Forty-five years ago, Andrew Young, a civil rights icon whom President Jimmy Carter appointed as his ambassador to the United Nations, resigned. His sin? Meeting with the Palestine Liberation Organization. At the time, there were red lines. Some dictators and all terrorists were so repellent that they were beyond the pale.
Times changed. Within the State Department, savvy diplomats and appointees defined their careers by shattering diplomatic glass. Less than a decade after Young’s ouster, Dennis Ross championed engaging PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. CIA Director William Burns moved his career into high gear by secretly engaging Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi just 15 years after the Pan Am 107 bombing. Jake Sullivan redefined himself from political aide to diplomatic wunderkind when he initiated secret talks with Iran. “You have to be willing to engage with your enemies if you want to create a situation that ends the insurgency,” Hillary Clinton explained to justify her Taliban initiatives. The damage each episode of outreach did to the free world was tremendous, even as these diplomats advanced their careers with supposed boldness. After all, was it wrong to try?
No. Diplomacy can break deadlocks if the partners are sincere. Just as respect for religious freedom reflects the sincerity of a dictator’s reforms, is there a way to determine which dictators are insincere and irredeemable?
Perhaps their children offer some insight. Both nurture and nature are important. Some offspring are bad eggs — psychopathy can just be a bad gene. Sometimes, however, it is deliberate.
The world’s most irredeemable autocrats raise their children to feel superior. They isolate and indulge them and inculcate a culture of entitlement. Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein, were sociopaths, sadists, and deviants. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s counsel to negotiate with Saddam Hussein, first to compel his withdrawal from Kuwait and then to resume inspections, was always naive. Saddam Hussein’s encouragement of his sons reflected his disinterest in the civilized behavior that Powell assumed as a baseline for diplomacy.
For the late Sen. Arlen Specter, a breakthrough with the Assad regime was his white whale. Specter took nearly 20 taxpayer-funded trips to Damascus between 1984 and 2012, many with close friend Sen. John Kerry. First, Hafez Assad and then son Bashar Assad played them like fiddles. Specter always saw hope even as he could point to no tangible success. Perhaps had he considered the character of eldest son Basil Assad, a spoiled playboy who died in a 1994 car wreck, he would have harbored no illusions nor bought so completely into the notion that younger son Bashar Assad was anything but a mass murderer.
The list goes on. Presidents Carter, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump might have saved time, money, and strategic position had they assessed the Kim dynasty in North Korea for what it was: a family detached from reality in which fathers taught sons to believe themselves gods. Washington could have saved itself blood and treasure had American officials understood the obvious: Those who see themselves as gods do not play by mortal rules.
The same problem repeats today, even with nominal allies. Is Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev sincere about peace? The antics of his children, Leyla Aliyev, Arzu Aliyev, and Heydar Aliyev, suggest he sees his family as above the law, raising questions about any diplomatic deal that negotiators might strike. Can the West trust Iraqi Kurds with aid when Masoud Barzani and his sons Masrour Barzani and Waysi Barzani flaunt their lifestyle? Two decades of corruption suggest otherwise. Is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as redeemable as NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg suggests when Recep’s son Bilal Erdogan profits off the Islamic State oil trade?
Sometimes, leaders are wise enough to sideline their spoiled progeny, or their societies do it for them. Such was the case with Tommy Suharto in Indonesia and Mirzan Mahathir in Malaysia.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
What about dictators who break new diplomatic ground? Consider Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who made peace with Israel; Mikhail Gorbachev, who helped end the Cold War; and South African leader P.W. Botha, who worked with Nelson Mandela to dismantle apartheid. Each had well-adjusted children who succeeded long after their parents’ deaths.
Intelligence agencies can spend billions of dollars for insight, but sometimes, there is no substitute for character. It trumps policy any day.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.