Notice I keep using the word “talk.” Not “negotiate.” Negotiate comes at some point in the process of talking. And you can’t say, “I’ll only talk if you give me this.” Because they’ll say “I’ll only talk if you give me that.” And you immediately freeze the basis for talking. So even on those horrible afternoons when I had to spend all my time arguing with the Syrian foreign minister, which we did a lot of—- exchanging vivid talking points with each other—- we were talking.

It took me a year to get permission to do it, because of reservations, but nevertheless, I started talking to the North Koreans, and I met with the North Korean foreign minister in 2002, in Brunai for the first time. But then the nuclear problem exploded in their face and our face.

What were those exchanges with the Syrians like?

They’re always difficult. They’re tough debaters and tough negotiators, but I can hold my own. Sometimes they said they would do things which they didn’t. And sometimes they did things which we suggested would be wise for them to do. So it was a mixed bag. And sometimes nothing was accomplished: we just talked. But when you’re trying to get them to do things, which apparently we are trying to do now, I don’t know any other way to try and get them to do those things, except perhaps to talk to them and not just cajole them and threaten them. And they love to talk.

Does the U.S. military have a role to play in helping to export American values?

We have. We’ve done it for decades. When I was a corps commander in Germany, or a young lieutenant in Germany, I was exporting American values. In fact, after the cold war when we were drawing down our troops from Germany and I was the one doing the drawing down, Joschka Fischer, who was my dear friend and colleague and still is, said you know, “I’m really worried and troubled about this.” He said, “I’m not troubled because there’ll be fewer troops to fight the non-existent Soviet Union. But for fifty years, Germans have had Americans live amongst us. And we always saw that as a sign of friendship and a connection to the United States. Your GIs were our biggest insurance policy, and we liked them, even though there were occasional problems.”

And I think I even wrote in my book somewhere—I better read that book again—that it’s pretty great, as a young lieutenant, to have a German farmer come out in the winter forest and bring you a cup of hot coffee and brodchen, a piece of warm bread, because as far as they were concerned, it was that American lieutenant in the woods who was protecting them.

If there are people who don’t want American troops there, should they be there?

It depends. They’re there because they serve our interest. And they also hopefully serve the interest of the country that they’re in. In the case of Haiti—Haiti is an example where we were not invited in, but there was a horrible civil war that was about to break out, if you’re talking about 2004. And our friends and allies, the French, Canadians, and others said we had to get Aristede to come on out, and he did decide to come on out. I provided him a plane and got him out, and everybody condemned U.S. roundly. Everybody was mad at me. The Haitian people were mixed, but there was gonna be a bloodbath that weekend, and I’ve never felt badly about doing it.