Viewed from the State Department in Washington, the world appears to be on fire, and record heatwaves are not the cause. The unresolved war with Iran has driven up energy costs, disrupted trade and intensified suffering far beyond the battlefield. Gaza remains trapped between military occupation, armed resistance and humanitarian catastrophe. Russia’s war against Ukraine has entered its fifth year, while suspected acts of sabotage against NATO countries raise the danger of a wider confrontation. Elsewhere, conflicts receiving less American attention continue to consume lives.
Rarely has the world needed patient, professional diplomacy more urgently. Yet the United States increasingly behaves as though diplomacy were a public-relations exercise conducted between military campaigns: a way to announce agreements, issue ultimatums or declare victories, rather than the slow, frustrating work of reconciling interests and preventing violence.
This raises a fundamental question: whatever happened to the idea that one of the principal responsibilities of the president and secretary of state was to promote peace?
That responsibility has never meant pacifism. Presidents must protect the country, deter aggression, and sometimes respond to force. American foreign policy has never been as peaceful or altruistic as its mythology suggests. But there was once at least a widely accepted presumption that military power should support diplomacy, and that diplomacy should ultimately make military action unnecessary.
Today, that hierarchy appears to have been reversed. Negotiation increasingly serves as coercion, while peace is treated as a trophy to be claimed rather than a political order to be constructed.
The Constitution does not designate the president as the nation’s “peacemaker.” It names the president commander in chief, empowers the president to receive ambassadors, and gives the executive branch a central role in negotiating treaties. But it also divides the power to wage war between the executive and legislative branches. Congress declares war, funds the armed forces, and regulates their use.
That division was deliberate. The constitutional structure was intended to prevent the sword and the purse from being concentrated in a single pair of hands. According to the Congressional Research Service, the framers divided war powers partly to make it more difficult for the country to become entangled in unnecessary conflicts. The 1973 War Powers Resolution later attempted to restore that balance by requiring consultation with Congress and limiting prolonged, unauthorized military engagements. Congressional Research Service
In practice, however, presidents of both parties have steadily expanded their ability to initiate military action. Congress has often acquiesced, preferring to criticize wars after they go wrong rather than accept responsibility for authorizing, or refusing to authorize, them.
The result is a political culture in which bombing can be ordered rapidly, while diplomacy requires endless justification. Military action is described as decisive; negotiation is portrayed as weakness. Yet launching a war is often easier than defining its purpose, controlling its escalation, or determining how it will end.
The question, therefore, is not whether the president must always choose peace. It is whether peace remains the destination toward which American power is directed.
The position of secretary of state was created in 1789 to manage relations with foreign governments and conduct negotiations with their representatives. Over time, the secretary became the president’s principal foreign-policy adviser and the leader of the country’s diplomatic service. State Department Office of the Historian
Some secretaries of state embraced that role energetically. William Jennings Bryan negotiated agreements under which countries promised to delay hostilities while disputes were submitted to investigation. Frank Kellogg helped negotiate the Kellogg-Briand Pact renouncing war as an instrument of national policy, an achievement for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize. John Kerry became known for relentless shuttle diplomacy; Hillary Clinton and Antony Blinken, whatever judgments one makes about their records, treated alliance management and international negotiation as central duties of the office.
These efforts did not always succeed. Treaties were broken, peace processes collapsed, and diplomacy sometimes provided political cover for continued violence. But the underlying principle remained important: the secretary of state was supposed to keep channels open, understand adversaries, reassure allies and search for outcomes that military power alone could not deliver.
Marco Rubio represents a markedly different conception of the office. His public doctrine places American primacy, national advantage and civilizational solidarity ahead of multilateral restraint. At the 2026 Munich Security Conference, he lamented the decline of the “great Western empires,” which he said had been accelerated by communist revolutions and anti-colonial uprisings. He called on Western allies to be proud of their heritage and prepared to defend it. Transcript of Rubio’s Munich address
The problem is not that a secretary of state speaks about national interests. Every secretary does. Diplomacy divorced from national interest is sentimentality. The problem arises when “national interest” is reduced to dominance, obedience, and the capacity to compel weaker states.
When diplomacy becomes the delivery system for ultimatums, the secretary of state ceases to function primarily as a negotiator. He becomes the civilian face of coercive power.
Trump’s approach to international conflict is transactional and intensely personal. He prefers dramatic announcements, compressed timelines, and visible demonstrations of dominance. He speaks of wars as deals to be closed and peace as proof of his individual skill.
But genuine peace is not a branding opportunity. It is a durable arrangement under which former enemies decide, or are given sufficient incentive, to stop trying to change the outcome through force.
