After decades of self-confidence and military dominance, the United States faces a world of great powers that demands a return to classical strategic diplomacy. In an age of growing rivalry, Washington must use negotiations as a tool for survival and strengthening its influence. This is what Wes Mitchell, former US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia in the first administration of Donald Trump, writes in the pages of the American magazine Foreign Affairs.
Since returning to office in January, US President Donald Trump has sparked a lively debate about the role of diplomacy in American foreign policy. In less than three months, he has made bold diplomatic proposals to Washington's three main opponents. He has begun talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine, has reached out to Chinese leader Xi Jinping to hold a summit, and has sent a letter to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to end the country’s nuclear program. At the same time, his administration has made clear its intention to renegotiate the balance of benefits and burdens in Washington’s alliances to ensure greater reciprocity.
Trump’s initial moves have drawn protests and accusations of appeasement. But Washington needed a new kind of diplomacy.
After the end of the Cold War, the United States abandoned the use of negotiations to advance its national interest. Convinced that history was over and that it could reshape the world in America’s image, successive U.S. presidents have come to rely on military and economic power as their primary foreign policy tools. When they did use diplomacy, it was usually not to increase U.S. power but to try to build a global paradise in which multilateral institutions would replace states and eliminate war altogether.
For a while, the United States could get away with such carelessness. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Washington was so powerful that it could achieve its goals without old-fashioned diplomacy. But those days are gone. The United States no longer has a military capable of fighting and defeating all of its enemies at once. It cannot bring another great power to ruin through sanctions. Instead, it lives in a world of continent-sized rivals, with powerful economies and armies. Great-power war, unthinkable for decades, is once again a real possibility.
In this dangerous environment, the United States will need to rediscover diplomacy in its classic form—not as a footman for an all-powerful army or as a guarantor of global norms, but as a hard-nosed tool of strategy. For millennia, great powers have used diplomacy in this way to prevent conflict, recruit new partners, and break up hostile coalitions. The United States must take a similar path, using negotiations and deals to limit its own weight, contain its enemies, and recalibrate the regional balance of power. And that requires engaging with rivals and reshaping alliances so that Washington does not have to take the lead in a simultaneous confrontation with Beijing and Moscow.
Therefore, it is necessary to talk to China and Russia and demand reciprocity from friends. Done right, it could help manage the disparity between the United States’ limited resources and the virtually endless threats facing it, something that many other great powers have used diplomacy to do. In fact, the essence of diplomacy in strategy is to realign forces in space and time so that countries avoid tests of strength beyond their means. There is no magic formula for how to do this properly, and there is no guarantee that Trump’s approach will succeed. But the alternative—trying to outdo everyone—is not viable and is much riskier. In other words, strategic diplomacy is America’s best chance of strengthening its position for continued competition.
ANCIENT WISDOM
In the summer of 432 B.C., the leaders of Sparta gathered to consider whether to go to war with Athens. For months, tensions between the two city-states had been simmering as the Athenians clashed with Sparta's friends while the Spartans watched indifferently. Then a group of hawks, incited by their allies, were eager for action.
But Archidamus II, the aging king of Sparta, proposed something different: diplomacy. Talk, Archidamus told the assembly, could avert conflict while Sparta worked to create new allies and strengthen its position domestically.
I command you not to take up arms at once, but to send and protest to [the Athenians] in a tone that is neither too warlike nor too submissive, and to use the time to perfect our own preparations. The means will be, first, the acquisition of allies, Hellenic or barbarian, it does not matter... [,] and second, the development of our internal resources. If they listen to our envoys, so much the better; but if not, after two or three years our position will have become materially strengthened... Perhaps by then the sight of our preparations, supported by equally important language, will have swayed [the Athenians] to submission.
