When Diplomacy Sounds Like a Threat

Let’s not pretend this was a slip of the tongue.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said some foreign leaders are “no longer on planet Earth” because they “lied to the United States” and “strung us along,” and added that “many of the previous leaders were killed.”

That’s not awkward phrasing, it’s how this is being framed, and it’s a hell of a way to talk about diplomacy. Oh, that thing about “lied to the United States”? Heh. Yeah, kinda ironic.

If negotiating “the wrong way” can get you killed, then why even bother? Because we are not talking about diplomacy anymore. We’re talking about a game with high stakes where no one knows the rules. We’re talking about a system where the penalty for “flubbing” negotiations with the United States is death. It might as well be renamed Russian Roulette. Sit with that absurd thought for a moment.

You can call that strength if you want, but other countries are going to hear it as a warning: engage, and if we decide you wasted our time, you might not be around to explain yourself.

That changes the entire calculation, whether anyone in Washington admits it or not. Funny thing about diplomacy: it works because both sides believe the process is safer than the alternative. Once that assumption is gone, negotiation stops looking like a solution and starts looking like a trap, something to avoid or outmaneuver rather than engage in. In other words, if Mango Mussolini calls, let it roll over to voicemail…permanently.

People respond to that by stalling, hedging, digging in, or walking away altogether. Oh, wait! That could cause problems, too. And that’s how conflicts escalate, not because anyone suddenly becomes irrational, but because the incentives shift and trust disappears, simply because our dear leader gets his “knickers in a twist.”

So when a White House spokesperson—a young woman who has been indoctrinated spectacularly by the powers that be—casually connects failed negotiations to leaders being killed, it doesn’t project toughness. It signals that the current U.S. admin is unpredictable, the rules are unstable, and the outcomes depend on who’s doing the judging…or maybe everything is based on a whim.

That’s not leverage, it’s volatility, and once that’s the signal, you don’t get better diplomacy. You get less of it, along with a much greater chance that things spiral in ways nobody can control.