In hindsight, American attitudes at the end of the Cold War seem both quaint and naive. Some U.S. hawks, including George H.W. Bush himself, were suspicious after Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev promised a “new world order” during a Dec. 1988 United Nations speech.
The elder Bush later co-opted the term in the run-up to military actions against Iraq. “We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment,” he declared in a speech before Congress, saying a new world order can emerge: “a new era, freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, east and west, north and south, can prosper and live in harmony.”
With the Iron Curtain demolished, politicians believed it was only a matter of time before the last remaining communist states crumbled. Interviews with Clinton-era North Korea negotiators show they were willing to agree to a bad deal simply because they did not believe the communist regime could survive another decade.
That left state sponsors of terror as the key challenge to international stability. On Sept. 30, 1997, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright remarked at the Council on Foreign Relations that “dealing with the rogue states is one of the great challenges of our time … because they are there with the sole purpose of destroying the system.”
Then-Secretary of Defense William Perry and national security adviser Tony Lake also identified rogue regimes, or “backlash” states, as the top challenge the United States faced. Even if this was true, the Clinton-era approach to the problem was naive. Albright sought simply to wish the problem away with wordplay. Albright declared, for example, that the U.S. would no longer speak of rogue regimes, but instead, it would call Iran, North Korea, and Libya “states of concern.”
As Richard Haass (subsequently both director of State Department policy planning during the George W. Bush administration and today the president of the Council on Foreign Relations) explained, the idea was to separate policy options from the stigma of dealing with rogues by which, in practice, the sophisticated foreign policy elite meant diplomatic and economic engagement.
That notion, which has transcended the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Trump eras, has led to a litany of failures. Consider the following:
- Afghanistan: The Clinton administration and Albright sought to engage the Taliban and largely took the group at its word when it promised to quarantine al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and close terror training camps. The Trump administration’s peace deal with the Taliban is no better and makes many of the same mistakes Clinton and Albright did in the immediate pre-9/11-era.
- Iran: Both Clinton and Obama hoped to lure Iran with apologies and carrots rather than coercions and sticks. It didn’t work. Iran sought to leverage increased trade and reduced sanctions for the sake of its own nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Clinton was willing to say no when the scale of Iranian malfeasance became clear, but Obama wanted peace at any price. Despite rhetoric about how airtight the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was, it not only failed to achieve what Obama promised, but it also undid decades of nonproliferation precedent.
- Syria: Beyond reaching out to the Palestine Liberation Organization, many within Clinton’s Middle East peace team harbored dreams of flipping Syria. The late Sen. Arlen Specter traveled to Syria at taxpayer expense almost 20 times and always believed he was on the brink of something big. He was not alone. As President George W. Bush sought to isolate Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, then-Sen. John Kerry and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rushed to Damascus to prove that their engagement rather than coercion was the path to keep “Syrian reform” alive.
- North Korea: Partisans can point to their opposites to assign blame for North Korea’s nuclear program, but there is enough blame to go around. Former Secretary of State James Baker called the 1992 Korean De-Nuclearization Declaration a triumph of patient diplomacy in his memoirs, but in hindsight, he achieved nothing. Clinton’s 1994 Agreed Framework simply renegotiated many of the same pledges at the expense of several billion dollars in new concessions. Albright famously stood next to the North Korean “Dear Leader” as he commemorated his missile program. In desperation to win a breakthrough with Pyongyang, and in order to change George W. Bush’s legacy amid the public turn against the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice removed North Korea from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list despite overwhelming evidence of its support for Hezbollah, the Tamil Tigers, and kidnapping Japanese civilians (the State Department re-designated North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism in November 2017, reversing Rice’s mistake). The North Korean regime subsequently developed several nuclear missiles, but even so, Trump’s embrace of the new “rocket man” took naivete to a new level.
It is possible to criticize Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for outreach to both the Taliban and North Korea although, in both cases, it is Trump who initiated both processes. That both processes have failed should not surprise: Trying to co-opt rogue regimes with incentives seldom works.
That brings us to Sudan: The Clinton administration rightly designated Sudan a state sponsor of terrorism in 1993. Omar al Bashir’s regime hosted Bin Laden and supported numerous Palestinian rejectionist groups. It also engaged in slavery and, of course, genocide in Darfur. Through it all, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the U.S. maintained sanctions. Sudan would on occasion hire lobbyists to try to end their isolation, but Washington would not budge.
Only when Bashir fell did Khartoum show a sincere desire to change its direction. To Pompeo’s credit, he recognized the opening and moved to nudge Sudan in the right direction, today visiting Khartoum to discuss Sudan’s removal from the terror list. He should do so without delay, as there is no evidence Sudan is any longer engaged in the terrorism business. Indeed, the Trump administration should go farther with aid in order to help Sudan rebuild after years of isolation.
The broader lesson here is that diplomacy does not alter the character of rogue regimes. It is the epitome of American arrogance to believe it does. Concessions and sanctions relief often make rogue’s behavior worse. Ultimately, rogue regimes and terror sponsors change when rogue leaders lose power. Sometimes, statesmanship means withholding diplomacy until the time is right and seeking to seize the moment only when the time is right.
Pompeo should be applauded because when it comes to Sudan, he demonstrates his own vision unencumbered by Trump’s dictates. But the importance of Pompeo’s Sudan trip may not lay within Sudan itself. What happens in Khartoum does not stay in Khartoum.
With the coming American embrace of Sudan, Pompeo also shows all those living under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s rule in Iran that when they free themselves of their leader, they can expect a warm welcome back into the community of nations. Nothing would lay a better foundation for a Pompeo doctrine.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
