| Summary/Abstract |
American policy-makers and politicians present specious rationales for abjuring diplomatic engagement with adversarial regimes and actors. The conventional wisdom is that negotiating with adversaries is futile and a form of reward that the enemy will exploit. This tool of statecraft, therefore, should be avoided. However, many of the objections for avoiding diplomacy are suspect when examined closely. In addition, though prominent adversaries like Iran have generally shunned the United States, it has regularly engaged other hostile and adversarial regimes and non-state actors. The selective use of specious reasons contributes to an American foreign policy that often prefers the isolation and containment of ‘rogue states.’ Additionally, myths like the futility of appeasing adversaries have taken hold, and practitioners rarely question it. The post-Cold War American ‘diplomacy allergy’ is often counter-productive and stands in contrast to Cold War pragmatism.
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