Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
By Video, 6 July 2026
Diplomacy gets a bad rap. Those who understand it least either fantasize about the impossible things it can supposedly accomplish or dismiss it as nothing more than saying ‘nice doggie’ until you can find a rock. This is not surprising. Diplomacy is a word that is simultaneously a synonym for statecraft, for the art and practice of conducting international negotiations, for skill in handling differences without arousing hostility, and for dealing tactfully with other people.
But, at its best, diplomacy is a mysterious science and the province of a learned profession, like the clergy, the law, medicine, or the professional military. This makes it inherently esoteric and incomprehensible to laymen. It also makes its practitioners an elite. As such, they are subject to vilification by everyone else as a group of intellectuals who mistake black passports for certificates of competence and misconstrue the peculiarities of foreigners as common sense.
We are, after all, a society that agrees with George Orwell that “some ideas [are] so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them.” Still, diplomacy is an essential profession, as illustrated by the observation that it is the second oldest.
Diplomats are the peaceable heralds of national power. They are the counselors of their nation’s leaders on foreign relations and the voice, hands, eyes, and ears of their country in foreign lands.
Statesmen use their armed forces to defend or advance national interests by intimidation or violence. They use spies to persuade foreigners to commit treason. They use diplomats to persuade foreigners to do what they want them to do without resorting to subversion or war. It takes skill to do that. Skill is not in-born. It is acquired through training, mentoring, experience, and passionate dedication to self-improvement.
For some time, the United States has experimented with diplomacy-free foreign policy. The results of the experiment are in. It doesn’t work.
Our experiment has included:
· A kneejerk preference for ostracism, punitive sanctions, or the use of force over dialogue, compromise, or measures short of war in response to disagreements with foreign countries. This approach reflects a disdain for the interests and perspectives of foreign counterparts and fecklessly panders to the hallucinations of the homeland instead of focusing on how to persuade the country it targets to accommodate our concerns. It impedes rather than facilitates mutually beneficial resolution of differences.
· The replacement of diplomatic engagement and dialogue with provocative posturing and diatribe. The theory behind this seems to be that giving the finger to other countries amidst colorful invective punctuated with erratic threats is more likely to cause them to repent and be saved than a respectful meeting with them would. That’s not how it works in ordinary society and it is not how it works in relations with foreign states and peoples.
· Substituting inexperienced cronies, in-laws, and political poodles for experienced envoys and giving them no mandate to seal an agreement with those with whom they are charged to negotiate. Ignorance of the negotiating record, culture, history, language, and decision-making processes of one’s opposite number makes success a shot in the dark. Positive results are even more elusive when the authority to whom the envoys report is prone to arbitrary and capricious second guessing and changes of mind or more focused on domestic politics than on the issues at stake with foreign interlocutors.
· The use of negotiations as a means of deception, including as cover for military surprise attacks. This discredits the United States as an interlocuteur valable [legitimate partner in discourse] or negotiating partner and thereby complicates, if it doesn’t outright preclude the peaceable resolution of disputes.
· Fake diplomacy to match fake news. Diplomacy is a political performing art. The use of it to manipulate domestic public opinion and stock markets rather than to resolve problems with foreign countries transforms it from an instrument of statecraft into a farcical political charade.
· Pursuing unwritten understandings or agreements in principle, heads of agreement, or so-called napkin agreements that defer all the difficult issues for later negotiation. This sort of performative diplomacy appeals to the gullible, but it is a failsafe recipe for further discord, escalated antagonism, and impasse.
· Substituting policies of deterrence based on purely military threats for an approach that balances the credible demonstration of military capabilities with diplomatic reassurances that these capabilities will not be used if the other side refrains from doing what you are trying to persuade it not to do. Without such reassurances, the military component of deterrence is more alarming and provocative than dissuasive. This is how arms races are born and sustained and the likelihood of eventual war is increased.
