My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy

My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy Mount Aloysius College 2013 Spring Moral Choices Lecture Delivered by Dr. Jim Walsh March 12, 2013

2 | Mount Aloysius College

March 12, 2013 | My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy

Opening Remarks

Thomas P. Foley, President Mount Aloysius College

We asked Dr. Jim Walsh to join us here tonight at Mount Aloysius College for at least four different reasons.

First, Jim is the perfect segue from last year’s beautifully presented lectures by Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the Director of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, and founder of FactCheck and FlackCheck.com.

Frankly, we were desperate to find someone who could match Dr. Jamieson’s hundreds of appearances on national airwaves, and I want to tell you that we’ve found him.

At last count, Jim was coming up on his thousandth appearance—and I am sure his daughter Corey is going to love how I’m about to describe him—his thousandth appearance as a “talking head.” So he’s a good match for Dr. Hall Jamieson.

Second, Jim is also a perfect segue from last year’s yearlong Mount Aloysius speaker series theme on civil discourse.

Jim is a devoted practitioner of the art, and I need only one proof of that claim. His supporters that follow him on CNN are just as rabid about Jim as his supporters who follow him on Fox, and we have the blogs and the tweets to prove it.

Jim’s resume is impressive and a much edited version appears in your program. Yes, he has hundreds of appearances on major news shows in America and 30 foreign countries. Yes, he is a prolific author, with more than 50 articles in journals and major newspapers around the country and the world and a new book due out later this year from Yale University Press. Yes, he won the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship from the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Yes, he is the author of one of the “ten best and original ideas for 2008”, as chosen by the British paper The Independent. And yes, Jim was described in this month’s edition of Foreign Policy magazine as “one of the world’s top military thinkers.” I should add that he is perhaps the only one on that list also named a Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar by the US Institute for Peace.

No more words from me in this regard. Jim is very talented, he’s very thoughtful, and he’s highly respected in his field, far beyond his home base in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And I’m delighted to welcome my friend, Jim Walsh, to Mount Aloysius College to deliver the Sixth Annual Moral Choices Lecture. Thank you.

Third, Jim gracefully fit his topic and his expertise neatly into our yearlong exploration of the Mercy and Mount Aloysius core value of hospitality, which we have pursued with the theme, Finding Home in a Changing World.

We’ve heard from a self-described Hunger Games/Harry Potter philosopher about the challenge for young people especially, of “finding home in an often inhospitable world.” We’ve heard from a Catholic bishop and canon lawyer on the theology of hospitality, from a Pulitzer Prize winner on the hospitality of writing, from our own faculty on hospitality in the digital age, and now from Jim on his topic, My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy. So, we thank him for adapting his first-hand, front-line experiences in Iran and North Korea to our speaker series theme here in the Southern Allegheny Mountains.

Finally, Jim’s special expertise allows us to explore again the idea of Moral Choices about which Sister Helen Marie Burns, Ph.D. spoke with fervor in her welcome. In past years, Mt Aloysius has focused this lecture on death and dying, on the environment, on sex and sexuality, last year on civil discourse in public life and this year, thanks to Jim’s quite remarkable depth on the topic—on the issue of foreign policy. Thank you for that, Jim.

Mount Aloysius College | 3

My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy | March 12, 2013

My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad:

Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy fhdfgdhfgh Mount Aloysius College Dr. Jim Walsh March 12, 2013 Introduction Thank you very much for that generous introduction, Tom Foley— President Foley.

You know, I just got back from Seoul, South Korea, a week-and-a-half ago, right after North Korea’s nuclear test, right before the inauguration of the new South Korean President. I was supposed to be in Iran last week, but the government ran into problems issuing a visa, so I’ve been doing a lot of travel. And travel takes its toll. But when I got a call from President Foley asking if I might be available to come and be with you, my answer was, When can I come?

There are few people I know, in my tender years, that I have a stronger opinion about than Tom Foley. He is a decent person to the core. You know, I don’t think you can really overstate how important that is. He’s decent to the core, someone I trust, someone I cherish as a friend (even though we don’t see each other very often); someone who holds to his path and code in life, and yet also is just tremendously effective and tremendously funny and a good steward. So, I congratulate all of you on your good choice. You are lucky people to have him as your president.

I am lucky to have him as my friend.

I want to say that I appreciate how well I’ve been treated since I arrived here. We had a marvelous dinner and reception, and I got to participate with some terrific students in a 4 | Mount Aloysius College

class on terrorism. You know, almost everything has been great.

The one thing that I have a problem with is the event poster. You know, first of all, Ahmadinejad’s name is in bigger letters than my name. So whoever did that, you know, not so good. But it’s not the worst poster I’ve had. I had one that showed my face superimposed on a seventy-story tall nuclear explosion.

Background Let me now turn to the actual topic tonight, “My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad.” I took this picture.

That’s George Stephanopoulos’ arm in

the lower left corner. I took this with my iPhone. That’s the Iranian Ambassador to the U.N. That’s President Ahmadinejad.

That’s the Foreign Minister. And I’ve had occasion when the President comes to New York—as all world leaders do in September of every year to attend the opening of the United Nations—to engage with him and ask him questions. And so I’m going to use that as the stepping stone to talk about a broader theme of hospitality and international relations.

Let me give you a sense of where I’m coming from on this issue. I’ve been to Iran a number of times; have met with Iranians in what are called Track II meetings, where people meet with

March 12, 2013 | My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy

Mount Aloysius College | 5

My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy | March 12, 2013

statements, generalizations.

The Iranians—the Iranians feel that they were once a great civilization under Cyrus. They are Persians, not Arabs.

They are Persians, not Turks. And when they look around southwest Asia, they think they’re the top dog or that they deserve to be the top dog, that they are special and different in the same way that Americans think that they’re special and different and that they have a special charge in the world. They think that about themselves. And so I think psychology—maybe it’s not as important as power, but it’s not trivial.

the “knowledge of their government” but not officially as “government representatives.” I spent a fair amount of time with the Iranian President, and I’ve met a bunch of folks throughout the system of the Iranian government.

In the Iranian government, the President is not like the President of the United States. The Supreme Leader is the “decider” in the Iranian system. And it’s a system in which power is shared among many institutions. In point of fact, the presidency is relatively weak compared to some of those institutions.

In sum, I’ve had the chance to chat with a lot of officials who represent different points of view, different factions and different institutions within Iran.

Similarly, I’ve been to North Korea and I’ve participated in Track II meetings there. I’ve spent hours with Pak Ui-Chun as he’s risen through the ranks. He’s now Foreign Minister of North Korea. And I’ve had a chance to consult with other people in the region, in China, South Korea and elsewhere, about the Korean situation, which has also evolved over time.

What Matters This talk is about hospitality and international relations. So maybe the first place to start is to ask ourselves, what is important in the conduct of international politics or foreign policy?

