In My Time - Dick Cheney [261]
Finally, effective diplomacy requires that our diplomats study and learn from our history. In this case, recent history with North Korea was a pretty effective guide to how they would behave. They signed the Agreed Framework in 1994 during the Clinton administration and immediately began violating its terms, demanding payment and looking for ways to use the negotiations to blackmail the United States. We now know the North was actively working to enrich uranium and proliferating with the Syrians while they were party to the Agreed Framework. They behaved the same way with us and have brought out all their threats and demands again for the Obama administration. They have learned now, through Republican and Democratic administrations, that this is an effective way to operate. It yields concessions from the West while they continue to develop nuclear weapons. I hope a future president and secretary of state will break the cycle. This is particularly important because in the area of nonproliferation, as in so much else, the United States must lead. If we do not hold the line, few others will.
History in a broader sense is also important. In every administration, Republican and Democrat, there is often an inclination on the part of the State Department to make preemptive concessions to bad actors in the hope that their behavior will change. I often wondered what historical lessons or examples my State Department colleagues were drawing on as they advocated such policies. If they had been able to point to something, to say, well, here is where it worked in the past, I might have viewed their efforts differently. Sadly, the history is clear. Policies that ignore or reward dangerous behavior by our adversaries do not work. Concessions delivered out of desperation in the naive hope that despots will respond in kind tend not to enhance the security of the United States.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Endings
According to the Constitution, the vice president is also president of the Senate, and in the early days of the country, that gave the vice president quite a lot to do. The first vice president, John Adams, even participated in debate on issues that came before the Senate, although after a friend advised him that his lengthy disquisitions were stoking resentment, he eased off. By my time, the position of Senate president had pretty much boiled down to casting tie-breaking votes—a job not to be disdained. My ability to cast those votes gave Americans the Bush tax cut that they still enjoy as I write.
In 2008, I found something else I could do as president of the Senate. It all began when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns. In an eloquent decision written by Judge Laurence Silberman, the court held that the right to bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment is an individual right and that the D.C. handgun ban violated that right. The Supreme Court had agreed to hear the case and the Justice Department filed an amicus brief, which was no surprise, but the position that the department took was unexpected. Instead of affirming the Court of Appeals decision, the Justice Department argued that it was too broad and asked that the Supreme Court send the case back to the lower courts. This stance seemed inconsistent with the president’s previous position on the Second Amendment, and it was certainly inconsistent with my view.
One evening in early February, David Addington got a call from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s office. A staff person told Addington that a number of members of the House and Senate were preparing to file an amicus brief in support of the D.C. Circuit decision and wondered if, by any chance, I might be interested in signing on. Addington had the brief sent over, read it, and then called to see what I’d like to do. It wasn’t a hard decision. I signed on, joining fifty-five senators and 250 House members, as “President of the