These ideas predate the end of the Cold War. For all his legendary realism, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was an idealist who believed that the task of American diplomats was eventually to create a world federation. US President Ronald Reagan, hardly a peace-at-all-costs merchant, found his picture next to Chamberlain's in a full-page advertisement (paid for by Republican hawks) in the "Washington Times" after he had begun nuclear negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, both ideas flourished. Liberals saw the Soviet collapse as proof that paradise was near, and hardliners saw it as proof that diplomacy was unnecessary. Diplomacy had been declared dead before, but never had the death grip been so advanced.
But the rumors of the end of history were premature. It turns out that liberalism has not erased geopolitics from human history. China, Iran, and Russia have not transformed themselves into liberal societies. On the contrary, they have all become confident, civilizational states that remain determined to dominate their regions. Today, great power rivalry is back, and systemic war is a very real possibility.
Neither liberals nor hawks have viable solutions to this problem.
All the international institutions in the world cannot prevent a war between the United States and China or Russia, or both. And as the last two National Defense Strategies have acknowledged, the U.S. military is not prepared or equipped to fight two major adversaries at once. Washington can and should reinvest in its military. But with the rise of China and Russia and the country’s massive deficit, it will take a generation to transform the U.S. military into one capable of confronting all its enemies simultaneously.
To compensate, Washington will need to return to strategic diplomacy. As Archidamus would say, it must protest to its adversaries in “a tone that is neither too imposing for war nor too conciliatory for submission,” and use the gained interval to better position alliances and domestic resources for war in the hope of avoiding it. Like great powers in the past, Washington can begin by reducing tensions with its weaker major adversaries in order to focus on the stronger ones. This is what Kissinger and his boss, US President Richard Nixon, did when they warmed up relations with Beijing so that the United States could better focus on Moscow in the early 1970s.
Today, the weaker rival is Russia. This has become all too obvious as Ukraine has depleted Moscow’s military resources. The United States should therefore seek to use Russia’s current state to its advantage, seeking a detente with Moscow that is detrimental to Beijing. The goal should not be to eliminate the sources of conflict with Russia, but to place limits on its ability to harm US interests.
This process should begin with ending the war in Ukraine in a way that is favorable to the United States. This means that, ultimately, Kiev must be strong enough to block Russia’s advance westward. To achieve this goal, US officials negotiating a peace agreement should learn from the failure of the 2022 Istanbul talks between Kiev and Moscow, which treated a political agreement as the goal and worked towards a ceasefire.
This has allowed Russia to make its political demands—neutralizing the Ukrainian state by limiting the size of its army and changing its constitution—a precondition for peace. A better model would be Korea in the 1950s: prioritize a ceasefire and leave the issues of a broader agreement in a separate process that could take years to bear fruit, if at all. Washington should still be prepared to make the Ukrainians cede territory when necessary. But it should make Ukrainian sovereignty a precondition for negotiations and use U.S. sanctions, military aid, and seized Russian assets to persuade Moscow.
The United States should seek a defense relationship with Ukraine similar to the one it maintains with Israel: not a formal alliance, but an agreement to sell, lend, or provide Kiev with what it needs to defend itself. But it should not grant Ukraine NATO membership. Instead, the United States should insist that European countries take responsibility for Ukraine—and for the security of their continent as a whole.
To push Europe forward, American policymakers could again learn from the Nixon administration, which developed a doctrine in which the United States agreed earlier in the year to provide nuclear protection for its treaty allies in the secondary region (then Asia, now Europe) but expected the local states to provide their own conventional defense. As an economic consequence, Nixon’s Treasury Secretary, John Connolly, pressured allies to reduce restrictions on American goods and to increase the value of their currencies to stimulate American industry.
Today, a Nixon-style agreement could lead to a new transatlantic grand bargain in which the United States provides extended deterrence and certain strategic systems to Europe, but the Allies provide most of the combat capabilities on the front lines. In the economic realm, Washington could demand reciprocity in market access and dictate that allies can benefit from American innovation only if they remove regulatory standards that hinder them. The goal should be for allies to adopt American standards, not the other way around, and collectively turn the West’s sights on Beijing.
