The negotiations involving Trump and Wickoff are performative and not genuine peace efforts.

“One of the people I met who's not in government, but somebody quite close to government and said, you know, it's just it's just infuriating to see this Wickoff guy and Trump announcing we're close to a deal. The negotiations are ongoing. She said they're not real negotiations. They're completely fak”

The speaker finds the concept of engaging in diplomatic negotiations while simultaneously attacking the other party to be absurd and ineffective.

“it's like now it's a good faith negotiation where we spend it trying to kill you, but it's good faith ne it's about the nuclear program, but you got to die. It's about the nuclear program, but you got to get your head blown off.”

Krystal Ball argues that the use of diplomacy as a ruse in recent US-led negotiations has destroyed the possibility of future diplomatic solutions.

“Then we used a second diplomatic effort as a ruse. That's even to talk about the fact we actually used a diplomatic ruse to assassinate Kasamsulmani to begin with. You can't trust us. We're out there floating assassination of your leader of the Ayatollah and you know partner with these psychos who w”

Diplomacy requires thorough preparation and strength rather than empty photo opportunities and groveling to foreign dictators.

“Well, you don't show up if it's going to go down like that. And you spend months, sometimes years, preparing for that meeting to ensure what happened between Trump and Xi doesn't go down.”

Robert Malley maintains that it is essential for diplomats to engage with all parties in a conflict, including those classified as terrorist organizations, to effectively resolve disputes.

“How do you resolve a conflict if you don't talk to the parties who are in conflict? That sort of seems elementary, but it's a fact that they once you classify some an organization as a terrorist organization, you can't talk to them or if you could talk to them, strict limits.”

The Trump administration should have understood Russia's long-standing demands for a neutral, disarmed Ukraine before taking office to navigate diplomacy more effectively.

“So why didn't Trump and company understand exactly what those demands were and work around that starting on January 20th? I don't know what the answer is, but they didn't.”

The US has the capacity to restrain Israel's military actions, but it depends on the political will of the President to withstand pressure from lobbying groups.

“The reality is obvious to me. Obviously, the United States can. It's a question of whether the president is willing to pay the political price for uh implementing that and pushing through that given the fact that there's going to be a lot of resistance.”

The United States holds the necessary leverage to dictate when the war with Iran concludes.

“we've talked a lot about how instrumental Prime Minister Netanyahu was in convincing President Trump to go to the war against Iran, but ultimately, as Ronin said, in this relationship, Trump holds the leverage in ending it and he can tell Netanyahu when the war will end.”

Trump's summit with Putin is dismantling the established international order and post-WWII institutions that historically maintained global stability.

“he's dismantling all the organizations set up since the Second World War that kept peace. He's dismantling all those international laws, all the norms, the international criminal court, the international court of justice, the trade agreements, NATO, the UN.”

Effective diplomacy requires the ability to speak for domestic audiences while simultaneously advancing international goals, a skill that Trump's envoys do not possess.

“And one of the things that's really interesting about diplomacy, as you remember, is that diplomats have to speak both for consumption at home and for moving the ball forward in international affairs. And that's a really tricky thing to do.”

Private capital networks and business interests are inappropriately replacing traditional diplomacy in the current U.S. foreign policy toward Russia and Ukraine.

“It feels as if, and I don't know if this is Trump or more specifically the cloud cover for this being the idolatry or the increasing idolatry of the dollar in the United States, but it feels as if diplomacy itself is being replaced by private capital networks, sovereign funds, energy deals”