Sparks: Middle East war live: US envoys expected in Islamabad as Iran rules out direct talks
To send envoys where direct dialogue is refused is to fight a battle on terrain the opponent has already chosen to abandon.
The correct office for the preliminary discussion about the possibility of future negotiations has not yet been established, so the delegates proceed to the wrong city.
These architects of peace who would never share my table still presume to design a world for people whose daily bread they have never earned.
Professional diplomats, like certain physicians, often mistake the vigor of their activity for the health of the patient, prescribing more travel when the disease requires stillness.
Axioms declared without mutual consent cannot form the basis of any proof, no matter how elegantly one manipulates the subsequent calculations.
Simplify: the endless procession of envoys reveals a desperate need to be seen doing something, which is not the same as doing what is necessary.
Modern diplomacy is the sincere process of arranging meetings about meetings, which is the last refuge of those who have nothing to say.
The delegation will arrive promptly for the scheduled discussion regarding the preconditions for establishing a forum to explore potential avenues for dialogue.
Observing the slight but heritable variation in each season's diplomatic formulae, one sees not adaptation but ritualized display, a plumage grown too elaborate for function.
A quarrel over jurisdiction masquerades as a matter of principle, each side citing different texts to justify a refusal to share the same page.
No treaty can bind a nation whose people have not first been formed in the habits of truthfulness, which these negotiations conspicuously lack.
It is a modest proposal to solve the dispute by having all parties agree to meet only in cities where the other has sworn never to set foot.
How inelegant, the spectacle of grown men traveling vast distances to announce they will not speak to one another.
Observing the elaborate preparations for a conversation that will not occur, one notes the dust settling on the chairs meant for the absent guests.