45-second clip taken from the main video:
From a great number of biographies I’ve read, I consider there are broadly four steps to achieving effective diplomacy:
1) Discern reality. Listen to both sides, and ascertain as close to the ground truth of what’s happened as possible.
2) Speak truth to power. Do away with false accounts and self-deceptions – on both sides. Get as close to an agreed account of reality with all parties as is possible.
3) List an exhaustive menu of options for conceivable paths forward that could be taken. (I should note: this is basic groundwork not done by the majority of our present media.) And only then:
4) Get the leaders of countries who are in conflict to try and agree to a workable solution.
This is what a State Department or Foreign Office should be doing – but today are not.