Well as a scholar, that’s what I’m trained to study. And there’s a long body of scholarship about what’s important in the way countries make decisions and the way they interact with other countries. And this is sort of the normal list. [See box above] And the one that always comes up first is power, how you act in the international system, how you react to others depends on how much power you have, your military might, your economic might, how big is your GDP? And then, with that power, what are the national interests you pursue?

6 | Mount Aloysius College

Now for most countries the national interest at the top of their agenda is security. They want to stay in power.

They want to stay in the game, and so they want to stay around as a country.

They don’t want to go the way of the Soviet Union.

Geography—Americans forget about geography, but to the rest of the world turns out to be pretty important. We are blessed because we are surrounded by two large oceans and two large, weak allies. Those are our borders— two oceans and two large, weak allies.

You know, if you grew up in a country that was on the border of Germany, or you grew up in a country on the border of Russia or China, you would have a much more complex international context in which to conduct foreign policy. So for a lot of countries, not so much for us because we enjoy such terrific luck, geography—who are your neighbors—is a big deal.

Psychology, this is one component that the literature tends to stress, that scholars tend to stress. Psychology—I think countries make decisions based on pride. The Americans are very prideful. The French are prideful. I know these are sort of broad cultural

Domestic politics. A lot of foreign policy is not about the other guy across the ocean or across the border, it’s about what’s happening inside your borders. You’re conducting a foreign policy because one foreign policy is going to win you support from a domestic constituency that you need in order to get reelected or to pass a bill or whatever. The foreign is about the domestic.

Ideas. In recent years, in political science and in international relations, there’s been more attention to the role of ideas. Some of these people are called Constructivists. And these ideas take all sorts of forms—they can be good ideas or bad ideas.

As an example, there’s religion. There have been a lot of wars fought over religion throughout the centuries.

Nationalism, certainly World War II, you could argue, was the result of hyper nationalism, at least in East Asia, as Japan tried to expand and colonize other countries. And in the United States, liberty is an idea that seems to have galvanized people. So this seems to be the list of things that most scholars of international relations refer to when they talk about how and why countries act on the international stage.

And the thing that they tend to stress is the last thing on the list—liberty. States are independent and sovereign. There’s no court that can tell them what to do.

You know, if you break a law here in

March 12, 2013 | My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy

the United States, the police arrest you, you go to trial, and you’re sent to jail if you’re guilty.

There’s nothing like that in the international system. It’s very hard to force states to do something you want them to do, if they don’t want to do it because they are independent and sovereign. So the system that works internationally is not the system that we enjoy domestically.

Now, you look at all that, and to my disappointment and my concern, since we have another 50 minutes or more left, hospitality does not appear on that list. So where does hospitality fit in?

Hospitality in Foreign Policy?

The thing that the mind first races to when thinking about hospitality in a foreign policy context is, well...I’ve been in ambassadors’ offices, and everyone is so gracious. And at the U.N. there’s tremendous protocol, and you call people by certain names and you serve tea, and you do things and you deliver messages that have fancy words to them. There’s this whole system and formality and way of doing things that is similar to hospitality.

When you visit countries on official visits, there is this whole protocol. The White House has a protocol officer. The State Department has a protocol officer.

But you sense in the international relations literature, while that is all true, it’s not really that important. You know, that’s just cosmetics. That’s the make-up on the pig. Yes, everyone’s acting nice and they have these rituals, but really, underneath it all, it’s really about power and who’s big and who’s small. So that doesn’t look very promising.

Hospitality in Daily Life So I tried to go back to the beginning and I just asked myself what is hospitality? Hospitality, as I understand it, is a relationship—and that’s the most important word, relationship—

between host and guest. So what are the elements of hospitality?

I remember when I was a kid and my parents would take me to visit friends and we would have dinner at their house, and then they would come and have dinner at our house. Now, I was always told to be on my best behavior.

You know, there were things I could do at home that I was not supposed to do when I was at someone else’s house.

And I was taught to show respect for that other person’s home.

And then there was a reciprocity and a mutuality to this. We would be invited to someone’s home and we would bring a bottle of wine. They would be providing dinner. We would invite them over to dinner. They would invite us over to dinner. There was a meeting of equals in which there was sharing and reciprocity back and forth from people who lived in different places.

There was often a cessation of hostilities.

Maybe I wasn’t getting along with my neighbor’s son at the time they were being invited over for dinner, but I put that aside and I was on my best behavior during dinner, and vice versa. There was generosity. There was

“So I tried to go back to the beginning and I just asked myself what is hospitality? Hospitality, as I understand it, is a relationship—and that’s the most important word, relationship—between host and guest...”

empathy. The point of hospitality is to make someone feel at home. How do you make someone feel at home? You imagine how they see the world. You look at the world through their eyes. In understanding where they are coming from, you are able to reach out to them and make them feel welcome.

And finally, although no one would have thought of it or put it in these terms, it’s about vulnerability and trust.

I’m inviting you into my house. You’re going to go in my bathroom, look in the medicine cabinet. You’re going to see my house; it may not be as neat as it should be or there’s jewelry and money in the drawers, but you trust that the people that you are hosting are worthy of trust. And you open yourself up and you make yourself vulnerable in a spirit of generosity, empathy and reciprocity.

That’s what happens when folks go over to each other’s house for dinner. It might not feel that way at the time, but if you think about it, that’s what’s going on there.

Hospitality in International Relations Now, let’s talk about international relations. This involves the exercise of exactly the same rules of relationship just discussed: rules of behavior, respect, reciprocity. In the international system, in which states can do whatever they want, it’s hard to force them to do something. The way things get done is that the countries that are friends and countries that are adversaries have relations.

Mount Aloysius College | 7

My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy | March 12, 2013

Remember that question: What is hospitality? It is a relationship. And it is neccessary if you expect to get something done in foreign policy, even with countries you don’t like, that you think are the enemy—the Soviet Union was the enemy. They had 20,000-plus nuclear weapons. We had 2,000-plus thousand nuclear weapons.

We managed to get through it and not kill each other. And the only reason we did is because we had a relationship.

Now, we didn’t like each other and we fought tooth and nail and we tried to cause problems for the other side, and everyone danced when the Soviet Union died. But during that whole dangerous period, there was a relationship in which there were rules of behavior, where there was respect for the adversary. You didn’t respect their system, but you respected them as a sovereign state.

Reciprocity and mutuality, you do something for me, I do something for you. Cessation of hostilities. As I read treaty negotiations, for example, countries tend to be better behaved when they’re negotiating than when

“if I don’t understand how you see the world and you are my enemy, then we’re going to have problems.

We’re going to make mistakes, and we may even fight wars...”

they are outside of negotiations.

When countries sit down and they talk to one another to work out an arms control agreement, to work out a refugee agreement, a narcotics agreement, whatever they’re working on, they tend to be better behaved.

