Word: eban
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Despite these dramatic alterations in the international arena, the ways in which nations interact with each other, the basic methods of intercourse, have remained surprisingly constant. As former Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban argues convincingly in his book The New Diplomacy, the only true novelty in international relations is the increase in number of nations involved...
...basic role of diplomacy today, therefore, is as it has always been, is the control of conflict. Imbedded in Eban's argument is the assumptions that nations more often than not will have competing interests and it is the goal of statesmen to keep these rivalries at manageable levels. Progress he warns, will most often be unspectacular and painfully slow and actions may very well offend the public conception's of morality, especially in democracies. What The New Diplomacy evolves into, then is an eloquent defense of the traditional realist approach to international relations...
Time and again, Eban shows, the age old tools of diplomacy are the most efficacious. Concepts as the balance of power, spheres of influence and reliance on the historical record have contributed more than anything else to global peace. Such innovations as international organizations and human rights crusades have had limited success in a world where nations continue to tenaciously guard their sovereignity and freedom of action...
...There was something complete about them; you knew they were there for keeps. When you're a private eye, you want things to stay put." Later, in Yma Dream, Thomas Meehan offers a Carrollian nightmare in which the Misses Chaplin, Sumac, Gardner, Gabor, et al., and the Messrs. Eban, Ehrenburg, Betti, etc., are introduced to Miss Hagen, the actress: "Uta, Yma; Uta, Ava; Uta, Oona; Uta, Ona; Uta, Ida; Uta, Ugo; Uta, Abba; Uta, Ilya...
Having asserted that in Israel "the moral preoccupation gives a special pathos and nobility to life," Eban concludes with a ringing affirmation of Israel's democratic integrity. Its spirit is embodied, he believes, in the commission's conviction that "a harsh truth is more salutary than a smooth evasion." That same belief seems to underlie Eban's own account...