To make of their country a pariah is a political, strategic, and moral failure for the leaders of Israel. Those leaders strategic decisions over the last few years, if not longer, have been rather consistently poor, or at least imprudent.

Of course the North should continue to be named and shamed in the United Nations for its human rights abuses and nuclear misbehavior. But pariah states never behave responsibly, and no state has a bigger role than we do in coaxing Kim Jong un s regime into normality.

Today, as recent events have shown, isolation is more often than not a mistake, an unenviable condition resulting from failed policies. Cuba s emergence from decades of forced isolation is a victory for the island, while North Korea s pariah status has led it to the brink of collapse.

But the thaw in US Cuba relations has not been welcomed by all US politicians. Indeed, despite President Barack Obama s apparent desire to end the pointless diplomatic freeze, some right wing US politicians would, it seems, prefer a pariah to a potential partner off Florida s coast.

British and American negotiators secretly met with Libyan counterparts to resolve the case of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and other terrorism issues. In the quid pro quo that followed, Qaddafi agreed to eliminate his nascent nuclear program in exchange for an end to pariah status.

Indeed, the Timorese people have consistently shown that what they want from their government is openness, dialogue, and majority voting under the rule of law. Myanmar s people want the same, but their country is being pushed towards collapse by years of political and economic crisis, and might well become ASEAN s pariah, like Africa s Zimbabwe.

By continuing to support Assad despite his use of chemical weapons, Russia s standing in the Arab world has gone from patron to pariah. What little moral and political standing Russian President Vladimir Putin has retained in the rest of the world is also evaporating, as he will soon discover at the upcoming G 20 Summit in Saint Petersburg.

By treating Lukashenka as a favored business partner at the same time that the EU is trying to isolate him as an international pariah, European hypocrisy stands naked. Instead of indirectly propping up Lukashenka s regime through such cozy deals, Europe s governments must begin to act in accordance with what Europe s parliament has long understood underwriting Lukashenka economically only prolongs his misrule.

Opening up trade in agriculture and textiles and even providing preferences of the kind that are offered to other poor countries would likely benefit directly the poor farmers who make up 70 of the population, as well as create new jobs. The wealthy and powerful can circumvent financial sanctions, though at a cost ordinary citizens cannot so easily escape the impact of international pariah status.

Demographers warn that the Jewish and Arab populations between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean will reach parity this year. From that point on, the specter of a Jewish minority ruling over an Arab majority in an apartheid state is bound to become a reality, turning Israel into an international pariah, unless a more sober coalition replaces Netanyahu s suicidal alliance with religious fundamentalists and extreme nationalists.

By the end of his life, Shevardnadze had become a political pariah in Georgia, the West, and Russia, where he was viewed as an architect of the Soviet Union s dissolution. Yet, even if he was largely forgotten after the Rose Revolution of 2003, when he was ousted by his one time protégé, Mikheil Saakashvili, his cunning and skill at manipulating political forces still enabled him to manage his legacy to his advantage.

Yet, despite history s long train of failures, Hamas s June 2007 seizure of control of Gaza, and its pariah status in the West, we are repeatedly told by the US that 2008 will be the year of a peace agreement. Meanwhile, the Arab peace proposal, which calls for a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders and a fair solution to the refugee problem in exchange for normalization of Arab states relations with Israel, appears doomed.

On the one hand, he needs to maximize his control of the economy and society in order to raise wages and pensions and to keep opponents down, while nourishing the long tail of patronage that keeps him in power. On the other hand, Moscow s elite who fear that their assets may be expropriated by a future government wants to avoid international pariah status so that they can see out their sun set years in the safety of the West if the need arises.