Recent progress in negotiations with North Korea reaffirms the effectiveness of historically effective secret diplomacy.
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The media reported earlier this week that North Korea had agreed to forego further development of atomic weapons in return for energy and security guarantees. President Bush understandably was cautious in reacting to the news. Given North Korea’s mercurial reactions in the past, the deal may quickly fall through.
Nonetheless, even the announcement represents a validation for the administration’s policy of the past few years that all discussions with North Korea be on a multi-party basis and in private meetings. This is in the historical tradition of secret diplomacy that functioned so well until after World War I.
Liberals of all stripes have been unrelenting in their criticism of the administration, demanding that the UN be brought into the negotiations. “Sensitive” liberals like Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy sincerely believe that agreements among nations can be reached only in public at the UN, in the glare of TV, with hundreds of participants from enemy, as well as friendly, nations.
Even a grain of common sense would tell most people that you don’t attempt, for example, to settle a family argument by staging a PR debate in front of the town meeting. With everybody watching, disputants posture for PR effect and dig in their heels on the assumption that public opinion, i.e., socialist-fomented street demonstrations around the world, is the only factor that need be influenced.
In real life, that is, outside the liberal-socialist camp, people will in private discuss their real interests and find some grounds for horse trading, if any deal is at all possible. As their true perceptions of national interest may be embarrassing if publicly disclosed, they will seldom do this in the UN General Assembly or the Security Council, where only PR slogans can be voiced.
The concept of Senator Kerry’s “community of nations” and “world opinion” came out of the Victorian era’s naive faith in humanity’s Progress toward perfection under the guidance of socialist intellectuals.
World War I was a bucket of cold reality that chilled their parade, but President Woodrow Wilson managed to project a loudly effective public appeal for an end to secret diplomacy and in favor of open agreements, openly arrived at. World news media were captivated by this reversion to Progress and created such public hysteria that more realistic heads like France’s Georges Clemenceau and England’s Lloyd George were trapped into going along with the fantasy.
Out of Wilson’s bombastic appeal to world opinion came the completely ineffective League of Nations, succeeded after World War II by the equally ineffective socialists’ dream, the UN.
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