Diplomacy of Peace at Any Price

Why, when forces in Syria were fighting for freedom from one of the world’s most sinister regimes, would Western leaders want them to stop?

General Karl von Clausewitz (German Culture)

Last month, as Syrian rebels advanced on Damascus, the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and France jointly called for an end to the fighting. “We urge de-escalation by all parties and the protection of civilians and infrastructure to prevent further displacement and disruption of humanitarian access,” they declared. “The current escalation only underscores the urgent need for a Syrian-led political solution to the conflict.”

Why, when forces were fighting for freedom from one of the world’s most sinister regimes, would Western leaders want them to stop? Why would they seek to save Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, the butcher of nearly a half million of his own people and a crucial ally of Russia and Iran, from possible overthrow? And what could possibly be Assad’s role in a “Syrian-led solution?”

The answers to these questions lie in the redefinition of the word “diplomacy,” radically altering its time-honored practice and purpose. What the West once considered a tool for assuring victory to the righteous side in wars is now viewed as the primary means for stopping wars entirely, irrespective of their winners. The concept of diplomacy, famously framed by Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, as war “by other means,” has now been inverted to “war as the failure of diplomacy by every means.” The very term “just war,” popularized fifty years ago by Princeton professor Michael Walzer, has become an oxymoron.

This new peace-at-any-price diplomacy would have shocked the great statesmen of the past. George Washington employed diplomacy to enlist France in America’s War of Independence from Britain. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln employed diplomacy to keep France as well as Britain from recognizing the Confederacy. If, instead of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, the West’s current leaders were running World War II, Parisians might likely be speaking German today, and the Filipinos, Japanese. The same Professor Walzer who championed “just wars” in the 1970s, denounced the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies that neutralized hundreds of Hezbollah terrorists—a brilliant action widely attributed to Israel—as an atrocity. “The attacks…came when the operatives…had not been mobilized,” he explained, “and they were not militarily engaged.” By that moral standard, any Allied attempt to kill Hitler in his bunker would have been deemed a war crime.

The peace uber alles diplomacy profoundly impacted President Biden’s policy toward Ukraine. Critics of his approach claim that neither the sanctions he levied on Moscow nor the arms he provided to Kyiv were remotely sufficient to defeat Putin. “He [Biden] treated the conflict as a crisis to be managed, not a war to be won,” Phillips Payson O’Brien, a historian of successful wartime leadership, recently wrote in The Atlantic. The result is a growing consensus, not only in Washington but among many NATO nations, that only diplomacy can stem the bloodshed. Even at the expense of paying off Putin with stolen Ukrainian territory, peace must be restored.

The Biden administration not only abhorred the war in Ukraine but feared the nuclear war that Putin threatened in retaliation for unlimited Western arms supplies to Kyiv. But no such danger existed in the war in the Middle East. Neither Iran nor, certainly, its proxies—Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—possess any strategic weapons. And, yet, Washington’s goal was not merely to manage the conflict, but to stop it entirely.

Biden certainly tried. By delaying or curtailing military aid to Israel and accusing it, despite achieving the lowest civilian-to-combatant fatality ratio in modern military history, of dehumanizing and “killing too many Palestinians,” he sought to compel Israel to accept a ceasefire, first in Gaza and later in Lebanon. “The war must end,” he said in December when Israel’s operations against Hamas had entered their critical phase and those against Hezbollah had not even started. In October 2024, after the interception of hundreds of ballistic missiles and explosive drones fired by Iran at Israel, he successfully pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to strike back at the Ayatollahs but to “take the win.”

None of Biden’s efforts satisfied the advocates of peace über alles. On the contrary, they condemned him for failing to end the war. “Biden’s Middle East policy appears to be a practical and moral failure,” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof observed. The Economist’s Gregg Carlstrom agreed: “Hard to conceive of a bigger failure than his [Biden’s] Middle East policy.” Khaled Elgindy, a senior Middle East Institute fellow writing in Foreign Policy, accused the president of embracing Netanyahu politically and militarily. “This ‘bear hug’ diplomacy,” Elgindy concluded, “has resulted in an unmitigated failure.”

Biden’s critics never once considered the possibility that his alleged failure was, in fact, a pivotal victory for the West. Grievously weakened by the war, Iran can no longer destabilize the Middle East, and opportunities for peace, previously unthinkable, are now within reach. A prematurely imposed ceasefire, by contrast, would have enabled Iran to recover and rebuild its terrorist proxies. A future war, far more destructive than this, would have loomed.

The redefinition of diplomacy stemmed from multiple sources. America’s abortive engagements in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan gave war a bad name, as did the elite universities which, rather than instruct students on how the world really works, enchanted them with “peace studies.” And few, if any Western leaders today have ever worn a uniform or had any first-hand experience in combat. The war they hate and will do anything to avoid is a war they never fought.

That timorous approach was again evident earlier this month as the rebels completed Syria’s liberation of Assad’s rule. Rather than welcoming this historic moment, the White House called on all parties to protect civilians, particularly minorities, and respect international norms.

Change, however, may be coming. “Assad is gone,” President Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success.”

The following day, President Trump indicated a different direction, posting that Syria’s internal chaos is none of America’s business.

It is unclear at this stage whether the United States will return to a more traditional definition of diplomacy. Doing so would revive the diplomacy of Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Churchill. Western leaders might reimpose punishing sanctions on Iran and once again deter it with a credible military option. Hamas can be all but eliminated and Hezbollah fully starved of Iranian resupply. A historic accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia can be achieved. The United States can reclaim its role as the dominant power in the Middle East and beyond.

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This article has been updated as of December 16th