History is full of some very bad characters that have made a mark on the world. Names like Adolf Hitler, Genghis Kahn and Pol Pot come to mind. These are not people most of us would want to do business with and yet, there have been cases where countries, including the United States, have had relationships with some unsavory and even evil people when it served larger national interests. Some would call this a cynical abandonment of higher values, but geopolitics and national security can be dirty, vicious exercises in choosing bad options over still worse ones.
