Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
This is a guest essay by Nachum Kaplan, a longtime journalist and commentator who writes the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Western diplomacy now rests on a fantasy: that aggressors can be persuaded by disappointment.
The assumption is rarely stated openly, yet it shapes responses across crises. Aggression triggers condemnation. Escalation produces calls for restraint. Diplomatic meetings generate statements urging de-escalation. Carefully calibrated language substitutes for leverage.
It is baloney.
While Western leaders sigh like disappointed school principals, the Islamic Republic of Iran expands its regional reach, Russia wages war, and China advances its Belt-and-Road colonial project across economic, military, and geopolitical domains. Western governments respond with increasingly refined expressions of concern. The pattern has become familiar enough to resemble doctrine.
Israel has lived inside this doctrine for decades.
Hamas fires rockets at Israeli cities while embedding launchers in civilian neighborhoods. The diplomatic reaction tends to center on Israeli restraint rather than Hamas strategy. Statements urge proportionality, caution, and de-escalation, while the organization that initiated the violence continues operating under the assumption that international pressure will constrain Israel more than it constrains Hamas.
This is not a misunderstanding. It is part of the strategy.
Hezbollah offers an even clearer illustration. Over nearly two decades, the group built an arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets and missiles in southern Lebanon, many aimed directly at Israeli population centers. The buildup violated international agreements and occurred in plain sight. Western governments periodically acknowledged the violations. The response rarely moved beyond expressions of concern. Hezbollah’s capabilities expanded steadily. Only now is Israel is finally dealing with them as a hot front in its war against Iran, which is Hezbollah’s patron.
Iran has followed this strategy regionally. Tehran funded and armed proxies across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, many openly committed to Israel’s destruction. Western governments emphasized diplomacy, negotiation, and restraint. Iran consolidated influence, tightened its encirclement of Israel, and expanded its capabilities.
Western diplomacy assumes condemnation creates pressure. Israel’s adversaries understand that condemnation creates opportunity.
Hamas embeds military infrastructure in civilian areas partly because the resulting civilian suffering generates diplomatic pressure on Israel. Western outrage constrains Israeli operations, which in turn improves Hamas’ survivability. The diplomatic reaction is not an unintended consequence; it is integrated into the strategy.
Western outrage has become part of the battlefield.
Modern Western political culture places extraordinary emphasis on reputation. Careers rise and fall on perception. Governments worry about headlines. Institutions calibrate positions to avoid moral criticism.
These instincts also make some sense within democratic societies where public opinion matters, reputation influences legitimacy, and criticism carries consequences. It also makes sense within political movements or parties where virtue is often a determinant of group hierarchy.
Projection follows naturally. Western leaders assume adversaries share similar incentives — that condemnation produces discomfort, isolation generates anxiety, and reputational damage creates pressure.
Israel’s adversaries operate differently. Iranian leadership frames confrontation with Israel and the West as ideological purity. Hezbollah presents resistance to Israel as central to its identity. Hamas incorporates martyrdom narratives into strategic planning.
Under these conditions, condemnation does not deter; it validates enemies’ internal narratives. Opposition from Western governments becomes evidence of righteousness and reinforces domestic legitimacy.
Israel is all too familiar with this dynamic.
During Gaza conflicts, Israeli operations aimed at degrading Hamas infrastructure often faced diplomatic pressure to halt before strategic objectives are achieved. Hamas benefited from time to regroup, rebuild, and prepare for future rounds.
The cycle became familiar. Western diplomacy grew more eloquent. Enemies accumulated strategic gains.
Israel frequently acted instead. This produced friction. Western observers interpreted Israeli military action as aggressive, whereas Israeli policymakers viewed Western passivity as dangerous.
The gap reflects geography and experience. Western lawmakers can afford to experiment with diplomatic language. Israel cannot. Rockets and tunnels do not respond to tautology-filled communiqués.
Israel’s defensive success sometimes compounds the problem. Systems like the Iron Dome reduce Israeli casualties, which in turn lowers Western tolerance for Israeli offensive operations. Hamas retains incentives to continue fighting, while Israel faces increasing diplomatic pressure to stop. Defensive success becomes diplomatic vulnerability.
This is a strategic environment few Western policymakers fully appreciate because they often assume people and governments have universal motivations — stability, prosperity, legitimacy and so on. Yet some actors prioritize ideological victory, regional dominance, or long-term confrontation, even at significant cost.
Dictators and their acolytes are usually psychopaths or have sociopathic tendencies and suffer no such need for approval. These regimes measure success in raw power, security, and advantage. Reputation matters more domestically than it does internationally.
Iran’s investment in proxies surrounding Israel reflects this logic. The strategy unfolds gradually through incremental gains and persistent pressure. Diplomatic condemnation accompanied this expansion for decades without altering the trajectory.
Israel’s experience reinforces skepticism toward diplomatic reassurance.
The withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 did not prevent Hezbollah’s buildup. Its withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 did not prevent Hamas’ militarization. The Oslo Accords process, built partly on the assumption that diplomatic legitimacy would moderate adversaries, sparked waves of suicide bombings in the Second Intifada that reshaped Israeli public opinion, in many cases permanently.
These experiences shape Israeli strategic thinking.
Western governments continue to rely heavily on statements that signal engagement without requiring risk. Military deterrence requires commitment. Economic pressure demands sacrifice. Diplomatic language offers safety.
Diplomatic condemnation now carries roughly the strategic weight of scolding a hurricane.
Over time, this imbalance produces diplomacy that sounds serious yet exerts modest influence.
Somewhere in Tehran, Beirut, or Gaza, decision-makers pursue strategic objectives with little interest in Western disappointment. They calculate power, vulnerability, and opportunity. They do not calibrate strategy based on adjectives. Israel has learned this the hard way — under missile, rocket, and drone fire, and pogroms launched from just over the border.
The West shows no sign that it is learning anything at all. The belief that aggressors can be persuaded through disappointment retains a certain charm. It reflects optimism about human nature and faith in universal norms.
But, ultimately, it is nonsense that does not stop the wars.
Right…for some reason we now act like the purpose of a war is to “achieve” a cease fire. That’s almost comedic. The goal is to achieve military and political objectives and the cease fire is the reward to the loser that lets it survive in return for a series of concessions. How is this not obvious?
Excellent points, concisely presented. One quibble: There is perhaps the implication here that it is the aggressive Moslem countries whose leaders value their domestic reputation over international opinion. If anything, that's even more the case with the leaders of Western democracies. Their constituencies have a strong bias against war unless they feel physically threatened, or are convinced the war will be cost free. Their economies depend on capitalism and free trade, which are highly vulnerable in conflict. Hence the high-minded but dangerous and slippery-sloped preference for diplomacy over military action.