Israel refused even to negotiate with the Hamas led Palestinian government, trying to squeeze it financially and make it capitulate. Hamas refused to acknowledge a two state solution except obliquely, and then under considerable pressure.

The threat we face is existential, Nasrallah said. We now have three options to expand the war and fight far more than we have fought in the last four years, to capitulate and be slaughtered, or to disperse throughout the world, walking humiliated and purposeless from catastrophe to catastrophe.

I still recall the difficulty that I faced, as South Korea s foreign minister, in convincing Bush administration policymakers to negotiate with North Korea instead of merely applying pressure and waiting for the North to capitulate. Back then, North Korea was restarting its Yongbyon nuclear facility and producing plutonium, thus strengthening its bargaining position vis à vis the US.

More precisely, the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers and the troika continued to leak to the global media that the Greek authorities had no credible, innovative proposals on offer their standard refrain. A few days later, once the powers that be realized that the Greek government was about to capitulate fully to the troika s demands, they saw fit to impose upon Greece their demeaning, unimaginative, and pernicious Treuhand model.