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Reflecting on his perilous days as a US military attache in Beirut, Ambassador Frederic C. Hof argues there is more to successful diplomacy than conferences. Much of the essential work of diplomacy, he writes, is collecting and reporting information, rather than in formal or high-profile negotiations, and a great deal of this work is carried out not by professional civilian diplomats but by military attaches serving under the direction of the ambassador. Frederic C. Hof is diplomat in residence at Bard and the author of Reaching for the Heights: The Inside Story of a Secret Attempt to Reach a ...

Between 2009 and 2011, a team of U.S. negotiators including Bard Diplomat in Residence and Ambassador Frederic C. Hof came historically close to realizing a Syrian-Israeli peace agreement by seizing on an alignment of interests in Damascus, Jerusalem and Washington. The United States Institute of Peace and Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy present a discussion reflecting on Hof’s experience trying to broker Syrian-Israeli peace and what it can tell us about the possibilities and limitations of American conflict mediation.

Who is Destroying Lebanon and Why? If the destruction of five states in the Greater Middle East over the past two decades has required deadly wars, the destruction of Lebanon was carried out by the Lebanese themselves, without them realizing it. The Resistance has helplessly seen the country collapse. It is indeed possible to win a war without having to fight it. Within a few months, Lebanon, often misrepresented as “the only Arab democratic state” or even as the “Switzerland of the Middle East,” has collapsed. Successively, popular demonstrations against the political class (October ...