Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs Magazine. I am joined today by Ambassador Chess Freeman. He is a retired career Foreign Service officer,

former Assistant Secretary of Defense, and one of America's leading authorities on U.S.-China

relations as well as the Middle East. He served as President Nixon's principal interpreter

during his historic 1972 visit to China. He also served as President Nixon's principal interpreter during his historic 1972 visit to China.

He also served as United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989 to 1992.

He is the author of books including interesting times, China, America, and the shifting balance of prestige,

and America's continuing

misadventures in the Middle East as well as being a past president of the Middle East

Policy Council and co-chair of the U.S. China Policy Foundation. Ambassador Freeman,

welcome to current affairs.

I'd be with you.

I want to start a little quote from you here.

You have said of the United States, we don't do diplomacy anymore.

You spent your career as a diplomat, and one of the criticisms you've made of the United

States foreign policy consistently is of the resort to force

and the threat of force over diplomacy. I wonder if you can explain, expand upon what you mean by,

because I think most Americans probably haven't thought about this much. Most Americans know

about their country's disastrous failed wars abroad.

But the idea of diplomacy, what it is, and the fact that we don't do it anymore is probably

something they haven't heard much about.

So perhaps you could explain what you mean by that.

Well, the word diplomacy has multiple meanings.

...