Would you meet an evil dictator?

Say Kim Jong-un or some other evil motherfucker?

This mental exercise has occupied my mind for some time.

I don’t mean meet out of curiosity. Rather, under these two scenarios:

• Say you’re President or in the position of leadership. I am not talking about some extreme situation where you have to meet because the world is on the brink of a nuclear war. But say you could meet to establish some contact, to initiate a thaw, and maybe be better prepared for that hypothetical extreme situation
• You truly loath someone because they are everything that you are not, because they fall totally outside of your system of values; yet you could meet your nemesis to attempt to reduce your loathing, to give it a chance, however small, to better understand their world

For me, it’d be meeting someone like the Chechen leader Kadyrov or Russia’s Sechin. You can Google them. Not that I actively loath them every waking hour but they are thugs to me.

Generally, it doesn’t happen — these meetings. I think country leaders and politicians apply the principle “no negotiation with terrorists” even when we are not talking about literal terrorists. You just don’t meet with bad guys.

Plus there are probably PR constraints — you’d get bashed your supporters and opponents alike.

At a more personal level, there are principles and dignity — I’m too good to ever sit opposite this evil motherfucker.