· Erratic movement of the goalposts in both negotiations and warfare as opposed to steadfast perseverance in the pursuit of well-defined and feasible objectives. This sets the stage for and perpetuates ‘forever wars.’ Such wars have no clear goals, no benchmarks against which to measure success or failure, no diplomatic engagement with a demonized enemy to persuade it to stop fighting, and no plan for negotiations to accomplish war termination or create a sustainable postwar order.
· Denigrating allies and dissing partners but fawning over the strongmen who lead adversaries. This is almost as counterproductive as lumping all your most disliked opponents together under a provocative but vapid rubric like “the Axis of Evil” or “powers that layer authoritarian governance with a revisionist foreign policy” – a Biden conception that counterfactually bracketed China and Russia. Pas sérieux, as the French might say. Such domestically appealing political sloganeering encourages camaraderie among U.S. adversaries while inviting the ridicule of analysts the world over.
· Aiming at the unilateral capitulation of foreign opponents in response to “maximum pressure” instead of negotiating with them to obtain their agreement to the adjustments in their policies, behavior, or relations with us or others we desire. The statement that the other side cannot be negotiated with because it is ‘irrational’ is no more than a declaration that you are not prepared to make the effort to understand why your opponent thinks the way he does or to work out how to persuade him to think differently.
· Misdescribing agreements on deescalation as ’peace agreements’ or ‘ceasefires’ when they do nothing to address the causes of armed conflict and provide no basis for ending it. Even worse: initiating ‘ceasefires with Israeli characteristics’ in which only one side is expected to actually cease fire.
The concrete results of implementing these hare-brained hypotheses include:
· The demise of international law and comity and their replacement with disorder verging on anarchy.
· attention deficit diplomacy that the world sees as fitful, oafish, and rude, as well as destabilizing and menacing.
· Failed forever wars in Indochina, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, Somalia, Ukraine, and Iran as well as in fruitless counterinsurgency operations in at least 82 countries at present.
· An entente between China and Russia aimed at countering U.S. global primacy.
· The creation of a previously unthinkable nuclear threat from north Korea to the continental United States.
· Irreparable forfeiture of trust on the part of foreign interlocutors to the point of gaining a reputation for being ‘agreement incapable.’
In the specific case of the United States at present, the results include:
· Tensions with U.S. allies that have cost us our assured followership, risk the dissolution of our alliances, and foreshadow the impairment of our capability to project power globally.
· A rising danger of war over Taiwan that risks an eventual nuclear exchange with the People’s Republic of China.
· The unraveling of dollar hegemony and a threat to the “exorbitant privileges” of prosperity and power that they have conferred on our country.
· And a lot more – that I do not want to mention because it would depress you or appear to imply that I think one of our two political parties is wiser than the other on foreign policy matters. I don’t.
Regardless of whether we favor Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum, we can safely conclude that the evidence shows that an all-military-all-the-time approach to international relations does not do the job. Disdain for analytical and diplomatic expertise is dangerous. It’s time to end the American experiment with diplomacy-free foreign policy and to return to proven means of conducting our foreign relations. This means setting aside the “Washington playbook” and its precepts.
When policies fail, doing more of the same or throwing more money at the problem is not an appropriate response. When force fails to produce the desired results, escalating it is unlikely to yield victory. When faced with unavoidable, impending defeat, one should face the truth and retreat, not hang around to reinforce failure as we did in Afghanistan. Claiming victory is dunderheaded when the other side has not accepted defeat.
So, what do diplomats do other than push cookies at each other or hand them out to mobs in public squares abroad? Well, they are at work 24/7 interacting with foreigners, protecting and seeking to advance national interests, and rescuing citizens from the ingenious difficulties they create for themselves. Diplomats help prepare for war. Sometimes they start wars even when they don’t mean to do so. In a backhanded recognition of all this, the Cherokee pundit, Will Rogers once quipped, “take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.”
American diplomats’ recruitment of allies aggregates other nations’ power to our own. Agreements on basing and transit assure logistical support for ourr country’s armed forces. Diplomacy establishes the privileges and immunities members of those forces enjoy when deployed to other countries. Most important, it provides the means by which a better peace can replace the one a war has shattered.