So far, the Trump administration appears to be moving in that direction. It has persuaded both Russia and Ukraine to halt attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure. It has increased its influence, including by persuading Saudi Arabia to increase oil production. It has drafted a minerals deal with Ukraine that increases the relationship between the two countries without making Washington responsible for Kiev’s defense. And its tougher tone toward Europe has led to the continent’s biggest defense spending increase in generations: nearly $1 trillion. Trump’s initial tariffs have upset Europeans, but they could also reopen negotiations on a new transatlantic grand bargain for the first time in a decade. All of this could lead to better outcomes for the United States, provided Washington keeps its eye on the prize—which is not destruction itself, but destruction in the service of strategic renewal.
DIVIDE AND RULE
Once the United States secures an end to the war in Ukraine, American diplomats may begin to more actively try to complicate Moscow’s relationship with Beijing. That too will prove difficult. Russia is unlikely to be completely cut off from China: the countries have more shared interests and a more congenial political relationship than when Nixon traveled to Beijing. But their interests are not the same. Russia has become highly dependent on China since the war in Ukraine began, and dependence in geopolitics is always irritating. Russia’s financial and technological dependence on China, in particular, has increased significantly as a result of the war. The Chinese are also displacing Russia from its accustomed sphere of influence in Central Asia. And they have gained a controlling stake in the infrastructure of Siberia and the Russian Far East, to the point that Moscow’s real sovereignty in these places is increasingly in doubt.
This raises an old dilemma for Moscow: whether it is primarily a European or an Asian power. Washington should exploit this tension. The goal is not to sway Russia toward a conciliatory stance, much less to become an ally of the United States, but to create the conditions for it to follow an eastward rather than a westward vector in its foreign policy. American officials should resist Russian efforts to strike a new grand bargain that would include American concessions in eastern NATO countries, which would confirm Russia’s westward vector, and instead pursue a divided détente aimed at tightening restrictions on Russia in areas where its interests conflict with those of the United States and easing restrictions in areas where they align. To do this, Washington could lift restrictions that prevent Asian allies from offering investment alternatives to China in Russia’s eastern territories if Moscow meets U.S. demands on Ukraine.
The same logic should extend to arms control. Because of the strain it has endured since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia will have to restructure its conventional armed forces, which may require diverting funds from its long-range nuclear arsenal. The situation is reminiscent of the mid-1980s, when the Soviet Union faced financial pressure to cut spending on strategic nuclear weapons.
Reagan used this as an opportunity to strike a new arms deal with Gorbachev, a model that Trump could replicate by offering Moscow a revised arms control framework that sets tighter limits than the previous agreement between the countries. The goal should be to force the Russians to take risks in their strategic arsenal in order to reduce U.S. demands for bilateral deterrence. Washington could then focus most of its nuclear attention on Beijing’s nuclear buildup. Such an agreement could also create space between China and Russia, thwarting Beijing’s desire to see the United States burdened with an arms race in Europe.
Washington could use strategic diplomacy to deal with another potential nuclear threat: Iran. The United States has a strong interest in thwarting that country’s nuclear program while limiting the need for future U.S. military interventions in the region. The prospects for success have been enhanced by Israel’s recent neutralization of Iranian proxies and air defenses, which gives Washington a chance to extend the Abraham Accords model by encouraging the normalization of Israeli-Saudi relations. Israel’s successful regional military campaign also means that the United States can shed old Iranian surrogates like Lebanon and Syria. In Syria, success will require American diplomacy to foster an internal balance of power that gives the Kurds a role while keeping Islamist factions supported by Turkey and Qatar at bay. At the same time, the United States should work with Turkey on areas of common interest, such as Ukraine, and encourage reconciliation between Turkey and U.S. allies such as Greece, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.
