You are good at negotiating. If I'm not mistaken, Helsinki was a success in terms of you having started a dialogue and begun to build a rapport. Considering how many people are willing to continue to do business with Russia while scolding President Putin, your willingness to talk to him as if he is the leader of a country and not an exasperating child was more honest and worthy of American ideals than Europe's greedy whining. This is particularly true when it's taken into account that Europe has also wanted the United States to provide homes for all of the refugees displaced by Mr. Assad's unchecked aggression against his own people. Rather than admit its own failures in preventing and stopping the destruction of Syria, Europe is also happy to follow the media by calling you a racist, as if racism has ever died in Europe. "Take these refugees; you're the U.S., everyone knows you have plenty of money. Look at them all, living in such terrible conditions. EVEN they shouldn't have to live like abused animals. Can't you help us get some of them out of here?"
Perhaps you think like a businessman. Starting a conversation with someone in the business world does not usually work with demands or threats. Probably most of the people who work for the media have no practical experience with negotiating. I respect the military, and I know that its most talented people advance because they know how to talk to people, but it is also true that the function of the military is to be there when negotiations fail. You're not being given the opportunity to succeed by the people who are offering their opinions to the media about how everything that you do is wrong.
It takes time to work out the most challenging problems and conflicts.
I might say that you ought to start thinking like a lawyer in some ways, in terms of figuring out what the other side is probably going to say, step by step, and having responses ready for all of the steps. This does not always lead to success, but it does provide a way through other people's blustering. It requires the ability to keep one's temper and to refuse to be provoked into saying or doing things that the other side can use against you. I don't always manage to use this tactic; I am too miserable and angry, and I'd rather sling insults. That doesn't work, particularly against people who already hate me. I feel that I can be forgiven for my insults, since there is no insult that I have slung at anyone that is as horrible as being victimized by voyeurism. I will be naked in public for the rest of my life. The people who did this to me can cope with some insults.
