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Why Do Some Americans Loathe Diplomacy So Much?

There are some Americans for whom diplomacy is inherently suspect and undesirable.
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Dominic Tierney wonders why the U.S. is the only one of the P5+1 countries where there is a serious controversy over negotiating with Iran:

Furious Republican opposition to a deal over Iran’s nuclear program may look like another example of political partisanship and personal animosity toward Barack Obama. But there’s also a much deeper reason for congressional pushback: the deeply ingrained aversion in American culture toward parleying with ‘evil’ opponents.

Negotiating with international adversaries is more controversial in the United States than in most advanced democracies. Whereas in other countries bargaining is often seen as the norm, Americans frequently view face-to-face talks as a prize that the opponent has to earn through good behavior.

There is something to this, but I’m not sure that this applies to most Americans or to American culture generally. There are some Americans for whom diplomacy is inherently suspect and undesirable, and who view all talks with authoritarian and hostile regimes as preludes to betrayal and “appeasement.” I don’t think most Americans share this loathing of diplomacy (broad majority support for the Iran talks would seem to show they don’t), but those that do are greatly overrepresented in our foreign policy debates and in our political class. If I had to identify the main reasons for this hostility to diplomacy, I would say that they are 1) the disparity in power between the U.S. and the other country in question; 2) the nostalgic attachment to WWII and the idea of “total victory”; 3) the phobia of appeasement or the fear of being seen as an appeaser by one’s domestic opponents; 4) an irrational belief that the other government will never abide by any agreement; 5) an instinctive dislike of compromise as such. Tierney identifies some of the same reasons later in his article.

Because the U.S. is normally in a much stronger position than the other country, American opponents of diplomacy see no reason to negotiate. A negotiation is bound to leave the other nation with something it wants, and that is considered too much. They believe that the U.S. should use its greater power to try to force the other side’s capitulation. Attachment to the idea of “total victory” makes anything short of the other side’s complete surrender seem unsatisfying and inadequate. The fact that pursuing such a goal is extraordinarily costly and dangerous doesn’t enter into these calculations. Politicians certainly want to avoid being labeled an appeaser, though this labeling has become so common and the motives behind so obvious that it doesn’t have the same power to intimidate that it once did.

The good news is that most Americans are not so ideologically committed to rejecting diplomacy. When it comes time to vote, most Americans are normally more inclined to whichever side of the argument is more interested in making the effort to resolve outstanding disputes through negotiation. I suspect most people in the country understand that it is a much less costly way to pursue U.S. goals and secure U.S. interests than the likely alternatives. Because the U.S. is typically in such a strong position relative to its interlocutors, there is not much to fear from reaching agreements with foes and rivals. Hostility to diplomacy is not really so deeply ingrained in our culture, and that makes the hawkish loathing of diplomacy that much more dangerous and inimical to U.S. interests.

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