Andrew, with all due respect, a VP Nixon meeting with an unknown quantity like Castro in 1959 (who sometimes declared he was neither Communist nor hostile to the U.S.) is not the same as a President Nixon meeting with a fully entrenched Castro between 1969-1973 — and that was precisely the context, whether presidents like Nixon or Reagan chose to meet with known hostile leaders per se as opposed to leaders of nuclear superpowers that could annihilate the U.S.
And I thought I explained in yesterday’s essay on NRO why talking per se is not appeasement:
Most define appeasement not by the mere willingness on occasion to negotiate with enemies…Rather, appeasement is an overriding desire to avoid war or confrontation to such a degree so as to engage in a serial pattern of behavior that results in an accomodation of an enemy’s demands—and ultimately the inadvertant enhancement of its agendas.