To the editor:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking on June 3, 2008 to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) said: “I know that there is a serious debate right now, both in our country and in Israel, about how to address the threat posed by the Iranian regime. This debate, though, should not be about whether we talk to Iran. That’s not the real issue. Diplomacy is not a synonym for talking. True diplomacy means structuring a set of incentives and disincentives to produce change in behavior.”

By “incentives and disincentives” she means carrots and sticks.

The problem here is that other nations are not rats or pigeons in a laboratory, they are not research animals in some learning experiment. Sometimes other nations just cannot be bought with our incentives or threatened with our punishments.

This warmed-over, carrot-and-stick diplomacy is a form of arrogant imperialism from the past. I suggest that Bush won’t talk with those who have other national goals contrary to ours because he is afraid of spontaneous debate over the conference table. In that kind of debate they would have to recognize that their opponents are thinking, rational people who just happen to have different priorities, values and goals from ours. That is impossible as long as they think of other nations as rats in our laboratory.

Julian I. Taber

Coupeville