Strategy in arbitration case needs rethinking

IN a famous essay at the height of the Cold War in 1952, “The Dangerous Amateurs,” the famed political philosopher Walter Lippmann warned against the dangers that amateur diplomats pose to the work of diplomacy, and how if unrestrained, they could make “diplomacy suffer unnecessarily.”

We think of his words today as we monitor the progress of the jurisdiction hearings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, and observe how the project appears to have gotten out of control.