Terry Glavin Quotes
Afghans long ago resigned themselves to this sort of thing. Compromises must be made. Deals with the devil are better than ceaseless butchery. In the exigencies of post-conflict bygones, against the threat of collapse into more terrible bloodletting, the ugliness of realpolitik is the lesser evil.
Glavin, Terry. "The Butcher of Kabul is back, and he's a peacemaker." National Post, 23 Sept. 2016.
In dos nations there are people who will reject any negotiated deal in which they do not get everything that they want. Some even will characterize the deal as a sellout or treason. But to be successful the diplomats from both sides must feel that they have gotten enough so that they can persuade their countrymen and political authorities that the nation has gotten enough to make the deal worth while.
The dilemma of how much interaction a democratic nation should have with tyrannies and dictatorships has been argued for years. The metaphor of dining with the devil comes from the English proverb given in {611184}.
From the 1787 Philadelphia discussions on the Constitution right up to the Civil War there was compromise after compromise on the slavery issue. Many political issues are amenable to compromise like tax rates or election modalities. Others like freedom of religion and speech and slavery are not. With the latter, compromise just delays the inevitable and often makes the final resolution more contentious and often violent.