That requires more than compelling one party to sign a document. A sustainable agreement must address security fears, political legitimacy, enforcement, economic reconstruction, and the possibility that leaders will later abandon their commitments. It must give each side some reason to comply even after the television cameras have departed.
A coerced pause may be useful. A ceasefire, however imperfect, can save thousands of lives. But a settlement that leaves the central political dispute untouched is not necessarily peace. It may be an intermission during which the parties reload.
This distinction helps explain why spectacularly announced “breakthroughs” so often disintegrate. Political leaders confuse producing a plan with creating consent. They demand visible compliance before building the trust, verification mechanisms, and reciprocal concessions necessary to sustain it.
Diplomacy is not the art of making every party happy. It is the art of constructing an agreement each party considers less dangerous than continued conflict.
The war with Iran offers the clearest warning about a foreign policy organized around coercion. Military force can destroy facilities, kill commanders, and disrupt government operations. What it cannot automatically do is produce a cooperative political order.
Bombing may instead strengthen the most uncompromising elements of a regime, discredit internal reformers and persuade the population that national survival requires greater militarization. Even when force damages a nuclear program or weakens regional militias, it does not answer the essential strategic question: what political behavior must follow, and why would the targeted government agree to it?
The Trump administration appears to have expected overwhelming pressure to produce rapid Iranian capitulation. Instead, the conflict has become a costly struggle over the Strait of Hormuz and the terms of a possible ceasefire. Reporting in July described repeated bombing, Iranian retaliation, rising oil prices and an administration unable to convert military action into a stable settlement. The Guardian
That is the recurring weakness of wars launched without clearly achievable political objectives. The initial attack creates an illusion of control. Retaliation, escalation, and economic consequences then narrow the attacker’s choices. Leaders who promised victory become afraid that negotiation will look like retreat, so they continue fighting partly to avoid admitting that force did not deliver what they expected.
Professional diplomats are most necessary at precisely this moment. Their job is not to flatter the president’s version of events. It is to identify an exit that protects essential interests while preventing pride from condemning more people to die.
Gaza exposes another contradiction in American diplomacy: Washington often claims the authority of a mediator while materially supporting one of the belligerents.
The Trump administration’s 15-point plan reportedly proposed Hamas’s disarmament, an Israeli withdrawal and an eventual transfer of authority to a Palestinian national body. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the plan, insisting that Hamas surrender its weapons before Israeli forces withdrew. The Guardian
The disagreement was not a minor procedural detail. It concerned the order in which each side would surrender its principal source of leverage. Israel demanded disarmament first; the plan linked disarmament to withdrawal. Without a trusted mechanism for simultaneous or independently verified implementation, neither side had reason to believe the other would fulfill its obligations.
This is exactly the sort of problem diplomacy is meant to solve. It requires intermediaries, enforceable stages, independent monitoring, humanitarian guarantees and sustained pressure on all parties—including allies. It also requires a political horizon for Palestinians. People cannot be expected to accept an indefinite condition of displacement, occupation or statelessness merely because a ceasefire document labels the condition “peace.”
American leverage over Israel is substantial, but leverage that leaders are unwilling to use is not meaningful leverage. If Washington exempts an ally from consequences while demanding total compliance from its adversaries, it is not mediating. It is managing the conflict on terms favorable to one side.
The United States cannot credibly promote peace in Gaza while treating Palestinian political rights as optional and Israeli security as the only nonnegotiable concern. Both peoples require security, dignity, and a future. An agreement that protects only one will ultimately protect neither.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine presents a different challenge. Calls for negotiation can become morally empty when they ignore the aggression that caused the war or demand that the invaded country surrender its sovereignty.
Peace cannot simply mean the absence of Ukrainian resistance. Nor can negotiations succeed if Moscow believes time, intimidation and Western exhaustion will deliver what its forces have not secured on the battlefield.
Reports that American intelligence attributes an explosive drone incident at Germany’s Leipzig/Halle airport to Russia illustrate the growing danger of confrontation beyond Ukraine. German officials described the incident as representing a new level of threat, although the government did not initially make a public attribution. The Guardian
Here, military preparedness and diplomacy are not opposites. Credible deterrence may be necessary to persuade Russia that attacks on NATO territory will be costly. But deterrence without a diplomatic destination can become permanent escalation. Weapons can influence the balance of power; they cannot decide the final status of territory, design security guarantees, return prisoners, reunite families, or rebuild shattered communities.
