About the Negotiating with Evil Project

Engaging Terrorists, Rogues, and Revolutionaries

The George W. Bush Administration initially vilified certain regimes around the world, only to backtrack later and selectively engage with some of them, including two of the three charter members of the “axis of evil.” Further, the Bush Administration has engaged selectively with certain terrorist groups and insurgents, also contrary to its declaratory policy.

Clearly, the United States has been “negotiating with evil,” with respect to both certain states and non-state actors. This diplomatic behavior is not new; previous U.S. administrations have behaved in a similar fashion. But because it has largely occurred in the shadows, few protocols and little analysis of prior practice exist in the open literature or even on a classified basis to help guide thought or action. Each administration has had to perform the policy equivalent of reinventing the wheel.

This type of engagement raises fundamental and enduring policy questions: Can states benefit from engaging with enemies? If so, then what is the best way to proceed? Who should engage? What topics should be open to negotiation and which ones non-negotiable? And how can states gain effective leverage to shape the outcome? A hidden diplomatic history exists, but is poorly understood, even by U.S. officials. This project aims to help change that.

The Project is comprised of two essential components:

• The examination of four historical cases of U.S. engagement with declared state enemies: the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, North Korea under both the Clinton and Bush Administrations, and Libya under Colonel Qaddafi.


• Six Workshops will be convened to examine state engagement with current or recent terrorist organizations or insurgencies: the IRA, Britain, and Ireland; ETA, Spain and France; the Tamil Tigers, Sri Lanka, and India; Hamas, Israel, and Egypt; the Moro Liberation Fronts and the Philippines; and the United States, Iraq, and the Sunni Awakening.

These workshops will bring together a broad range of expertise, including current and retired policy-makers and government officials, military leaders, intelligence professionals, historians, terrorism specialists, and other academic experts.