It seems in so many things, including foreign policy, lessons tend to be repeated until they are learned. It’s not to say there is a cookie-cutter solution to every problem. Dictator cracks down on dissidents, dictator invades other country: break off relations with dictator, cut trade or use whatever other tools are available. Certainly denounce it, as anyone on the side of the good guys always does. But wait, hasn’t that worked? Maybe there isn’t a one-size fits all approach with regard to the minutia, but perhaps there tends to be in the bigger picture. Some of the best things are those which are simple, yet work every time. We do know what has worked and we do know what has not worked in the past.

At any rate, those who oppose standing up to tyrants and dangerous regimes rarely accuse those who support it as using a cookie cutter approach, anyway; for that would be admitting that it has worked in the past, and history is something they wish to keep as far out of the discussion as possible. What doesn’t work is using trade as a means of liberalizing a truly totalitarian regime, what doesn’t work is weakening your defenses to show good will to predatory state aggressors who wouldn’t know a thing about good will but do know a great deal about an opening when they see one. This isn’t to say that regimes never come around, but it can only be believed as much as it can be verified. What doesn’t work is going hat in hand with apologies for offenses real and imagined, offering niceties, and treating monsters like gentlemen. And fortunately for us, we have the failures to prove it: Neville Chamberlain, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and already Barack Obama.

Ronald Reagan once said, “To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.” This sounds like something fairly simply to grasp; so why is it so many continue their bent on anything but the obviously successful tact? I’m sure the answer is a bit complicated, but what appears to be the case mostly is that there are those who spend far too much time over-thinking things and in so doing, utterly disconnect themselves from the real world. These are people, who have, for the most part, terribly wonderful intensions, but have holed up so long inside their labs researching atmospheric nuance, they’ve forgotten that the sky is blue. Honestly, we’ve all been guilty of it in some area at some time or another. Maybe we were so caught up in how reliable our new car was, we forgot to change the oil.

There are also those who choose not to think at all; those who completely rely on five minutes of TV news as they’re headed out the door to help them decide what their world will look like tomorrow. Even more unfortunate is that more often than not, those in the news are also those in the first group.

Interestingly, the detractors of Reagan’s foreign policy claim now as they did then that “cowboy diplomacy” will lead us into conflagration. They argue this today knowing full-well that it was Reagan’s foreign policy that lead to an amazing peace; one that meant not just the end to the Cold War, but the liberation of tens of millions from the chains of their tyrannical oppressors. By contrast, we have seen tragically time and again as aggressors transgress against the weak. Europe’s biggest wars have come about as the result of the Napoleons, the von Bismarcks, the Hitlers, and the Stalins sensing they had a real shot at exploiting their neighbors. Japan likewise believed it would be an easy enough affair with China and the United States. Kuwait learned the lesson of weakness from Saddam’s Iraq and Honduras may soon learn a bit from Venezuela as Obama looks on.

Most of us know this because we live it out in our daily lives. If we leave our keys in our cars, we know it’s far more likely that someone will make us the victims of theft, and, just because it hasn’t happened in awhile, doesn’t mean it’s any less a danger. We also know that if we leave the front doors of our houses open, flies tend to fly in. After all, this is what thieves and flies do: exploit vulnerabilities. This, the path of least resistance, is truly one of the most fundamental laws of nature.

When we lay down before a hungry beast, it is then and only then that we should be blaming ourselves before we blame the beast. Other times, no matter our shortcomings, it is really safe for you to assume the beast is far more ignoble than you. After all, he wants to eat you, and at least you don’t want to do that to him – you just want him to leave you alone and not harm your friends. If he doesn’t leave you alone, it’s true you may have to shoot him, but that is quite unlikely, since that beast’s first priority is to live so he may eat you. However, if you should be faced with the decision to shoot him, at least you will have that option if you are prepared: you still have your weapon and you are not lying prostrate before him.

I have spent most of my life owning, training with horses, and competing in shows. What I have learned from this is that horses are basically kind, good natured animals and extremely intelligent. They develop a strong bond with humans, other horses, and even the other animals around the stable. They are by no means alligators. However, the rule of the open door is so ingrained in every creature, that if you should leave the door to the feed room or a gate to the outside standing open, he will fully exploit it. He does not do this because he is disloyal – indeed, he may feel terrible he has failed you after the fact (and his stomach will likely agree). But exploit it he must because it is part of his nature. Now take that nature and insert it into a predator, which cares not a bit about you and whose only purpose is indeed to do you direct harm. This is Iran, North Korea, China and other states and international players in our time. The sooner we face reality as realists rather than as  dreamers, the sooner we will be far safer if not also doing a great deal to defend our moral high ground and the overall interests of ourselves as well as our friends living closer to these predators.

Unlike the distended, detached ideological theory many on the other side have cooked up this past century, what I have just told you is reality. It is not borne of Nobel-Prize winning creative thinking; it is something that has been demonstrated in the real world since time immemorial. It is a reality in every facet of our lives from geopolitics to backyard politics, to the animals around us, and even to physics. It seems in so many things that lessons tend to be repeated until learned, or at least during the times in which they are remembered. Let’s remember those lessons which serve us well so that our imaginations do not lead to folly.