Rich, you write: “For all the talk of Obama’s realism, he is pursuing a policy driven by a fantasy about international affairs — that all disputes can be resolved through negotiations and governments can be talked out of their interests.” You are right, but rather than dismiss Obama’s approach as a fantasy, the belief that engagement and dialogue can always succeed is an ideology, one that infects a good proportion of those who consider themselves realists.

Carter, as president, started with a different ideology, one that saw human rights in foreign policy as paramount. Memoirs of Carter administration officials show he moved to undercut the Shah in part because, he felt that Khomeini would be better for human rights. Carter was wrong, and stubborn. Rather than admit some of his pet targets — Mugabe, Arafat, Assad were not interested in peace or human rights, he simply shed this pretext and embraced the same ideology which Obama appears to have now — a belief in moral equivalency and the idea that negotiation can solve all ills regardless of the extremism of the adversary and the immorality of the position.

As to the rest of your post, you are right that the Carter-Obama analogy doesn’t hold up on Iran. If you believe Obama’s concern is simply engagement over the nuclear issue, then the “Chicken Kiev” analogy is more apt.