Secret Attempt News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

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 ...

As a kid, Sami Tsang was told to be quiet and well-behaved. "My work kind of does the opposite of that," she says. See her latest creations at Art Toronto this weekend.

Over a decade into Syria’s civil war, it’s hard to fathom the country at peace and integrated with the international community. The Assad regime’s brutal oppression of protests in March 2011 sparked more than 10 years of violence, conflict and tragedy in the country. But in the weeks before, there was quiet hope that a clandestine U.S. effort could broker a land-for-peace deal between Israel and Syria. For Syria, such a peace agreement would have resulted in the lifting of U.S. sanctions and financial assistance, trade and investment from the international community, giving Syrians hope ...

Join USIP and Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy for a discussion reflecting on Ambassador Hof’s experience trying to broker Syrian-Israeli peace and what it can tell us about the possibilities and limitations of American conflict mediation. The conversation will also look back on the consistent and the unpredictable elements of successful negotiations in the Middle East, Balkans, Colombia and Africa, and draw lessons from past successes, failures and near-misses.

Most books about diplomacy are chronicles of success. Reaching for the Heights is a remarkable history of, and a series of profound insights into, a failure.