Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes

by Michael Rubin

The world has seldom been as dangerous as it is now. Rogue regimes—governments and groups that eschew diplomatic normality, sponsor terrorism, and proliferate nuclear weapons—threaten the United States around the globe. Because sanctions and military action are so costly, the American strategy of first resort is dialogue, on the theory that “it never hurts to talk to enemies.” Seldom is conventional wisdom so wrong.

Engagement with rogue regimes is not cost-free, as Michael Rubin demonstrates by tracing the history of American diplomacy with North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, the Taliban’s Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Further challenges to traditional diplomacy have come from terrorist groups, such as the PLO in the 1970s and 1980s, or Hamas and Hezbollah in the last two decades. The argument in favor of negotiation with terrorists is suffused with moral equivalence, the idea that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Rarely does the actual record of talking to terrorists come under serious examination.

While soldiers spend weeks developing lessons learned after every exercise, diplomats generally do not reflect on why their strategy toward rogues has failed, or consider whether their basic assumptions have been faulty. Rubin’s analysis finds that rogue regimes all have one thing in they pretend to be aggrieved in order to put Western diplomats on the defensive. Whether in Pyongyang, Tehran, or Islamabad, rogue leaders understand that the West rewards bluster with incentives and that the U.S. State Department too often values process more than results.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

426 pages, Hardcover

First published February 18, 2014

About the author

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School's Department of National Security Affairs, and previously edited the Middle East Quarterly.

Reviews

[Nicholas Kinberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poorly Researched if not Intentionally Misleading

Dr. Rubin constructs convincing arguments to the uninitiated. For those with knowledge on North Korea informed by a SAIS publication, some "Foreign Policy" articles, and a few podcasts, his discussion of North Korean opportunism is enlightening.

For those who've read just a couple of books and academic articles on the Muslim Brotherhood, however, his writing borders on apologism and misleading rhetoric.

Such a lack of nuance should give any reader pause. This is why I'm not sure I can trust any section of this book. I don't know whether Dr. Rubin's points are cogent or just ignorant of counterpoints.

I would like to believe that the United States has bungled diplomatic missions by being too eager to talk. In some cases, like Libya, North Korea, or the PLO, I do. But in cases like Iran, I'm reticent to trust a word written.

Read after having educated oneself on American relations with each country and organization mentioned in this book. One will find the nuance given by other pieces interesting to juxtapose against this qualitative study.

[Chaimpesach · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would not read this again. It is a helpful and depressing chronology of the failures of US diplomacy to alter the course of Libya, Iran, Iraq, the PLO, etc. The most interesting chapters are at the end where Mr. Rubin provides analysis of intelligence failures that appear to be the result of biases in favour of diplomacy. In any case, while this book was informative it was rather dry. The thesis is very simple: the threat of force and ensuring accountability is required for diplomacy to have any success, and diplomats should be aware that diplomacy is a means towards an end and not an end in and of itself.

[Thomas Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

What sort of diplomatic connections are ongoing between adversaries? It happens that the US (and other governments) do maintain relations of sorts. These are the back channels. While Rubin's book is not great reading it is an extremely informative history our these interactions.

[Omar · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've ever read when it comes to geopolitics. The chapters narrate, with depressing detail, the manner in which the USA has been hoodwinked by rogue regimes. Each chapter deals with a separate rogue state, including Iran, Libya, Syria, Iraq, North Korea, Taliban-era Afghanistan and Pakistan. The bottom line is that attempts at diplomacy with such regimes are inevitably doomed to failure simply because they explicitly reject the rules on which diplomacy is based. They will only accept an offer if it is backed with sufficient force. In fact, it would be ideal to use force alone (sticks without carrots). I'd personally go even farther and say that the ultimate aim of the United States should be to destroy such regimes root and branch using whatever means necessary, both for humanitarian reasons and for the USA's security.
Unfortunately, many well-meaning individuals are more concerned about bashing the USA rather than such demoniacal governments; some, like Noam Chomsky, go as far as calling the USA the real rogue state. While such people's aims of preventing war may be motivated by good, it must never be forgotten that Hitler needed a Churchill rather than a Chamberlain. This attitude has become especially prominent after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. To such people, I just want to say: every moment we spend debating in our comfy living rooms is a moment when an innocent prisoner of conscience is being tortured to death in a concentration camp somewhere in these evil states.