A statement Secretary of State John Kerry made while talking to reporters in Beijing last week caught my eye.

If Kim Jong Un decides to launch a missile, whether it’s across the Sea of Japan or some other direction, he will be choosing willfully to ignore the entire international community.  And it will be a provocation and unwanted act that will raise people’s temperatures.

Yeah?  And?  Northern Korea isn’t part of the international community; why would Kerry think Littlest Kim cares about ignoring it?  What is Kerry thinking about when he makes statements like this?

In fact, northern Korea was decidedly unimpressed:

North Korea has dismissed the South’s proposal to resolve tensions through dialogue, describing it as “a crafty trick” to disguise Seoul’s hostility.

The Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said it would not talk unless Seoul abandoned its confrontational posture….

Unfortunately, it’s of a piece with how this administration, and its predecessors, have been dealing with another of our enemies: Iran.  They think that the governments of both places think like we do, that the men of these governments share our values, share our goals.

This naive, if not outright ignorant.  The failure of this assumption, though, has been manifest for a very long time.

Hmm….