8 | Mount Aloysius College

They tend to stop throwing stones when they’re sitting down and talking, at least for that period, and then they go back to what they were doing before.

Generosity and empathy. You know, the key for me in dealing with Iran and North Korea is empathy, not in the normative sense of, “I want to share your feelings and views and beliefs,” but empathy in the sense of trying to understand how you see the world.

Because if I don’t understand how you see the world and you are my enemy, then we’re going to have problems.

We’re going to make mistakes, and we may even fight wars. So this is empathy that is principled, based on reasons of national interest.

And then finally, again, vulnerability and trust. There is no agreement that you can make with another country that is ironclad—100 percent, can never be broken—and which if broken can be enforced by some grand international court that will force a country to comply or force it to stop its bad behavior.

When you enter into agreements like we did with the Soviet Union, like we did with Libya to rid them of their nuclear weapons program, in all cases you try to verify—trust but verify—but at the end of the day, there’s no eliminating some of the vulnerability, and there’s no eliminating a requirement of trust. You try to minimize that. You don’t want to lead with that. But at the end of the day, in human institutions, there’s no avoiding that.

So these are the elements of hospitality, and these are the elements of international relations when countres—countries you like, your allies, and countries you don’t like, your adversaries—are forced to have relationships in order to solve problems.

So it’s about relationships, rules and values that regulate the behavior of the state. Because in the absence of those, in the absence of relationships, rules, and values, states will do whatever they want. And it’s very hard to stop them from doing whatever they want.

Hospitality and American Foreign Policy And perhaps you’re thinking: That’s all very nice, Dr. Walsh, but is it true in practice? That sounds like good theorizing but is that really what happens? Do respect or reciprocity, alter a country’s behavior? Will tyrants play nice if we are more hospitable?

And the answer is a surprise. The answer is, ironically, that those elements are most useful for the worst and most vexing problems. So let me explain why. And I’m going to do so by looking at American foreign policy.

Let’s back up now. Having laid down sort of the theory part of this, let’s back up and talk about American foreign policy.

American foreign policy is known historically for two big characteristics, a moralizing tendency and power. The historian Richard Hofstadter wrote many years ago about the moralizing tendency in American foreign policy.

And this fits this lecture series because it raises important dilemmas.

You’d think that having a moral foreign policy would be a good thing, and it is. You know, we would criticize those cynical European diplomats who would cut deals over national interest, who had no sense of norms, who would buy lunch for the devil if they could get what they wanted. And we said, no, some things are important. Human rights are important. Slavery is important. And so we tend to have a more moralizing, in some cases finger-wagging, foreign policy.

We also have, by luck and hard work, tremendous power, tremendous, overwhelming international power in a post-war period—greater wealth, more allies, more weapons, more of everything. Essentially, the U.S. was calling the shots within its sphere, in the international system, after the end of World War II. Everyplace else was devastated.

Russia was destroyed.

Europe was aflame.

Japan had Hiroshima. And we were the one left

March 12, 2013 | My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy

standing, and we enjoyed tremendous benefits from that.

So what happens when you take good intentions, virtually limitless power, and you put them together? Well, there’s a strong tendency to want to say to that country who’s your enemy or who you don’t agree with: “You’re wrong and you’re going to do what I say. And if you don’t do what I say, I’m going to force you to do what I want—because we’ve got all the power and we’ve got the values.” You think you’re right, and you probably are. You’re right, and you have the power, so you’re going to force people—these bad people—to do the things you want them to do.

I think it was Vice President Cheney who said, you don’t talk to evil, you defeat it. So you don’t have tea with the devil and you don’t make deals with nasty characters. You force your will upon them. That’s sort of one side of the moralizing tendency in foreign policy.

sanctions. The use of sanctions feels as if it makes up 98 percent of U.S. foreign policy…sanctions. What do you do?

We’re punishing that side. We say: You’re going to stop doing what we

“Do respect or reciprocity alter a country’s behavior?

Will tyrants play nice if we are more hospitable?...The answer is, ironically, that those elements are most useful for the worst and most vexing problems....”

don’t want you to do, and we’re going to make you pay until you give up. Or we’re going to topple you or, we’re going to threaten the use of military force.

Then, if those don’t work, we’ll just isolate and contain you. And maybe we’ll negotiate. But we don’t want to be seen as rewarding bad behavior, so that comes further down the list.

So remember, the elements of hospitality are: respect, reciprocity and mutuality, cessation of hostilities, generosity, and vulnerability – nothing that really relates to the use of force.

Not much correspondence there.

There is not a lot of respect or reciprocity in the application of military force. Regime change, ditto.

The positive side is, we’re out there as a force for good in the world, and we’re willing to say and do things that other countries aren’t willing to do. And we’re willing to spend blood and treasure to make that happen, and that’s been a force for good in the world.

The dark side of that moralizing tendency in foreign policy is that we know we’re right and we’re going to force others to do what we want them to do.

So how do we make other countries do what we want them to do when we know that we’re right? Use of force, regime change, sanctions, isolation, containment, negotiations, and buyoffs.

I like buyoffs, by the way. That’s another long conversation. It’s quick, it’s simple, get it done is—right? Move on. But you know, not popular.

In the last several years, since the end of the Cold War, we’ve gotten a lot of focus on military force, regime change, and Mount Aloysius College | 9

My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy | March 12, 2013

Sanctions, ditto. Isolation, more of the same. Containment, there’s a little respect in containment and there can be, occasionally, some reciprocity, but it’s still the purpose of containment to wait for the country to die so that you can sweep it aside and then begin anew. That’s what containment is about.

Buyoffs, no. Buyoffs aren’t respectful.

You know, you can threaten someone, and that’s not respectful, or you can say I don’t care about you, I’m just going to pay you off. There’s not a lot of respect in that either.

The one where there’s the strongest correspondence is negotiation, where you have to sit down and talk to the adversary, the “evil one.” Now, people love sanctions. Why do they love sanctions? Because it means you don’t have to fight a war, but it still looks like you’re doing something; right? And plus, they’re easy.

When you negotiate—and I’ve done it—it can be very frusterating. Some negotiators are maddening to talk to.

They talk in circles and you never know where you are. You don’t have to do any of that with sanctions. You just impose them on others. It’s not messy. It’s easy and clean. Don’t even have to deal with them.

There are two problems with all this, however. First, it’s costly; right? The war in Iraq should have taught us that.

War is costly. And we can’t go around 10 | Mount Aloysius College

fighting wars with every country we don’t like, trying to impose our views on them, even if they are evil.

And secondly, the coercion, the sanctions, the isolation, all that stuff works sometimes. But it doesn’t have a great track record. You know, sanctions aren’t going to work in North Korea because China is never going to let North Korea collapse because it doesn’t want a failed state on its border.

So we can pass—we have passed—a hundred sanctions. We passed one last week, a sanctions bill. We can pass another hundred sanctions, and it isn’t going to change the dynamic at all, because China is not going to allow North Korea to fail.

