Kerry Makes the Case for Diplomacy

This week’s developments illustrate the role of diplomat as manager, persuader, and demagogue. Secretary Kerry must negotiate with the Iranians and the Group of 6, his own government (interagency, internal State, White House, and of course, Congress), sell it to the various publics, and the constituent partners in the Middle East and Europe.

“The time to oppose it is when you see what it is,” he said, “not to oppose the effort to find out what is possible.”

But with the prospect of a deal suddenly more real than it has been for a decade, Mr. Kerry is having to fend off those who want to pre-empt it. He is insisting to allies that the United States will drive a hard bargain with the Iranians and doing his best to dispel rumors.

The latest round of talks failed, he said, not because of dissent from France, as has been reported, but because the Iranians rejected an offer put on the table by the French, along with the United States, Britain, China, Germany and Russia. “The French signed off on it; we signed off on it,” Mr. Kerry said. “There was unity, but Iran couldn’t take it.”

He offered familiar arguments as well: Without diplomacy, he said, Iran is much more likely to obtain a nuclear bomb, which would set off an arms race in the Middle East and leave everyone less secure. He even raised his own service in Vietnam as a reminder of war’s futility.

Still, the forces arrayed against a deal are diverse and potent: Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Muslim states, as well as a sizable contingent of Iran hawks in Congress. Mr. Netanyahu, who warned that Geneva was shaping up as a “deal of the century” for Iran, is calling on other leaders to rally opposition. An Israeli minister, Naftali Bennett, is mobilizing Jewish groups in the United States to try to block it.

via After Near Miss on Iran, Kerry Says Diplomacy Is Still the Right Path – NYTimes.com.

Acquitted Israeli Politician Returns to Job as Foreign Minister – NYTimes.com

Now Lieberman can get back to work, but one party leader in Israel says he “lacks inhibitions and sows discord,” hardly the skills of diplomacy needed in a difficult time for Israel with conflicts in Syria, crisis in Iran, and rebuilding in Iraq and Egypt all around.

A Russian-speaking immigrant from the former Soviet Union who lives in a settlement in the West Bank, Mr. Lieberman was foreign minister in the previous Israeli government from 2009 to late 2012, a tenure marked by several episodes that critics deemed highly undiplomatic. Famously skeptical of the prospects of reaching a peace deal with the Palestinians, Mr. Lieberman, a hard-line populist, accused the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, of engaging in “diplomatic terrorism.”

Last year, addressing an audience of foreign diplomats in Israel, Mr. Lieberman gave vent to his government’s anger over European support for diplomatic gains by the Palestinians at the United Nations and over international rebukes for Israeli settlement plans. Comparing Israel’s situation to that of Czechoslovakia in 1938 before the Nazi invasion, he said, “When push comes to shove, many key leaders would be willing to sacrifice Israel without batting an eyelid in order to appease Islamic radicals and ensure quiet for themselves.”

via Acquitted Israeli Politician Returns to Job as Foreign Minister – NYTimes.com.

All this is happening as Israel deepens its diplomatic relationship with none else other than China, starting with weapons and now with trade in technology investment.

Booklist | ‘The Brothers’ by Stephen Kinzer

A one-sided view of two brothers, a polemic of the duo, the diplomat and the spy, both of whom shaped the US from the fifties through the Cold War:

During World War II, Allen returned to the Bern embassy, putting his mistress’s psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, to work for the Allied cause, recruiting a senior official of the German foreign office, tapping into the ill-fated conspiracy to kill Hitler, and playing a part in the surrender of the Nazi armies in Italy. Foster had a quieter war, helping to write the United Nations Charter and serving as an adviser at the U.N. founding conference in San Francisco. He had been Thomas E. Dewey’s foreign-policy adviser when the latter ran against FDR in the 1944 election.

The fateful culmination, in Mr. Kinzer\’s view, came when, “with the Dulles brothers as his right and left arms, [Dwight D. Eisenhower] led the United States into a secret global conflict that raged throughout his presidency.” By bringing us such memorable acts as the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala, Mr. Kinzer implies, the brothers gave us in the end the allegedly warlike, unjust, hated America we live in now.

“The Brothers” is a long book pieced together largely from secondary sources. Mr. Kinzer’s compilation of clandestine capitalist mischief rolls inexorably onward from first page to last, seldom pausing to speak good of the dead. This approach is one-sided and somewhat monotonous, at times even obsessive, but not exactly unfair. After all, the positive side of the story has often been told, and those who see merit in the brothers’ work are unlikely to be swayed by Mr. Kinzer’s fervent rebutta

via Book Review: ‘The Brothers’ by Stephen Kinzer – WSJ.com.