Diplomacy and war are the languages of politics. Their difference is that diplomacy is best waged by the wise, too old for the battlefield.

There’s that scene in the classic film Lawrence of Arabia where prince Feisal, soon to be king of a newly created Iraq from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, says about his impetuous British field commander Lawrence:

“There’s nothing further here for a warrior. We drive bargains. Old men’s work. Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men, courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace. And the vices of peace are the vices of old men, mistrust and caution. It must be so.”

This, without the sexism, is the definition of diplomacy.

Today the world is in the grip of a new nationalist existential insurgency unseen since the Viking invasion of the British Isles. This time the enemy does not wear horned helmets to show itself. It’s identified by religion, the same religion that unleashed 9/11 and eight years of war in Iraq ending with the birth of ISIS. This is Extremist Islam and its nation is the “Islamic Caliphate”.

It’s an unprecedented insurgency in scope. It’s caught—and bought—the minds and bodies of non-Islamists: those who call themselves Gen Z, with Gen X and Gen Y Marxists leading their ranks. It’s a herd spanning east and west, espousing socialism without knowing its meaning, brandishing iPhones, label clothing, Chinese keffiyehs and trust funds for college degrees.

Its uniqueness comes because there hasn’t been a cohort like Gen Z more susceptible to propaganda since the early days of the Church and the messianic era of the Roman Empire preceding it.

And this insurgency has been facilitated by a political corruption unseen since the gangsterism of the Roaring Twenties.

So, in this environment, some called “woke”, the US electorate gave the world a second presidency under Donald Trump, a man who knows how to play the long game of diplomatic shock and awe.

As Feisal said, true diplomats understand the art of posture, though some are better at it than others. In negotiation we have the notion of “ambit”, asking for more than one wishes to receive, which is a strategic haggle of sorts.

Ultimately, the real art of diplomacy is not in blinking last. No, that’s business. True diplomacy is the art of having a vision above vice. Even Feisal’s script missed that point predating Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin in motion, a Muslim and a Jew who built an enduring Egyptian-Israeli peace now approaching 50 years.

The question then is whether in Trump’s juggle of the Levant including Israel, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, South East Asia, the Indo-Pacific and Africa, he has the mental capacity to keep these balls juggling with the cogency of a geopolitical vision?

This is a diplomacy at its most complex. It’s the dialogue that stopped the Cold War running hot. Yet, it’s also the geopolitics that put Hitler’s Germany on the Polish border in 1939 allied to Stalin’s Russia to the West’s astonishment—only to be followed by a greater treachery when Hitler in 1941 then turned his armies on Stalin.

I do, however, believe that Trump has that requisite skill. By this I mean the gift of aura aided by myriad advisers and closer confidants. We will find out when he visits the Gulf States in 48 hours’ time.

“Rumours are abounding in a world where the only countries refusing to talk nationalism are European. In terms of state interests where Pakistan is on fire; Sudan, Nigeria, Congo and Bangladesh are being raped; Yemen is challenging a superpower; Russia cannot flex any coherent might; China doesn’t possess the popular will for war; Europe, UK, Ireland and Canada are under Islamist usurpation; and Arab money still fuels it all—this is not the family of nations we knew at the dawn of the third millennium. Today the world is Mars.” – Adam Parker.

© 2025 Adam Parker.
Picture credit: “Colonel T.E. Lawrence with King Feisal”. By Harry Chase. © 2025 Imperial War Museum under Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Licence.