Key Words: Not a great weekend in American diplomacy: international-affairs notables

For those hoping to witness a tamping down of tensions between Washington and Pyongyang, the weekend was a grave disappointment, at least in the eyes of Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass and Washington Post foreign-affairs writer David Ignatius.

Said Haass:

‘This [was] a weekend of diplomatic malpractice.’

Richard Haass, Council on Foreign Relations

Ignatius, referring to an atmosphere in which Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, already having been challenged to an intelligence-quotient face-off by the president, not only was made to address Sen. Bob Corker’s suggestion that he’d been publicly castrated (you’ll recall his “intact” response) but described his preference for diplomacy with North Korea by stating that talks would go on “until the first bomb drops.”

Quipped Ignatius, who, like Haass, was appearing on MSNBC:

‘We’re a long way from Dean Acheson.’

David Ignatius, Washington Post

Acheson, who served as secretary of state under Harry Truman, is linked with the shaping of not only the Truman Doctrine but the postwar Marshall Plan and even the formation of NATO.

On Twitter, Haass addressed the Tillerson diplomacy-vs.-bombs remark as perhaps having missed its mark: