Needless to say, there are problems with such reactions whatsoever the practitioner’s competence.

The recommendations of the Iraq Study Commission, loaded with diplomats [and politicians who share this characteristic], are strong on negotiations. But dogging their conclusions is our professional deformation, a hazard in American diplomacy from time immemorial.

[Although here, a caveat: Thomas Jefferson, ever the negotiator, tried to get a consensus with Europeans to tackle the Barbary pirates, not unlike our present encounter with Islamofascists. But organizing a common front against blackmail, kidnapping and general mayhem for world shipping along the North African coast failed. Jefferson – leading the upstart American Republic — sent the Marines.]

The problem is when meeting an intractable opponent who accepts jaw-jaw [better than war-war, even ever contentious Winston Churchill said] but not compromise. Our diplomat seeks a successful negotiation. A successful negotiation requires a settlement. But if the other side does not give, our diplomat’s side must concede – and alas! sometimes yield vital interest.

The buildup to World War II was a long series of such diplomatic “successes” — from the 1922 limitation on naval strength to the Munich Pact assuring “peace in our time” with Hitler.

In the current struggle with Islamofascists and their willing or unwilling allies, the old children’s game of splitting up treasures obtains: one for me, one for you, and one for me, and one for me and one for you and one for me. It is, for example, okay to build the world’s largest mosque in London but not okay to distribute the King James in Saudi Arabia. Conversion to Islam in western societies is personal privilege but a death sentence in most Islamic countries.

Turning to the megacrisis:

Syria, seeing itself as heir to the Ottoman Syrian province, has always claimed Lebanon, refused to recognize international borders or accept a formal embassy. Its intervention in Lebanon’s civil war — granted at the behest of most Lebanese factions and endorsed by the West — furthered its claim. Retreating before revulsion against its assassinations of Lebanese politicians, Damascus still intends to maintain control through its surrogate, Hizbullah. Any successful “flip”of Syria, as former Secetary of State James A. Baker has suggested as part of a U.S. retreat from Iraq, requires an end to such Syrian ambitions, as old as their state and the Lebanese “entity” France created to protect its clients, the Maronite Christians, after World War I.

Iran, whether under the Shah or Islamofascists, sees itself as heir to the ancient Persian Empire. [They don’t call it Persian Gulf for nothing.] With a highly skilled elite, a large mushrooming population, weak neighbors, and huge oil revenues, Tehran dreams of glory. Its political class sees weapons of mass destruction as part and parcel of regional hegemony. By hook and crook, Tehran moves toward nuclear weapons, in no small part aided and betted by countries with which the U.S. has otherwise manageable relations, Russia, India, Germany [its exporters] and until recently, Pakistan [through it’s A,.G. Khan network]. Would this Iranian regime back away from this ultimate confirmation of power in the 21st century through diplomacy? Baker-Hamilton gives no hint of why or how Washington is to achieve this miracle.

Like his father before him, Kim Jong-Il balances a bankrupt little corner of Asia, between a starving population and a military to whom all resources flow. Kim is convinced – he has turned down importuning from his only friends, the Chinese, to follow their model – no other prop for his regime is sufficient short of weapons of mass destruction. He has tried most everything else — from milking Korean ethnics n Japan [bizarrely kidnapping Japanese to infiltrate it further] to counterfeiting U,.S.dollars. But “the realists” tell us bilateral talks with Kim would convince him he can walk blissfully into the sunset hand in hand with an American aid program, dropping his nuclear weapons. Of course, human events are noxiously fickle. And jaw-jaw could postpone the inevitable collision of Kim’s ambitions and his neighbors’ fear of a nuclear-clad North Korea. Pyongyang might fall apart, might lose its Dear Leader to human frailty, etc., etc. But meanwhile, as diplomats negotiate, Pyongyang’s nuclear weaponry pursuit appears to go blithely forward.

In a world of thousands of “back channels”, informal “negotiations” go on constantly — Baker approached both the Syrians and the Iranians.[Yes, the U,S. did talk to the Soviet Union but never asked nor got its help.The deal with good old Uncle Joe at Yalta, in fact, led to a half century of Cold War and near nuclear holocaust.] Negotiations in a fog of wishful thinking and without predetermined nonnegotiable final goals is a recipe for disaster. That road is tried and untrue.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com and East-Asia-Intel.com.