Blinken’s Moscow policy criticized by envoy who helped free Brittney Griner

Guardian:

Cameron Hume, a career diplomat who was an ambassador under Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama, said: “For a secretary of state to not want to even get body language or two words from Sergei Lavrov about the situation in Moscow, in the Kremlin, in the people who are close to [Vladimir] Putin, during a time of war was striking to me.

“I would want those little tiny windows into that reality, given the stakes.”

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Hume said: “I think if you have problems with people, you’re a diplomat, you’re just supposed to meet with them. And that doesn’t convey that you’re weak, soft or anything else. It conveys you want to explore how you deal with the problem rather than ignore how you deal with the problem.”

Hume also said: “There’s been a general habit of American diplomacy, which has strengthened or become more dominant in the last 30 years, that if we don’t like what somebody’s doing, we will name them and shame them and we will then assume that’s all we have to do. And we’ll go out and have lunch

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“You can’t resolve complicated conflicts just sitting on your laurels and saying I’m morally superior.”