The State Department has become an arm of the Pentagon, and if anything is even more militaristic. From Ted Snider at libertarianinstitute.org:
The signature of Joe Biden’s State Department has been the abdication of diplomacy. Its head, Antony Blinken, the chief U.S. diplomat, has abdicated the role of diplomat. Though obvious in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, this absence of diplomacy has been nowhere more evident than in the Russo-Ukrainian war where the State Department has been more the warrior than the Pentagon.
On November 9, 2022, it was America’s top soldier, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, who said, “There has to be a mutual recognition that a military victory is probably, in the true sense of the word is maybe not achievable through military means, and therefore you need to turn to other means.” Nine months later, Milley was still advising that, “If the end state is Ukraine is a free, independent sovereign country with its territory intact, that will take a considerable level of effort yet to come. And this is a long, very difficult, high casualty-producing war that’s ongoing. You can achieve those objectives through military means. That’s gonna take a long, long time, but you can also achieve those objectives maybe possibly, through some sort of diplomatic means.”
But while the warriors were counselling diplomacy, the diplomats were counselling war. When asked about talks taking place in the early days of the war, State Department spokesman Ned Price answered that Russia is “suggesting that diplomacy take place at the barrel of a gun or as Moscow’s rockets, mortars, artillery target the Ukrainian people,” and objected that, “This is not real diplomacy. Those are not the conditions for real diplomacy.”