The prospects for successful American diplomacy with Iran will increase in proportion to the overall position of power that the new administration is able to muster in the region. While it is hard to imagine Iran giving up its nuclear program, the time to try a gambit like the one Trump made with his recent letter to Khamenei is now, when Tehran holds weaker cards and the United States holds better ones than it has in a very long time.
A STRONG POSITION
Then there is China. This country presents perhaps the most serious challenge from any rival in American history. American authorities will not be able to contain China the way they did with the Soviet Union; it is simply too big and too integrated into the world economy. But Washington must try in every way possible to isolate it, excluding its viable ability to form anti-American coalitions. The goal of American diplomacy should be to build the largest possible coalitions against Beijing, while at the same time building a position of domestic economic power and on that basis seeking a new modus vivendi that benefits American interests.
The ground zero for such a strategy is Asia. China is surrounded on all sides by countries with which it has strained relations. India and Nepal have territorial disputes with China; Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam have maritime disputes with China. American diplomacy should use this dynamic to foster a regional balance of power that limits China’s ability to expand militarily.
So far, the United States has had mixed results in this regard. The administration of President Joe Biden has nominally continued the first Trump administration’s emphasis on treating Beijing as Washington’s main competitor. It has increased rhetorical support for Taiwan; expanded cooperation with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quartet, consisting of Australia, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States; deepened defense cooperation with the Philippines and worked to bridge rifts between Japan and South Korea.
But all of these initiatives took shape as Washington reduced the U.S. military presence in Asia to focus on crises in Europe and the Middle East. The result was a disconnect between U.S. rhetoric and capabilities. On Taiwan, for example, the Biden administration broke with its predecessors in undermining strategic ambiguity, but at the same time redirected U.S. military power toward Europe and the Middle East. Washington has also sought more help from its Pacific allies for goals away from Asia, such as weapons for Ukraine and participation in sanctions against Russia.
With China, the gap between the Biden administration’s rhetoric and its capabilities has created a paradoxical situation in which the United States has positioned itself as both provocative and weak.
The White House has been provocative in its big-game rhetoric on issues such as the future of Taiwan, but weak in its reduction of the U.S. regional military presence. China’s lack of respect has been clear since March 2021, when senior Chinese foreign policy official Yang Jiechi lashed out at U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at a meeting in Anchorage about promoting American democracy.
Four years of what some call “zombie diplomacy” followed, in which China presented the Biden administration with two options, both win-win for Beijing. In one, Washington could have dropped its support for Taiwan, reduced the U.S. military presence in the region, and opened U.S. markets and investment to China in exchange for a working relationship. The other was a military confrontation. Washington, for its part, treated preserving the relationship as an end in itself. It also tried to isolate climate change from geopolitics, which the Chinese refused to do. As a result, the United States became burdened with emissions restrictions that hurt American industry as China continued to build coal-fired power plants. These missteps have left the Biden administration unable to establish a strong position for effective bilateral diplomacy.
Going forward, the U.S. approach should be the opposite: minimize rhetoric and maximize actions that strengthen Washington’s leverage for direct diplomacy. At home, that means increasing energy production, reducing the deficit, and deregulating to strengthen the economy. In Asia, this means pushing for greater reciprocity with allies on tariffs and defense burden-sharing, as well as strengthening the United States’ military deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.
The goal of pressure on friends should be to recalibrate these alliances so that they are more useful to Washington and, over time, to draw them more deeply into the U.S. financial and military-industrial system. The goal of Washington’s increased presence should be to reassure partners that U.S. pressure is designed to build stronger alliances, not pave the way for abandonment, and to ensure that resistance to China is viable for countries that are intimidated by Beijing.
As it strengthens its alliances, the Trump administration should pay particular attention to India.
The Biden administration has failed to properly engage New Delhi with Beijing because it has been too busy fighting the Indian government on unrelated issues. The White House, for example, has threatened sanctions against India for buying Russian weapons and has imposed sanctions on Indian companies for buying Russian oil. It has also criticized New Delhi on human rights (though less than some of its progressive critics would like) and has put pressure on the pro-Indian government in Bangladesh, whose subsequent removal could now pave the way for Chinese incursions into Southeast Asia.
