Hal Wyler’s Chatham House Speech
From “The Diplomat” Season 1, Episode 8 (The James Bond Clause):
We started the Bosnia talks a few days after Suljic launched a bombing campaign that very nearly killed the woman who’s now my wife. It was my lot to spend more hours in locked rooms with that man than in the hospital with Kate.
First time I met him, I refused to shake his hand. Rookie move. It probably set peace back a year.
Communication isn’t the key. Diplomacy doesn’t open doors with a twist of the wrist. Diplomacy never works. It never fucking works.
Diplomacy is 40 days and nights in a Vienna hotel room, listening to the same empty talking points, getting trashed at the minibar. It’s getting to no, over and over and over. Diplomacy never works. Until it does.
I’ve given 30 years of my life for two moments when enemies stood on blood-soaked ground and grasped hands. I’d give it 30 more. Second round of talks with Suljic: I shook his hand. Two years later, he was a tired man hoping for peace, and together, we ended the war.
One of the boneheaded truisms of foreign policy is that talking to your enemies legitimizes them. Talk to everyone. Talk to the dictator and the war criminal. Talk to the poor shmuck three levels down who’s so pissed he has to sit in the back of the second car that he may be ready to turn. Talk to terrorists. Talk to everyone. Fail and fail again and brush yourself off and fail again, because maybe. Maybe.