So coercion, isolation, all this stuff, you can try it. It might work about a third of the time, 25 percent of the time, depending on the conditions and the countries you’re talking about, and it would be great to force the evil people to do what we want them to do either outright or by threats, but that is very costly and very hard to do.

This relationship between adversaries reminds me of relations in some families. I’m not talking about me personally, this is being videotaped.

Some of us here might have a brother or a sister or a parent or a friend that we try to get to do something.

Maybe it’s a child that you’re trying to get to wake up and go to school every day. We’ve all been in a situation where even the child has leverage on the older, more powerful adult. And sometimes you simply cannot force the person to do it. And the more you try to force them to do it, the more they resist you.

I think we all have in our extended families, a family member who needs to change. And you can try buying them off and you can try threatening them, and it doesn’t work. And they fight back because of pride, suspicion, and history. And the worse the relationship, the more difficult it is to get a result.

The Matter of Iran and the United States: Empathy?

Let me talk for a minute about the U.S. and Iran. I’ve been at this for more than 10 years. The Islamic Republic was born in 1979, so the animosity goes back to then and even earlier.

Here is what I find when I talk to Iranians at the highest level of the Iranian government. When you ask them what they believe in their hearts, the Iranians believe we want regime change—to overthrow their government. We sponsored a coup in 1953 and toppled their duly-elected democratic government. We said they

March 12, 2013 | My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy

were part of the “Axis of Evil” even after they bailed us out in Afghanistan and set up the Karzai government. That was their thanks.

The Iraq invasion—sanctions followed by invasion—sure sounds like a familiar story if you’re sitting in Tehran and you’re being sanctioned and there are threats of military force. That looks like “déjà vu all over again.”

would be a mistake to think that regime change was our policy, it would not be unreasonable.

Equally compelling, we in the U.S.— when I talk to my colleagues—we’re

We did a nuclear deal with Libya, where they gave us—Gaddafi gave us—his nuclear weapons assets and was given a clean bill of health, and then we later invaded and toppled him. Now, we can have a discussion about that; right?

There are human rights issues and all the rest. But if you’re sitting in Tehran, Libya made a deal, and what they got in return is they got toppled. If you want to look at it that way, you can look at it that way.

They covered up a military site at Parchin. Clearly, this was a site for stuff that was in violation of their obligations, so they tore the building down, sculpted all the soil off, and rebuilt over it. I mean, they clearly cheated; right? That’s why they did that. And they make, or have made, 20 percent enriched uranium.

So they say: “Listen, we have not decided to develop nuclear weapons, and we have this religious fatwa, this piece of paper, that says it’s haram, it’s illegitimate in Islam to pursue nuclear weapons.”

We’re supporting rebels in Syria against Assad. And I think Assad is terrible, but Syria and Iran are allies.

The Iranians have had people assassinated in the streets. They’ve had five nuclear scientists assassinated.

That’s not the U.S. doing that. I’m pretty sure I know who’s doing that, and I’m pretty sure it’s not the United States. But in any case, that’s happening.

We recognized the MEK, a group the Iranians consider to be a terrorist organization, and there are allegations that we support another terroristic group. We put on these sanctions, and we keep adding to the list of things that we have concerns about.

Remember empathy. You have to see the world as they see it if you’re going to be able to actually get at any of these things. I don’t think this is true, by the way. I do not believe our policy is regime change. I’m pretty sure it’s not regime change. And the U.S. government says repeatedly that this is not our policy.

You know, these are the words that we speak; regime change is not our policy.

But if I’m sitting in Tehran, while it

conclude that Iran is going for the bomb. They had a secret enrichment facility. They have far more enrichment capacity than they could possibly ever use for a domestic nuclear program that is barely off the ground. There’s no reason for them to have this much enrichment. They’ve gotten transfers from the Pakistani, A.Q. Khan, including a weapons design. There’s testimony from a Russian scientist that there was inappropriate testing. They haven’t signed the additional protocol.

convinced that Iran wants nuclear weapons, is going for the bomb. Now, the top intelligence officer in the United States, the Director of National Intelligence has testified every year that Iran had a nuclear weapons program in the late 1990s that it stopped, it halted, and shut down in 2003. They have a nuclear weapons capability. If you can make a centrifuge, you can make a nuclear weapon eventually.

So they have a basic nuclear weapons capability, but they have not decided whether they’re going for the bomb.

They have not made the political decision yet to go for the bomb. That is our consensus—a U.S. intelligence “finding” with “high confidence.” You don’t get a lot of “high confidence” intelligence findings.

So the policy is “they haven’t yet made a bomb decision.” But when you talk to friends and colleagues, it’s understandable why they would

And we say: “Regime change is not our policy. Look, here’s our policy. It is written down. I can read it to you. It’s not regime change.” And in both cases, both countries say look at the words we’re speaking. Trust me that my words are true. But there is no reason for trust in this relationship. Both sides have time-honored, well-earned reasons to mistrust each other—a justified mutual distrust.

And as for the Iranians,—we can talk in Question and Answer if you want, about whether we should use military force, I’ve written on this topic with colleagues—let me remind you that this is a country that fought the Iran/Iraq War in which Saddam used chemical weapons against a defenseless Iranian population. A war that went on for eight years, in which they paid a super-high price. That was the bloodiest war on record in the Middle East up to that point in the post-war period. So they’re Mount Aloysius College | 11

My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy | March 12, 2013

not going to just roll over.

Ultimately, most foreign policy disputes are settled through

“So, hospitality is not on the list of the most important variables in international behavior... But ironically, for the most vexing problems, the tough cases, the ones that... resist our attempts to pressure them to behave differently, it turns out that that is where it’s important...”

negotiation, not by force or imposition. It seems that we always reach for the “we should attack them” response or the “we should throw the bums out” response. But if you look at the numbers, that’s not how most things get settled.

Most things get settled in negotiations.

Sanctions, threats and buyoffs can be useful, but very rarely are countries— especially your adversaries who despise you, or what they think you represent—going to say, I’m waving the white flag, you’re right, I’m wrong, I give up. That just doesn’t happen very often.

So yes, sanctions, threats, etc., are fine but only in service towards a relationship in which there’s a discussion and a negotiation where both parties have to figure out a way where they can live with each other and achieve what they want to achieve.

Conclusion So, hospitality is not on the list of the most important variables in international behavior. And it’s not a central driving force in international relations. Power and national interest, these account for a lot more of what we see in terms of international 12 | Mount Aloysius College

politics. But ironically, for the most vexing problems, the tough cases, the countries we don’t like, the ones that fight us tooth and nail and resist our attempts to pressure them to behave differently, it turns out that that is where it’s important, where you have to have a relationship that is reciprocal, generous, empathetic, so that you can find a way to negotiate yourselves out of the box that you’ve put yourselves into.

