By Con George-Kotzabasis
Steve Clemons in the dizziness of “cocktail sotting diplomacy,” to quote him, forgets that diplomacy is the continuation of war by other means, to paraphrase Clausewitz. Like war, one deploys one’s ‘intellectual armaments’ in the field of diplomacy on the condition that there is a high probability that one will come out a winner from the diplomatic contest. And the timing of the opening of this contest depends on the strengths and weaknesses of one’s enemy. Engineering “strategic shifts” and achieving “strategic priorities,” to quote Clemons, depend on the condition that one’s enemy negotiates from a position of weakness.
I would also like to remind Steve that although it’s certainly true that one has to accept the world as it is and perforce negotiate with one’s foes on this realist principle, as he stated at the New American Foundation conference, one accepts the world as it is only for the purpose of changing it. To merely accept it without the ability to change it, because one’s actions are based on wrong calculations, is a barren futile exercise.
