"It is a mistake to assume that diplomacy can always settle international disputes if there is "good faith" and "willingness to come to an agreement". For in a revolutionary international order, each power will seem to its opponents to lack precisely these qualities. [...] In the absence of an agreement on what constitutes a reasonable demand, diplomatic conferences are occupied with sterile repetitions of basic positions and accusations of bad faith, or allegations of "unreasonableness" and "subversion". They become elaborate stage plays which attempt to attach as yet uncommitted powers to one of the opposing systems."
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Anti-communists from the United StatesCentenariansUnited States Secretaries of StateDiplomats of the United StatesNobel Peace Prize laureates
Original Language: English
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Sources
A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-22 (1957), p. 2
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
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