And that’s what I wanted to say about hospitality. So I’m happy to take questions.

Question & Answer AUDIENCE MEMBER: Tell me, how does Ahmadinejad fit in with the powerful people, and what type of attributes have gotten him to where he is now?

DR. WALSH:

I do a lot of Iran talks. I have never done a hospitality talk before. So I have a slide, which I can’t show you because it’s not on the computer, that lays out the Iranian decision-making system.

And I sort of alluded to it.

In the Iranian system, the most important political actor is the Supreme Leader, the top cleric. He’s the “decider.”

The position or office of president is fairly weak, actually. And one of the things Ahmadinejad did, through dint of personality and campaigning and cleverness, was sort of bring more power to that office, wrestle more power to the office of the presidency.

But the most important thing to know about Ahmadinejad is that he is termed out of office. There’s a presidential election in June. There’s a two-term limit for the president in Iran, so he will be leaving office.

And for the past year he has been completely sidelined, because one of the characteristics of the Iranian domestic

political situation is intense fratricide —intense competition where different organs of the government fight each other for power. And Ahmadinejad has tremendously powerful enemies in Iran, and they have been circling him for years.

So a year ago in Tehran, the question was would they arrest Ahmadinejad and throw him in jail or let him serve out his term? So, he has very little power other than the bully pulpit. And internationally, he’s still recognized as the president. But in Iran, it’s a different story.

Now, having spent 20 hours with him and seen many Ahmadinejads over these different dinners—the fiery Ahmadinejad, the scholarly Ahmadinejad—I find it hard to believe that he’s going to leave the scene quietly. That’s not in his nature. He is a renegade, an individualist, not afraid of bucking the Supreme Leader.

Within the past month, he went to their Parliament—the President went to the Parliament and showed a video that implicated his archrival, the Speaker of the Parliament, along with his brother, as being in cahoots in a corruption deal. So it’s like the President went to Congress and said here’s a video of a guy taking cash. Oh, and he’s the Speaker of the House. So, he has two months left in office and I don’t think the final shoe has dropped. I don’t know what he’s going to do, but he’s going to try to do something.

How he got there, he was Mayor of Tehran. There was a presidential election in which there was a runoff between him and an establishment figure, Rafsanjani.

So, the most powerful person in Iran is the Supreme Leader. The second most powerful institution is the Revolutionary Guard. To run for president, you have to be vetted by the Guardians Council. So, only establishment conservatives are able to run in the Iranian system. And among

March 12, 2013 | My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy

them you then have fights between what are called the Principalists, who are super hardline, and others who are pragmatic even though they’re conservative. So the hardcore folks rallied with the Revolutionary Guard to support Ahmadinejad. So he won that first election.

And then the second election was the disputed 2009 election, where you saw the street protests and the Greens and all that. So that’s how he came to be in office. But he’s not long with us, politically anyway.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: What can we do—what does our country do if there is a first strike by our allies, either South Korea or Israel?

DR. WALSH:

What is the U.S. going to do if there is a military action taken not by the United States but, in the case of Iran, by Israel, or in the case of North Korea, by South Korea? I think that’s a tremendous question.

The U.S. has told Israel repeatedly, in

no uncertain terms, that we will not participate in a military strike, and that if they launch one now, they’re on their own. Now, with the caveat that at some point in the future we’ll take care of this, we may see a need to take military action. But our position is: if you do something now, this month, this year, you’re on your own.

And in fact, the U.S. has said that before. When Israel attacked the reactor in Syria that the North Koreans had built for them, the nuclear reactor, Israel came to the U.S. and asked us to participate, and the U.S. declined. Same thing is true of the Israeli attack on Iraq’s Osirak reactor, Saddam’s nuclear power reactor. The U.S. declined that opportunity as well.

You know, the U.S. is its own sovereign, independent state, and it has to make choices about costs and benefits of the use of military force in the region in any given moment. And I think for right now, and certainly for the past several years, it’s hard to make a case for military action, in my own personal view. There are a lot of unknowns, it’s hard in the middle of an Arab Spring, instability, Syrian civil war, all the rest of it, to make that decision.

And, if I may digress for just a moment; my core concern about a military strike against Iran is not that Iran is going to retaliate. I’m sure it will retaliate. I’m sure we can handle that retaliation. My core concern as a person who focuses on nuclear weapons decision-making is that they will wake up the next day and say, OK, fine, we’re making a nuclear weapon.

Remember, the intelligence-finding of the top officer in the United States for intelligence is that Iran has a nuclearweapons capability, but it has not decided—not pulled the trigger—on going for the bomb. But I think if they are attacked, they’ll change their mind.

And I think there’s good historical evidence for that.

After the Israelis bombed the Osirak reactor in 1981/82, the nuclear program in Iraq was just one of several exotic weapons programs that weren’t going anywhere. After that attack, Saddam released physicists and nuclear engineers that he had imprisoned for other reasons, and he made the nuclear program “job one.”

So, what is the most important thing if you want to be a nuclear weapons

Mount Aloysius College | 13

My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy | March 12, 2013

state? It’s not this or that technology, it’s commitment.

It’s political priority.

The countries that become nuclear weapons states are the ones who say I want it, I want it now, and we need to get it done, and they give it political priority. I think an attack on Iran at this point gives a decision to go for the bomb political priority. That’s my concern but again, there are unknowns here.

“No one wants war. But that doesn’t mean war can’t happen. And when you’re... not talking to each other, then there is the opportunity for mischief, error, misperception, miscalculation. You’re just waiting for that to happen...”

On South Korea, I remember sitting with a group of uniformed officers at the U.S. base in South Korea who told me that they saw their mission as both deterring North Korea and restraining South Korea. I had never heard that second part before. About two years ago there was a shelling; North Korea shelled a South Korean island. You may have seen it. A couple of fishermen got killed. It caused a tremendous political stir and anger and upset in South Korea.

In the wake of that, South Korea changed its military doctrine. Its policy before was to say, North Korea, you hit us, we’re going to respond proportionately, tit-for-tat. After that island shelling, they said, you hit us, we’re going to hit you three times harder.

And then they said that the decisions about how to respond that used to be made in Seoul, were now going to be pre-delegated to forward-deployed commanders. We’ll let commanders on the ground make the decision about how to respond, and we’re going to be able to strike every military asset in 14 | Mount Aloysius College

North Korea. We felt constricted last time. We’re done with that.

Next time, we’re going to hit North Korea hard, we’re going to forward deploy, and we’re going to put every one of their assets in our sights, which is reasonable and understandable, except that their very forward—they call it proactive deterrence—that very forward-leaning approach means trouble if anyone messes up; remember, we have a new leader of North Korea, a new leader in South Korea both of whom are trying to consolidate their political positions. They’re both new to the job.

All right, you have Kim Jong-un.

