ABSTRACT
Diplomacy's "dark side" has acquired unprecedented prominence in spite of the heavy blanket of state secrecy. In the American context it would appear that most people are resigned to the burdens imposed by superpower status. The price of defending worldwide interests has come to include the transfer of authority to the executive branch, more centralized government, a military-industrial complex, and also the stamp of secrecy on a wide range of overseas activities. The focus in essence is on Israeli diplomatic ties other than formal ones. For purposes of discussion these contacts and ties are grouped together under the general heading of "quiet diplomacy," also referred to as "diplomatic back channels" or "back-channel diplomacy." As the entire Iranian arms episode reconfirmed, benign scholarly neglect in the long run could well prove far more injurious to the national interest and security of democratic nations like the United States and Israel, than scholarly interest.
