suggest that 9/11 was an inside job,276 the ultimate irony given that Joe Biden had justified American outreach by pointing to the spontaneous show of sympathy from Iranian citizens.
The Iranian leadership’s bad faith condemns diplomacy to failure in the absence of crippling sanctions or even limited military strikes. Ultimately, force counts. In June 2010, the Iranian government announced that it would send a ship to supply Hamas despite the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Israeli officials publicly and repeatedly said they would intercept the Iranian ship. Iran blustered, but Israel stood firm and Iran blinked.277 Never has an American administration implemented a comprehensive strategy to force Iran’s Supreme Leader to blink, let alone drink from the chalice of poison and begin to negotiate sincerely.
TEAM AMERICA AND THE HERMIT KINGDOM
Most Americans believe the Korean War ended more than six decades ago, when General William Harrison, representing the United Nations Command, and General Nam Il, representing the North Korean army and Chinese volunteers, signed an agreement to end fighting. The Korean War Armistice Agreement of 1953, however, was merely a ceasefire. Today, more than a million troops face each other across a demilitarized zone (DMZ) less than three miles wide. South Korea has transformed itself into an affluent democracy, while Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il, and his son Kim Jong Un have turned North Korea into a land of starvation, prison camps, and slave labor. Of all rogue regimes the United States faces, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the most isolated, most bizarre, and least understood. With its nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, and its refusal to abide by international norms, it is also the most dangerous. That it can now threaten Hawaii, and California may soon be within its strike range, is a testament to more than sixty years of failed American diplomacy.
The Korean armistice was the result of more than five hundred negotiating sessions spanning over two years.1 The United States did not insist that North Korea recognize the South’s legitimacy. To do so might have derailed sensitive talks.
With the armistice signed, Americans hoped to return home; but South Korea’s president, Syngman Rhee, understood that the armistice was just the beginning of a new phase in the conflict. Three months after its signing, American, Korean, and Chinese officials met again at Panmunjom in the DMZ to discuss peace and withdrawal of foreign forces. These talks were even more hostile than the armistice negotiations. According to Arthur Dean, the American ambassador, “No individual ever spoke personally to anyone on the other side.” North Korean representatives read every statement only after their Chinese allies approved it. “There was never an exchange of greetings or amenities on starting or ending a meeting,” Dean recalled, describing the sessions as “negotiation without contact.”2 After four weeks, the Americans and the North Koreans could not even agree on an agenda. The Americans may have wanted to talk, but good intentions mean little in diplomacy. North Korea was a Chinese puppet and Mao Zedong preferred that Korea remain an open wound.3 A follow-up conference in Geneva also ended without progress. Just because an adversary is willing to engage does not mean it is willing to agree.
The presence of American forces along the DMZ made it impossible not to talk. The armistice directed the two sides—American forces under the banner of the United Nations, and North Korea—to form a commission to communicate, settle violations, and handle repatriation of prisoners and displaced civilians. Today, American officers talk with their North Korean counterparts at Panmunjom if only over mundane matters such as the return of the bodies of North Korean villagers or farmers swept downstream during flash floods, or coordinating border crossings for international visitors. In practice, this requires a phone link between American and North Korean officials who occupy offices just a dozen meters away. If the North Koreans refuse to answer, American officers use a handheld bullhorn to shout messages across the divide.
When President Harry S. Truman excluded South Korea from his outline of America’s defensive perimeter, Kim Il Sung assumed he had a pass to attack South Korea. By the end of the 1960s, it appeared that fighting could again erupt on the peninsula. Between 1966 and 1969, there were more than 280 North Korean attacks on Americans or South Koreans around the DMZ.4 The North Koreans staged a brazen attack on the presidential mansion in Seoul, aiming to assassinate President Park Chung Hee. Two days later, North Korean forces seized the USS Pueblo, a U.S. Navy ship gathering intelligence in international waters off the North Korean coast, and took all the ship’s personnel hostage.
Only after Lyndon Johnson dispatched the USS Enterprise battle group did the North Koreans even agree to discuss the Pueblo.5 Johnson’s approach to the Pueblo crisis presaged Carter’s handling of the Iran hostage crisis years later, and with the same result: When Kim Il Sung concluded that American military force was off the table, talks went nowhere. It was almost a year before the North Koreans released the Pueblo’s crew, and then only after General Gilbert Woodward signed a humiliating “confession” on behalf of the U.S. government.6
In hindsight, the decision to negotiate a resolution of the Pueblo crisis was complicated. Engagement saved the lives of the ship’s crew, but their rescue came at a high cost. Allowing North Korea to keep the Pueblo meant the exposure of secret American technology. The ship’s capture remains a propaganda coup for the communist regime. Now a museum, the ship is a reminder to North Korea’s starved population of America’s supposed impotency. The symbolism went deeper, too: South Koreans juxtaposed the willingness of the White House to kowtow to North Korea after the Pueblo’s capture with its inaction after the assault on the South Korean presidential mansion, and said the contrast signaled that the life of the South Korean president was secondary to the return of the American crew. The fact that the North Korean commandos had passed through an area secured by American forces to reach the presidential mansion accentuated the point.7
American outreach to rogue regimes consistently erodes allies’ confidence, and Seoul had reason to be nervous. It understood Pyongyang’s tendency to couple diplomacy with provocation. On April 15, 1969—Kim Il Sung’s birthday, one day after North Korean officials proposed a meeting in the DMZ—two North Korean MiG-21s shot down an unarmed U.S. surveillance aircraft over the Sea of Japan, dozens of miles from North Korean airspace, killing thirty-one American servicemen.
Nixon contemplated military action but embraced diplomacy instead. Still, he understood that how the Americans talked was consequential. With a greater appreciation for nuance than diplomats today, he considered a number of scenarios: attending the prearranged meeting at Panmunjom