Welcome to the Commentary Magazine Daily Podcast today is Monday January 10th, 2022.

I'm John Pudhortz, the editor of Commentary No Rossment is still out with me as always

executive editor Abe Greenwald-Hi Abe.

Hi John.

And senior writer Christine Rosen-Hi Christine.

Hi John.

As we record this American diplomat Wendy Sherman is meeting with a Russian counterpart

to discuss the increasing tensions between the West and Russia in regard to Russia's

ambitions toward Ukraine.

And the tone is very bleak.

And ordinarily when American diplomacy is sort of underway the diplomats and the press

court that cover the diplomats which is now much smaller than it used to be, tends to

take an almost absurdly optimistic view because of course it's this belief that negotiations

are to be all and end all of all existence and they're just so wonderful and negotiations

mean just the most wonderful comedy between nations and everything is just going to be fantastic

and this is really what we want.

We don't want tension.

We want conversation.

That is not the way that this is being characterized.

This seems to be an extraordinarily pessimistic approach on the part of our diplomats the way

they're talking to reporters and the way reporters are handling this is they fully expect

whatever this conversation is to fail because the Russians are making preposterous demands

...