Indian and Pakistani diplomats tend to agree on one thing: A peace deal with their quarrelsome neighbor will need to be worked out under the cover of darkness through a so-called “back-channel.” [...] The benefits of backroom diplomacy are well known. Keeping negotiation processes outside the public gaze allows parties to make concessions and explore creative proposals that could otherwise mean political suicide for their leaders.

After a decade, in the 2000s, in which China aggressively pursued warmer relations with many Southeast Asian nations, using a combination of diplomacy, aid, and soft power to woo its neighbors, the past five years have seen a significant chill in China-Southeast Asia relations. 

At times President Obama sounds almost incoherent on Iran. On one hand he says, like the Israeli prime minister, that he does not see a peace deal in the near future. (“What we can’t do is pretend that there’s a possibility for something that’s not there. And we can’t continue to premise our public diplomacy based on something that everybody knows is not going to happen at least in the next several years.”) So they are on the same page?