The Trump administration should instead bring India closer to the United States. It should treat New Delhi as an ally on par with Japan or NATO partners when it comes to technology transfer, and it should try to push ahead with plans for an economic corridor running from India to the Middle East and Europe as a counterweight to China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative. It should abandon the Biden administration’s practice of criticizing India for perceived democratic backsliding and explore pledging political support and defense cooperation to New Delhi as it tries to defend its territory from China and Pakistan.
Washington should use the strength generated by rebuilding the country and building better alliances abroad to negotiate a more favorable balance of power with Beijing. For example, the Trump administration could use its improved position to push for a reduction in the trade deficit with China and expanded access for American financial institutions operating there. This could encourage Chinese investment in targeted industries in the United States. Washington could even try to revalue the currency, which would benefit both sides. China already wants a stronger yuan so it can be used to settle regional deals, and a weaker dollar could help the U.S. administration’s reindustrialization efforts.
For Washington, there is no contradiction between engaging with China and trying to rebalance relations with allies in the Indo-Pacific. Great powers throughout history have often found that rivals can act as productive leverage for friends. Bismarck, for example, used talks with Russia to push Austria, Germany’s treaty ally, to build up its military, which in turn pushed Russia to accept Bismarck’s demands. The key is to make sure the allies know that there is a limit to how far their patron will go in engaging with adversaries. Diplomacy with adversaries is about gaining temporary advantages that constrain the other side; diplomacy with allies is about long-term entanglements that give the central government more freedom. Calibrating the two in a way that motivates allies but does not alienate them is the art of diplomacy.
So far, the Trump administration’s moves with China have boded well. The White House has been holding out for a summit with Xi but has been coy about the timing. In the meantime, it has focused on building leverage through tariffs and by prioritizing the Indo-Pacific in new defense spending plans. If the détente with Russia, the US’s efforts to rebalance its portfolios with allies, and the use of diplomacy in the Middle East pay off, Washington will enjoy an even stronger position vis-à-vis Beijing.
All of these policies will, of course, take time to bear fruit. But if the administration can pull the strings together effectively, the United States will have the best chance to restructure its relationship with China since the 1990s, when it fatefully opened up to its adversary.
BACK TO BASICS
The United States faces many challenges as it works to revive strategic diplomacy as a foreign policy tool. But compared to its predecessors, the country’s circumstances are favorable. The United States has a unique ability, rooted in its open political system, meritocratic society, and dynamic economy, to right wrongs nonviolently and rejuvenate itself as a global power. Diplomacy can help this effort by translating these advantages into strategic gains in key regions that improve the United States’ long-term competitive position.
For strategic diplomacy to work, however, the United States must go back to basics—as Secretary of State Marco Rubio is seeking to do. Its foreign service officers should be trained in negotiations as a core competency; that is not currently happening. They should all be trained in military and economic matters, which is also not happening. The funding and priorities of the U.S. foreign service should be closely aligned with the National Security Strategy. And U.S. diplomats should be prohibited from promoting progressive causes that embolden adversaries and undermine friends—causes that most Americans do not support.
This re-emphasis will disappoint those who believe that diplomacy’s primary role is to promote values or to create rules and structures above the level of the state. This delusion is now deeply ingrained in American thinking, thanks to generations of leaders who believed that diplomacy would create a liberal utopia. But humanity is not moving toward an apotheosis. War and competition are permanent realities. The task of diplomacy is not to transcend geopolitics, but to succeed in it. Diplomacy is neither capitulation nor a gateway to nirvana. It is a tool of strategy that states use to survive the pressures of competition. When skillfully applied, it can bring benefits that far outweigh the costs. And in these perilous times, it is worth rediscovering that advantage.