A serious peace strategy would combine continued support for Ukraine with clearly defined negotiating objectives. It would involve Ukraine and European governments directly rather than treating them as obstacles to a bilateral bargain between Washington and Moscow. It would also distinguish compromise from capitulation. A negotiated settlement is legitimate only if Ukrainians, not an impatient foreign patron, have the decisive voice in determining what risks and concessions they can accept.
The emerging doctrine of American foreign policy appears to divide countries into several categories: powerful rivals to be contained, useful allies to be indulged, strategic assets to be acquired, and weaker governments to be coerced into compliance.
This is imperial thinking even when formal annexation is absent. It assumes that power grants Washington the right to determine the acceptable political and economic choices of other societies. Countries may retain their flags and seats at the United Nations, yet discover that meaningful sovereignty is conditional upon alignment with American preferences.
Supporters of this approach argue that all great powers behave coercively and that American restraint would merely create opportunities for Russia or China. There is truth in the warning. A power vacuum does not automatically fill itself with justice. But the answer to rival imperialism cannot be an American version advertised as more benevolent.
Empires routinely mistake fear for respect. Client governments tell the dominant power what it wants to hear. Allies conceal resentment. Adversaries arm themselves. Smaller countries hedge their relationships, not because they admire America’s rivals but because they no longer trust Washington’s promises.
The United States is strongest when other countries believe cooperation with it is voluntary, mutually beneficial, and governed by dependable rules. Raw power can force a temporary concession. Legitimacy makes cooperation durable.
The language of contemporary politics often treats peace advocates as naïve and military advocates as serious. History provides little justification for this hierarchy.
It takes no special courage to order an airstrike from a secure command center. Political courage is sometimes found in refusing escalation, speaking to an enemy, restraining an ally, or accepting an imperfect agreement before thousands more lives are lost.
Negotiation is not appeasement merely because it involves an adversary. Diplomats negotiate precisely because adversaries exist. The test is not whether talks occur, but whether they advance a defensible objective and reduce the danger of future violence.
Peace also serves concrete American interests. War raises energy and food prices, disrupts supply chains, increases public debt, intensifies migration and diverts resources from infrastructure, health, education and climate resilience. It kills American service members and foreign civilians alike. It can create new generations of enemies faster than military operations eliminate existing ones.
A government committed to America’s welfare should therefore treat war as an extraordinary failure of policy, not as a routine demonstration of resolve.
Rebuilding a foreign policy oriented toward peace will require more than changing the personalities at the top. It requires institutional reform.
Congress must reclaim responsibility for war. Members should demand clear objectives, legal authority, estimated costs, and credible exit strategies before American forces enter prolonged hostilities. The public deserves recorded votes, not evasive rhetoric followed by retrospective outrage.
The State Department must also be strengthened as a professional institution. Regional expertise, language skills, and long-term relationships cannot be improvised during a crisis. Diplomats should be empowered to deliver unwelcome assessments rather than pressured to manufacture support for predetermined policies.
American leaders must stop treating negotiations as personal performances. Agreements need competent teams, reliable verification, and persistent follow-through. Allies must be held to the same standards as adversaries. International law cannot be invoked only when rivals violate it.
Finally, success must be measured differently. The relevant question is not how many governments were threatened, how many weapons were deployed, or how many flattering headlines followed a summit. The measure of foreign policy is whether fewer people are dying, whether conflicts are becoming less likely, and whether agreements remain intact after the leaders who signed them leave office.
The president and secretary of state have never been neutral guardians of world harmony. They represent American interests, and American history contains far too many interventions, covert operations, and destructive wars to support a romantic account of the past.
Yet promoting peace should still be central to their responsibility, because peace, properly understood, is not an act of charity. It is the disciplined construction of security through law, negotiation, deterrence, economic cooperation, and mutual restraint.
The United States does not have to choose between strength and diplomacy. Diplomacy is how strength acquires purpose. Without it, power becomes impulsive, self-defeating and increasingly indistinguishable from domination.
Americans should demand that every candidate for national office answer several basic questions: Under what conditions would you take the country to war? What political objective would military force achieve? What diplomatic alternatives would you exhaust first? How would the conflict end? And who would be accountable if the promised victory failed to materialize?
Citizens should press Congress to debate and vote on wars, defend a professional diplomatic service, and reject the notion that demanding negotiations is a sign of weakness. Journalists should examine peace proposals as rigorously as military campaigns. Legislators should attach meaningful legal and financial consequences to unauthorized hostilities. Voters should judge presidents not by the theatrical force of their threats, but by the security and stability their policies actually produce.
Peace will not return to the center of American foreign policy through nostalgia. It will return only when the public insists that its leaders regard preventing war—not merely winning headlines—as one of the highest duties of office.
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