America’s Amateur Diplomats Are Set Up to Fail

The negotiations between the United States and Iran in Islamabad had to fail. That doesn’t mean future rounds, perhaps already starting this week, are futile. But the American approach to diplomacy has doomed the talks so far for the same two reasons that it has hampered efforts to broker a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, say, or to turn the fragile truce in the Gaza Strip into a lasting denouement between Israelis and Palestinians.

The first reason is that the US in the second term of Donald Trump relies not on professional diplomats and experts but on amateurs who may have the trust of the president but are otherwise out of their depth.