There’s an incident. Maybe someone messes up, someone gets killed. Well, the South Koreans respond three times as hard. So, are we going to bet that Kim will back down? I mean, we’re relying on the rationality of the North Korean regime to keep a mistake from spiraling

into a conventional war.

So my fear about the Korean Peninsula is not the nuclear weapons, per se. I don’t want to see them have nuclear weapons. I want it to be a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. But my near-term concern is the point that you raised about war breaking out—an inadvertent war—a war that no one wants.

North Korea doesn’t want a war. They’ll lose. They know they’re going to lose.

They’d go down. It would be ugly. But in going down, they would shoot a bunch of artillery at Seoul and tear a piece of Seoul off, and the South Koreans don’t want that. So, the South Koreans don’t want a war. We don’t want a war. The Chinese don’t want a war. The North Koreans don’t want a war that they know they’re going to lose.

No one wants war. But that doesn’t mean war can’t happen. And when you’re leaning forward, and, as you

March 12, 2013 | My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy

saw this week, the North Koreans cut the communication lines between the North and the South—and they’re not talking to each other—then there is the opportunity for mischief, error, misperception, miscalculation. You’re just waiting for that to happen.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:

I was listening to NPR this morning about drone activity. And even though, as you say, no one really wants a war, it seems we keep preparing for it…so, is there any hope?

DR. WALSH:

Drones are becoming cheaper, faster, easier, more sophisticated.

Soon everyone is going to have drones.

Welcome to that neighborhood. And Iran has shot down a couple of drones.

And you know, the South Koreans may use drones. I don’t know if they will or not; but that’s a good question.

To the question: do we have any reason for hope? My answer is yes, yes. War is not inevitable. War is a choice made by human beings. And so it’s in the power of human beings to avoid war.

And that’s why I put the priority on establishing a line of communication.

You don’t have to like the other guy.

We didn’t like the Soviets, but the Cuban Missile Crisis taught us that we needed to talk, so that mistakes don’t become wars. So, I think that’s possible. But these are both tough cases. I’m not a near-term optimist about the relationship with either of these countries.

And it’s true that, the longer this goes on, you wonder if something bad is going to happen. But we should be somewhat reassured by the fact that war is a big thing. It doesn’t happen every day. The chance of war breaking out on any given day is pretty small. The thing is, you just don’t want to keep rolling the dice over and over again.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:

But isn’t that what we’re doing because

we continue to—all countries maintain a posture of making sure they have what they need in case it happens?

bad behavior, and you’ll get savaged politically at home.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:

But in the case of other nations, the smartest way is to negotiate?

“To the question: do we have any reason for hope?

My answer is yes, yes. War is not inevitable. War is a choice made by human beings. And so it’s in the power of human beings to avoid war. And that’s why I put the priority on establishing a line of communication...”

DR. WALSH:

I think that’s true. I think there is a degree of self-fulfilling prophecy here and the use of worst-case scenarios that actually drag you into the thing unnecessarily. And that’s a long conversation, but—I agree. But all is not lost. I come here with good news.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:

My assumption, based on your presentation, is that right now negotiation isn’t highly valued in international relations. Do you see more nations putting more of a value on that, or is it still being pushed to the sidelines?

DR. WALSH:

If we think in terms of a pie, we put 80 percent of our time into sanctions.

Now, it takes two to talk. The Iranians need to talk and they walked away from the negotiating table for quite a long time. And the North Koreans, of course, are making it difficult. So if you test a nuclear weapon or you test a missile, it’s hard if you’re the President of the United States to say, okay, let’s negotiate because then it will look like you’re being weak and you’re rewarding

DR. WALSH:

Yes. There are all sorts of issues in the world of international politics, and some of them are, doubtless, being negotiated and negotiated well. But with respect to North Korea and Iran, there’s no conversation. There’s no line of communication. There’s not a telephone line with North Korea. Now we have had the beginning, as of a week ago in Kazakhstan, the resumption of what are called the P5-plus-1 nuclear talks. They could make some small progress.

But the problem with incrementalism in this relationship—you do a little bit and then you do a little bit more—is that the forces within both home countries who want to undo any progress, are beavering away, and there’s no trust.

So there is a strong argument for incrementalism in some things, but in others, one-step-at-a-time just means that you never get there because you never get to the second step. What you really need, is to do something that’s more dramatic.

I mean, we didn’t use incrementalism with Stalin, who was an evil person.

FDR and Stalin came to a top-down agreement—an agreement that was enforced from the top down, not achieved through little steps.

So while this varies by circumstances, I would say with respect to U.S. foreign policy towards countries that have bad nuclear programs or things we don’t like—the preponderant amount of policy, time, money and attention is spent on sanctions and on reassuring allies—those two, disproportionately.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:

You were talking about our moralistic Mount Aloysius College | 15

My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy | March 12, 2013

tendency in looking at foreign relations.

I wonder, do you have any opinion on whether, since 9/11, we have become what we hate?

DR. WALSH:

I don’t think we’ve become what we hate, but I do think that certainly 9/11 was a psychological and emotional shock to the body politic. And there are things that we did immediately after 9/11 out of emotion, understandable emotion, and then I also think some policy entrepreneurs, as any good policy entrepreneur will, took advantage of that situation to forward their agendas.

I think that’s all to be expected.

I think in some ways you could make the case that where we stand today, in 2013, is actually a good news story about the resilience of the American people and the American republic.

Yes, the early chapters weren’t very good—the war in Iraq—but here we stand a decade later, and I think we pulled back and found our footing.

There are still things that people are concerned about, Guantanamo and aspects of the various laws and use of drones and assassination, that are worthy of discussion, but I don’t feel that we’re spiraling down into some ugly, frightened place.

I think, as any country would, in those early years, we reacted out of fear. But I think you could argue that we’ve bounced back, that we didn’t slide down that slope. But maybe that’s just me.

16 | Mount Aloysius College

I’m an optimist by nature, so—.

You know, I want to say—can I say something about this crowd? And this is a compliment. Never in my life have I gotten so many questions from women, which I think is really, really terrific.

Often when I give talks, I have to default to calling on men and then saying that I’m going to alternate; I’m going to call on men and then call on women, and that’s the only way to get women questioners involved. I’m going to have to reverse this tonight and insist on calling on some men, but I’m very impressed by that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:

Where do you think America would rank on a list of hospitable nations? Do you think we’re near the top?

DR. WALSH:

That’s an interesting question, for which I have no answer whatsoever. Where does the U.S. rank in hospitality? I guess part of that is behavioral. You could actually have rankings about hospitality at the civil society level.

I’m just thinking this through with you now…you can imagine studies that would measure hospitality at the civil society level, how people conduct themselves.

Like civil discourse, what’s the nature of their civil discourse when they interact with each other? Are they social, are

they isolated, are they welcoming to strangers. How they treat immigrants might be another way of getting at that; right? This is a political science question. If you’re taking International Relations, you should talk to your professor about trying to construct a way of testing that hypothesis.