Diplomacy is a lot cheaper and less risky than war, but it and armed combat are both means to the same ends – maximizing national advantage. As Clausewitz said, “war is the continuation of policy by other means.” The success or failure of wars is not measured in battle damage but in political results. Wars do not end until the defeated admit defeat. Peace does not last if the defeated are not reconciled to the political changes that their defeat has entailed. The consolidation of victory or the mitigation of defeat in a peace between the combatants is a classic task of diplomacy. We Americans seem to have lost our ability to accomplish this.
Contrary to popular opinion, wars do not suspend diplomacy. Holding alliances and coalitions together in support of a war effort is a diplomatic responsibility. It is as dangerous to lose contact with the enemy in the diplomatic arena as it is to do so on the battlefield. In either case, loss of contact exacts opportunity costs and risks strategic or tactical surprise. Diplomacy sustains the hope that a war can end on advantageous terms.
The recent history of the United States amply illustrates the limitations of the use of force – even overwhelming force. As Talleyrand is said to have remarked, you can do anything with a bayonet except sit on it. As a country, we haven’t seemed to understand that sitting on bayonets is not a good idea. Time for a moment of national satori.
Our experiment with diplomacy-free foreign policy cannot last. The lesson of the diplomatic and military disasters that have recently befallen us is not that diplomacy is “woke” and worthless but that resort to it is inevitable. That is because without it we are often impotent. Forty-one years ago, Herb Stein quoted his wise mother to point out that “if something can’t go on forever, sooner or later it will stop.” We are destined to rediscover diplomacy and how to practice it, whether our politicians understand or like it or not.
So, those of you in this group who have not been deterred by the failure of the last gasp of the Boomers and Gen X’s replacement of them as managers of our national destiny should not despair. You can still find fulfillment in a career in diplomacy. You are, after all, blessed by an opportunity to start pretty much from scratch. If you choose to serve our country, you will be present at the recreation of the arts of power. As a pre-boomer, I envy you that opportunity, if not the circumstances that are creating it.
Diplomacy is not just an activity abroad. It is, as I mentioned, a role in the formulation of national policy. Among other things, the United States needs to reinstitute a policy process that pursues national interests rather than personal prejudices or vendettas. Even if most of their careers are spent abroad, diplomats are essential contributors to any effective foreign policy process.
I want to counsel you, however, that diplomatic service contains hardships. My thirty years as a diplomat spanned the apex of American power and concluded at the dawn of the so-called ‘unipolar moment.” That was the beginning of the end of American strategic coherence and humility. I had a spectacular career, including a role in every phase of the geopolitical and politico-economic transformation of China, the end of colonialism and apartheid in Africa, the end of the Cold War, the effort to ensure that the Cold War was followed by collective enforcement of the U.N. Charter and international law through the creation of a posse to liberate Kuwait, and a failed effort to enable a cooperative rather than confrontational order in Europe. But in the course of my modest contributions to history, I lost a child to inadequate medical care, was shot at several times (they missed), saw a marriage destroyed in part by the demands of my profession, and was mugged by the Israel Lobby for warning against the unsustainable horror that Israel has become.
A diplomatic career is an opportunity to be at least a spear carrier in the operatic spectacle of history but is not without sacrifices. It doesn’t pay much. I resigned over three decades ago, poor as a church mouse, to pursue a second, more lucrative career. I have followed that with an unanticipated third career as a talking head on alternative media.
As the great quantum physicist, Niels Bohr said, in a wise remark that is often misattributed to Yogi Berra, “prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” I urge you to seize the uncertainty! There is great satisfaction to be gained from helping to dispel it to the advantage of our country, the United States of America. We need to reaffirm the better angels of the American nature and to resume our country’s contributions to a more prosperous and democratic future, not just for ourselves, but for the world of which we are an inseparable part.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
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