Trump should negotiate with America’s foreign enemies. After all, when you have matters to settle, especially with those whom you have significant disputes, personal discussion is mandatory. Especially if an existential issue is at stake, you sit and talk regardless of whether or not some sort of  renewed credibility is granted to either party because face-to-face conversations are underway. But, to negotiate doesn’t mean to embrace. When Roosevelt and then Truman met with Soviet leader Josef Stalin, World War II was being waged. Few cared about providing Stalin additional credibility as a result of negotiations. Stalin didn’t become anyone’s best friend.

In the 1990’s, public discussion centered on the propriety of  discussions between Israeli leaders and representatives from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), primarily its terrorist head, Yasir Arafat. The question of legitimizing a terrorist leader responsible for the killing of hundreds (if not thousands), of civilians, was front-and-center. Once a major agreement was reached (1993), the matter of a face-to-face signing ceremony at the White House between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was also heavily debated. In the end, they met and signed the agreement.

Both President Trump and his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, have met with a variety of tyrants, including leaders from North Korea (only Trump), Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. But, context is everything. In this situation it could be argued that by negotiating, Trump and Kim Jung-Un are trying to reduce an existential threat to both nations, present because nuclear weapons are involved. In the other cases, the same arguments cannot usually be made.

What about Trump and Putin? Both men are authoritarian in nature, but only the latter has few, if any, legal and political restraints. The Russian leader, for the most part, makes decisions on his own, a position that Trump clearly relishes. When and if you cross Putin, he is not someone to take lightly; assassination and other forms of violence are used for purposes of intimidation and revenge.

People fear Putin. Trump is a coward and buffoon. Nevertheless, the political and strategic ramifications of their strange relationship, along with the way the American leader acts around brutal dictators, damages the U.S. in terms of a perceived diminution in the reliability of the United States as a bastion of democracy and as a country that keeps its promises. Consequently, in terms of American national security, both friends and foes wonder what we would actually do when a crisis arose, regardless of any signed agreement or treaty? Inevitably, nations that traditionally depend on America for security assistance will seek their own means of  protection (e.g. nuclear weapons), if the United States is no longer regarded as a dependable ally. We have been lucky so far. Our word and our treaty commitments have not yet been severely tested. Let’s hope that remains the situation until at least November 2020.