Engagement is Folly

(March 2014)

 

Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engagement with Rogue Regimes
by Michael Rubin
Encounter Books ( Feb.18, 2014)
Hardcover: 384 pp.
ISBN: 978-1594037238

 

 

And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

Michael Rubin, former Pentagon expert on Iran and Iraq during the Bush era, now a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), echoes Churchill’s observations about appeasement in his new book, Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engagement with Rogue Regimes. It is a dossier of the incredulous cupidity of American governments over nearly five decades who have been played for fools by nuclear obsessed Iran, Gaddafi’s Libya, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the draconian hermit kingdom of North Korea, and Islamic nuclear power and proliferator, Pakistan. Add to this rogues gallery are non-state aspirants from the Islamic terror groups; the Taliban, the Palestinians, both the PLO-Fatah and Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran’s proxy, Hezbolleh. The finely honed tools used by these states and terror groups include kidnapping, terror, deceitful evasion of agreements, bluster and bribery.

De Re Militari, “To seek peace, prepare for war.” Rubin cites the example of Nicolo Machiavelli in 15^{Too often, Western engagement of rogue regimes is akin to a matchup between Machiavelli and Neville Chamberlain. In such circumstances, Chamberlain seldom wins.}

Richard Perle and Rubin’s colleague at the AEIOperation Earnest Will reflagging foreign flagged vessels to facilitate US Navy protection of continued flow of Persian Gulf oil through the strategic Straits of Hormuz to the world oil markets. Despite his winking at the alleged inadvertent Iraqi air missile attack against the USS Stark that killed 37 US seamen injuring 21 others, Reagan launched covert actions in Operation Praying Mantis that witnessed Navy Seals assaulting offshore Iranian oil production platforms and decimating what passed for the Iranian navy. The irony today is one of those damaged Iranian Naval vessels from the Tanker War of the Reagan era, the frigate Sabalan, is part of a modest Iranian naval  flotilla making a power show of traversing the US Atlantic frontier in 2014.

After reading Dancing with the Devil, we sincerely doubt it.

 

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The West Speaks.

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