You know, for International Relations, you might try to look at a set of negotiations and see what countries participated in them and the stance they took and the degree to which it seemed to embody reciprocity. So the Nords have this tremendous record; right? I think, if I had to guess—and I’m making this up completely—I’m guessing Finland, Sweden and Norway are going to do really well because they’re always doing stuff like that, at least on the issues that I mentioned.

And others, probably not so good. But I’m not sure where we would be.

I would suspect that we wouldn’t be in the top 10 percent because we’ve enjoyed this fabulous history of immense power, so we really haven’t had to pay attention to anyone; right? You get used to that.

You get used to getting your own way, and so it’s possible that we haven’t had to be reciprocal. Not that we weren’t, but countries who live in a world with different geography and a different set of power attributes, they have to learn to get along and work things out more than we have really had to. So I would suspect that while we’re not bad, we’re not at the top.

March 12, 2013 | My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy

AUDIENCE MEMBER:

My question is about the recent controversy regarding the photo that was taken of Ahmadinejad consoling Hugo Chavez’s mother, which the clerics are condemning as a sin since they are not relatives. There is speculation about what he did. Do you think that it was—that he did it intentionally?

DR. WALSH:

So, there’s a recent controversy with President Ahmadinejad giving the mother of the recently-passed Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez a hug or, in the view of some clerics back in Tehran, touching a woman inappropriately.

You know, I think that’s the least of his problems. It’s a problem, but it’s the least of his problems. I mean, he has people back home that hate him. I’m not talking about the population; I’m talking about the elites competing for power in the government.

He has strong, powerful forces— clerical and otherwise—that hate him.

Larijani hates him. Larijani’s brothers —he has a lot of brothers and they’re all in places of importance—they all hate him.

So, I think that’s the fundamental thing driving all this right now. And then the question is: what’s he going to do?

I don’t know what he can do, but I feel sure he’s not going to just drive off and retire in Yazdi. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:

Given what you just said about all the different factions in Iran, would you anticipate a level of instability coming out of that?

DR. WALSH:

Do I think the factionalism will lead to instability? Obviously, this presidential election, the first presidential election since the 2009 disputed election, is a big deal.

I do not expect instability in Iran. I think it’s a much more authoritarian state than it was 10 years ago. You know, 2009 has made it a more authoritarian state. I mean, it wasn’t Canada prior to that, but compared to many states, Arab states in the Middle East, it had real elections; right? And there was a distribution of power.

Korea.

Are there human rights problems? Yes, yes, yes. But you look at Syria under Assad, the elder or the son, look at Egypt under Mubarak, you know, a lot of those countries in that region had problems that were worse than Iran’s. And countries in the Middle East used to look up to Iran as recently as five years ago. They don’t do that anymore.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:

So Iran is more authoritarian. They’re going to be on their guard for this upcoming election. It’s going to be tightly controlled. I’m sure they’re nervous about it, but I do not expect instability that would threaten the future of the regime. Moreover, I think if they were attacked, then you’ll get a rally-around-the-flag effect.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:

What are the practical considerations of North Korea having repudiated the armistice?

DR. WALSH:

I’d have preferred that they hadn’t done that, but I don’t think it’s going to be decisive in any way.

What strikes me about the North Korean provocations that we’ve seen is that they all involve words or actions that don’t actually do anything to South Korea; right? If they conduct a missile test, or they conduct a nuclear test, there’s no South Korean getting shot or hurt. They’re doing it themselves and it’s provocative.

If I get up and say I am ignoring this treaty or I’m going to cut a communication line, it’s provocative, but it’s not using a stick to poke South

So, I don’t welcome any of this. The North Koreans have a tremendously flexible foreign policy that allows them to accept and renounce things as they wish—so, no armistice today, maybe an armistice tomorrow. So, I don’t worry about that too much.

There are a lot of negative stereotypes towards Middle Eastern countries.

How does this fit in with hospitality— and what can we do to reduce it?

DR. WALSH:

That’s a great question; and thank you for bringing us back on theme. The check is in the mail. So the question is about prejudice against people from the Middle East, and what does that imply for this theme of hospitality? You know, I think it speaks directly to it. It speaks absolutely directly to it.

You have to engage people. You have to be reciprocal, mutual, respectful, and try to see the world through their eyes.

And that is the antidote to the opposite course of standing back and judging from afar, without talking and without engaging in a serious way.

I see these things as directly related; this talk is geared to the governmental level, how we should behave in terms of foreign policy. But at the level of civil society, we absolutely need more of that. We need to allow people to see each other as human. And they are human.

Now, not all humans are good. Some humans are evil. And some humans make bad choices, and on and on. We are frail and imperfect beings. But that is what it means to be human, and we need to be able to see that humanity.

You know, we’re never going to wipe out prejudice. But—here I go again, Pollyanna Walsh… Dr. Pollyanna Walsh —I’m also impressed by the fact that, when you look at the numbers, there is a ton of prejudice in the world Mount Aloysius College | 17

My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy | March 12, 2013

and people find reasons not to like each other, but it doesn’t generate a tremendous amount of violence. We have to apportion this up and talk about specific time periods.

if you’re going to get anywhere you’re going to have to talk substantively about what your real differences are, because a negotiation is not just having tea.

But the people who act out and do terrible things, whether they’re terrorists or they’re thugs, hooligans that beat up a Sikh because they think he’s an Arab—that stuff doesn’t happen as much as you would expect, given the sort of broad, widespread feelings of prejudice against people.

A negotiation is having tea and talking about your difficulties and your complaints. And I think the reason why the North Koreans and the Iranians—I’ve said unpleasant things about North Korea and Iran on TV many, many times: North Korea has a horrific human rights record, Iran is an authoritarian state, Iran clearly violated its Non-Proliferation Treaty commitments—but they still invite me, because they know that I’m going to tell them what I believe to be true.

So, it’s a good news/bad news story. Yes, people have negative feelings towards each other, but most people don’t act on it. The people who do, they’re a tiny, tiny minority. So, I think there’s a good story there, too.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:

If you have values, I don’t care if you’re Muslim or if you’re from Iran—looking to identify where the line is—you have to acknowledge that there are real differences that can’t just be swept under the rug.

DR. WALSH:

I hear you. And I agree with that totally.

And certainly in the domain that I’m talking about, which is the domain of foreign policy and foreign affairs, 18 | Mount Aloysius College

I tell them—and I say this to the Americans as well—you have this position and I sympathize with you on this. You know, your complaint here about X, you’re right, I agree. But you’re completely wrong about this, and you’re not helping by doing Y and Z. And I say that to the Americans, I say that to the Iranians, and I say that to the North Koreans.

So I think, I can only imagine in my own mind, that they’re not so sensitive that you can’t say substantive things to them; but there has to be respect first.

