Once again I watch as an American administration seeks peace through diplomacy.  Will they never learn?

The first rule of diplomacy is to leave all your options open.   You never signal what you will or will not do in response to a negative action taken by the person on the opposite side of the table.   To do so makes it that much easier for that opponent you are negotiating with to assess the negative consequences of failing to negotiate AND the negative consequences of not living up to their agreements.   This is second grade stuff.  You do not do what the Obama Administration just did by promising to not retaliate with nuclear weapons against any country who is a signatory on the Nuclear Proliferation Agreement.  

The second rule of diplomacy and the first rule of negotiation are to always be willing to walk away from a bad deal.   How many times have we seen a diplomat so eager for an agreement applaud any agreement he was able to reach?   Why on the other hand was Reagan so effective?  It was because he was unwilling to discuss those Pershing missiles he was placing in Europe and as a result he walked away from Reykjavik.

Another rule for negotiators is to understand who it is that you are negotiating with and what it is that motivates them.   Neville Chamberlain did a poor job negotiating with Hitler because he assumed that all men want peace.  This was not true then and it is not true now.  Americans also did a poor job negotiating with North Korea for an end to hostilities in the early 1950's because the Koreans knew that Americans do not have a stomach for mass losses at war.  They simply sat as they waited each day for the Americans to be negotiating from a weaker position.  The same is true for the peace talks in Vietnam and any and all negotiations we have had with China.  When the enemy cares less for their own soldiers than you do then you had better find a measure closer to them as a means to motivate. 

For more than sixty years the world has avoided a third World War not because of lack of conflicts but because the strength that was understood to be available in the event an act of aggression pushed a nuclear armed country too far.  This made an armed conflict out of the question.  But Obama has effectively taken that off the table and as a result this Obama Administration has created an environment that is far more dangerous today than it was a few months ago.  Ahmadinejad thumbs his nose at Obama because he knows he can.  He knows that Obama will not act aggressively in return because Obama has already told him as much.