After he took office, President Joe Biden declared, “Diplomacy is back.” Top aides Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan repeated the mantra. Their implication? The Trump era’s unilateralism and tweet-from-the-hip chaos were over.

A statesman embracing diplomacy, however, is akin to a surgeon wielding a scalpel: The tool depends upon the skill of its operator. While the Biden administration embraced the traditional trappings of diplomacy, its members approached the strategy with all the skill of a narcoleptic, epileptic monkey high on crack.