Thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East are pouring into the European Union from Belarus, a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. The surge in illegal immigration is being orchestrated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who is accused of trying to blackmail the EU into reversing the sanctions it imposed over his disputed reelection and a crackdown on dissent.

While the EU — hampered by its ideological commitment to open borders — appears at a loss as to what to do next, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania are being forced to spend millions of euros to build fences along their borders with Belarus. An EU spokesman explained that Brussels "does not finance fences or barriers."

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said that Belarus should be a concern not only for the Baltic countries or the EU, but for the "whole democratic world" which, he advised, "needs to wake up."

"We firmly believe that the protection of European external border is not just the duty of individual Member States but also the common responsibility of the EU. Hence, proper political attention should be paid to it on the EU level and sufficient funding allocated." — Joint statement issued by the prime ministers of Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

"Only a very clear and unified EU policy on returning irregular migrants can effectively prevent criminal groups and regimes from exploiting illegal migration for their own purposes. Europe's message must be short and precise — those illegally entering the EU cannot be granted a refugee status and will be returned to their countries of origin." — Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis.

More importantly, perhaps, it may be naïve to demand that Taliban give up terrorism -- the very method that has given them some significance for more than a quarter of a century. Terror is the very raison d'etre of this outfit.

The New York Times ran reports glorifying the USSR at a time that the Georgian master of the Kremlin carried out bloody purges. And, for a while at least, President Franklin D. Roosevelt saw Heinrich Himmler as leader of "moderates" in Nazi Germany....

China has not morphed into the "moderate" power that Henry Kissinger, Beijing's chief lobbyist in the US, claims.

Why should the group listen to Western powers when they have neither a coherent policy nor the hard power needed to back that policy? The Taliban know that they owe their very existence to terror and repression..... They reached the top of the pile because they could cut throats, stone women to death and dot the roads used by foreign troops with home-made bombs.

The Taliban may promise not to threaten Western interests directly.... In the final analysis, however, a regime that treats its own people with utter contempt is unlikely to offer foreigners, especially the "infidel," a better deal. In most cases, at least in the short and medium terms, a regime's foreign policy is the continuation of its domestic policies.

There is no need to rush towards any deal with Taliban.

In dealing with nasty regimes, the choice is not limited to full scale invasion or abject surrender.