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I recommend “The Diplomat“ (the US one, maybe the other is good too, don’t know) not just as a gripping and taughtly written television drama, but as a mini education in how to parse news like this, in one particular way.
It’s a wildly unrealistic show, I’m sure, but I do suspect one part of it is quite accurate:
Heated, pointed, clear-eyed, bare-fisted arguments behind closed doors become minuscule, subtle gestures in public statements. An anonymous source saying “the president raised his voice during the meeting” is more or less diplomacy’s version of a public face punch.
What •actually• got said behind closed doors? We can only guess.
2/2
I mention this because people (like me) whose resting place is an activist mindset often get impatient with international diplomacy not using language as strong as we would use in a social media post — failing to realize that, in the communication context they’re in, that’s exactly the strength of language they’re using.
3/2 [OK, the 2 was a lie]
@inthehands I had a similar epiphany when Obama said, publicly and often, that the ACA was the greatest thing since sliced bread, when he surely knew it was an awkward compromise. It was explained to me that saying what all those senators and congresspeople had risked their careers to support “kinda sucks, but it’s the best we could do” won’t exactly keep them as allies next time.
Iterated, high-visibility games are the norm. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1048424.Governing_the_Commons
@marick
Exactly. And if you actually pay attention to what he said at the time with your diplomacy ears on, you’ll notice that he does not in fact say that it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread; it’s much more like “this is a really important step, and we need to take the win.” At no point did I ever, not once, hear him imply that the US healthcare system would need no further improvement after the ACA.