Iβll believe I live in a peace-loving nation when the bookshelves devoted to diplomatic history outnumber the shelves on military history.
Category Archives: Diplomacy
Lippmann and How Close
βIt is often very illuminating, therefore, to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion? Was it the man who told you, or the man who told him, or someone still further removed? And how much was he permitted to see?β
βWhen he informs you that France thinks this and that, what part of France did he watch? How was he able to watch it? Where was he when he watched it? What Frenchmen was he permitted to talk to, what newspapers did he read, and where did they learn what they say?β
Public Opinion, chapter 2
Walter Lippmann
ββ
One may obviously substitute Ukraine, Russia, Gaza, and Israel here.
βWe are in the waiting business.β

When we visited Vienna/Wien in 2015, it coincided with diplomatic talks about Syria, at the Hotel Imperial. These were the first talks Iran deigned to attend, so the atmosphere was quite hopeful that progress could be made.
We were in the hotelβs CafΓ© Imperial when I overheard that line from the distinguished gentleman above, presumably in one delegation or another. If you recognize the image, itβs because yes, this is the source for one of my banners.
Clippedy cloppedy
TIL: When an ambassador presents their diplomatic credentials to Japan, they take a horse-drawn carriage to the Imperial Palace. Fiji did that today, in the first horsey ride since it was suspended by reaction to the pandemic.