The Day Diplomacy Died

This is a great read!

The Day Diplomacy Died on the Foriegn Policy in Focus website.


"In our special Memorial Day edition, World Beat is publishing an obituary for Diplomacy, which died prematurely last week after an extended illness.

The last seven years or so were difficult ones for Diplomacy. According to press reports, the mainstay of foreign policy began complaining of chest pains and nausea in 2001. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, Diplomacy sustained several shocks to the system, went into intensive care, and very nearly succumbed. But it was last week that its heart and soul finally gave up after a double-barreled assault by President George W. Bush and his presumptive successor John McCain."

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"The killing blow, however, came from John McCain. The Republican presidential candidate assailed Diplomacy in an effort to get at Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama. According to McCain, Obama doesn’t understand the “basic realities of international relations” because he favors sitting down and talking to people like Raul Castro in Cuba and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. McCain’s words, and the possibility that he might bring such an attitude into the White House in 2009, were simply too much for Diplomacy"

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Of course, being a cynic, I'd suggest that it may have been Barack Obama's retreat from the notion of talking to our enemies that might have been the real death blow. In the last week or so, Mr. Obama has retreated from the idea of talking to either Mr. Castro or Mr. Ahmadinejad. In the case of Mr. Castro, by using the old trick of placing unacceptable pre-conditions on the conversation. This has of course been a favorite tactic of those who want to publicly proclaim a willingness to talk but who actually have no intention of ever talking.

Thus, it was at this point that poor old Diplomacy realized it was doomed no matter whether it was killed publicly by Sen. McCain or quietly behind the scenes by Sen. Obama. Diplomacy then lost its last will to live and slipped quietly into the great beyond.