Absent the respect and the trust, people

go in with their litany of complaints and that’s where they start. Listen, you did this to me, you did that to me.

Well, absent any sort of pre-existing relationship or sense of trust or respect, people are just going to push you away or come right back at you and say, oh yeah, well you toppled my government.

You did this, you did that.

I found in North Korea, just as a small metaphor, that I did the things that would be hospitable in that environment

“You have to engage people.

You have to be reciprocal, mutual, respectful, and try to see the world through their eyes. And that is the antidote to the opposite course of standing back and judging from afar...”

as a guest. And then when I got in the car with my counterpart for one of those long two-hour drives to the next stop, say the birthplace of some important figure, we would argue.

The Foreign Ministry guy assigned to me, we would have knock-down,

March 12, 2013 | My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy

drag-out arguments. But we could do that. What made that possible was that there had been some initial relationship established. And the North Koreans—I like the North Koreans, I like the South Koreans—they mix it up. They’re not afraid to say what they think. I kind of like that personality. But you can’t do that unless you do the first things first.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:

You talked about misunderstanding— the misunderstanding that sides can have about each other. Obviously, it has to be addressed somehow, and obviously, it’s not as easy as a simple phone call— hey, we’ve got a misunderstanding. Oh, okay. Everything’s okay now. It was just a misunderstanding.

10 years.

You have to break the cycle of expectations. One side has to do something that the other side doesn’t expect, something that speaks directly to a core concern that they have, in a

“You have to break the cycle of expectations. One side has to do something that the other side doesn’t expect, something that speaks directly to a core concern that they have, in a way that is dramatic and gets them to stop and back up and say, what’s going on here? This is different.”

DR. WALSH:

Yes, it’s a good question. The question is about my point concerning the ways in which both sides can come to see the other as having views that aren’t their actual views, but in their hearts, they suspect that they are. They honestly think—not everyone, but there’s a non-trivial plurality of opinion that thinks we just want regime change.

And there’s a non-trivial group that thinks they’re going for the bomb—I don’t care whether they shut the bomb program off in 2003. I don’t care. In my heart I feel they’re going for the bomb.

And so it’s hard to negotiate a resolution to a nuclear dispute if you actually believe that the other side is going for the bomb no matter what. Or it’s hard to negotiate when you think that no matter what you sign—just like Gaddafi signed the Libya nuclear agreement— as soon the ink’s dry, they’re coming after you.

So simply saying that something is not your policy doesn’t cut it. You have to do something. I mean, actions do speak louder than words. And that’s why the advice I gave to my interlocutors was that they were caught in a cycle. I’ve seen this now many times over the last

way that is dramatic and gets them to stop and back up and say, what’s going on here? This is different.

Now, when I say that to the Iranians, they say, “Hey, we’re the weaker party here.

You’re the United States of America.

You go first.” Which, you know, that’s not unreasonable; right? The U.S. is far more powerful and really is much less at risk when you think about it. We don’t live in southwest Asia. We live surrounded by oceans, Canada and Mexico. So if they take risks and they’re wrong, and we really are about regime change, they’re screwed.

So they’re sort of right about that. And then I say it to the Americans, and the Americans say, you know, we would do that, but as soon as we offer something up, the Iranians are just going to pocket that concession and move on, and we’ll get nothing for it.

other that their words are real. And we haven’t seen that yet.

Closing Remarks

President Thomas P. Foley I want to thank Jim for just two more things that he brought to us here tonight. One is a new understanding of the word empathy that unites the themes that we’ve pursued the last two years here: civil discourse and hospitality. Jim’s notion of empathy is not that we understand and agree with what another party is saying, but that we try to figure out both what their position is and why it is they hold that position.

When Jim put those two charts up there showing what the Iranians think about us and what we think about the Iranians, that lesson applies to a lot of other issues as well. We might use that prism to look at our differences on issues that are very American—like gun control and immigration—and try to understand how we come to our different positions. And I think that’s an important take-away for us.

The second “thank you” is summed up by an expression: Smart is when you believe only half of what you hear.

Brilliant is when you know which half to believe.

Jim, the explanations that you gave us here tonight helped us all feel, at least for a little while—that we were brilliant on these issues, and we appreciate that very much. Thank you.

Now, I can understand why they say that, but that’s sort of where we are. It’s going to take something more. Talking— having a relationship of respect—is the precondition, but it is not the full answer. At some point people have to take actions that demonstrate to the Mount Aloysius College | 19

My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad: Hospitality as a Context for Foreign Policy | March 12, 2013

Biographical Note

Dr. Jim Walsh is an expert in international security and a Research Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program (SSP).

Dr. Walsh’s research and writings focus on international security, and in particular, topics involving nuclear weapons and terrorism. Dr. Walsh has testified before the United States Senate on the issue of nuclear terrorism and on Iran’s nuclear program. He is one of a handful of Americans who has traveled to both Iran and North Korea for talks with officials about nuclear issues. The British newspaper, The Independent, named Dr. Walsh and his co-authors as having offered one of the 10 best and original ideas of 2008.

His comments and analysis have appeared in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Times of London, the Financial Times, Associated Press, Reuters, Time magazine, US News and World Report, the Atlantic, 20 | Mount Aloysius College

the Economist, ABC news, CBS news, the Discovery Channel, MTV, and numerous other national and international media outlets. He acts as terrorism consultant for the NBC affiliate in Boston (WHDH, Ch 7), served as Iraq War analyst for WGBH (PBS, Boston), and regularly appears on Fox, CNN, NPR, and the BBC. His film credits include Testament (Paramount Pictures, 2004), Meltdown (FX channel, 2004), and Fortress Australia (Australia Broadcast Corporation, 2002).

Dr. Walsh’s recent publications include “What to do about Iran?” with Thomas Pickering and Anthony Zinni, Chicago Tribune (2012); the chapter: “Egypt’s Nuclear Future: Proliferation or Restraint?” in Forecasting Proliferation, Stanford University Press (2010); Dangerous Myths: North Korea, the United States, and the Future of Asia, Yale University Press (forthcoming); “Sanctions Can’t be the Centerpiece,” in the New York Times (2009); “How to Deal with Iran” with Thoman Pickering and William Luers in the New York Review of Books (2009). He is also the author of “Learning from Past Success:

The NPT and the Future of Non-proliferation” for the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission chaired by Hans Blix (2006). Dr. Walsh also served as editor for the book series, Terrorism: Documents of International & Local Control and his writings have appeared in several scholarly journals including Political Science Quarterly, the Nonproliferation Review, International Studies Review, and Contemporary Security Policy.

Before coming to MIT, Dr. Walsh was Executive Director of the Managing the Atom Project at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a visiting scholar at the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He has taught at both Harvard University and MIT. Dr. Walsh received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Jim Walsh was awarded the honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters at the 2013 Mount Aloysius College Commencement.