Imposing is not negotiating

There is a confusion that needs clearing up from the outset: pressure is not diplomacy. They are different things, and treating them as though they were the same is the underlying error at the heart of Trump’s foreign policy.

Negotiation is a process. It assumes that the other side exists, that it has interests of its own, and that no durable solution can be built by ignoring that. Not because it is a matter of courtesy, but because solutions that do not incorporate the other side simply do not hold. They are signed today and broken tomorrow. Or worse: they are never signed at all, and the conflict remains open beneath the surface, building pressure until it explodes again.

Imposition is something else. Imposition is saying to the other side: here are my conditions, you have no choice, give in or the consequences will be worse. That may work once, in very specific circumstances, when the other side has no real capacity to respond. But in most cases it does not work like that. What it produces is exactly the opposite of what it promises: more resistance, more resentment, and a reaction that arrives sooner or later.

Trump’s pattern is well known. First the unilateral action — the blockade, the tariff, the threat — and then the narrative that tries to justify it. But that sequence has a structural problem: when the justification comes after the action, it is not analysis; it is cover. And cover does not persuade those who are already responding to the blow.

The effects of this method are not theoretical. When economic pressure of this kind is imposed, the market reacts before anyone has negotiated anything: oil rises, confidence contracts, uncertainty increases, and the damage spreads far beyond the original conflict. In other words, coercion does not contain the problem; it spills it outward.

And here lies the core of the issue: Trump seems to believe that imposing first gives him control. But control and reaction are not the same thing. What imposition generates is not obedience — it is movement in the opposite direction. The other side does not stay still; it reorganizes, looks for allies, hardens its position, and responds. That is not a hypothesis; it is what has happened, with variations, every time this method has been applied.

That is why there is no rational reason to think this time will be different. The method is the same, the pattern is the same, and the conditions have not changed enough to justify expecting a different result. Repeated coercion does not accumulate successes; it accumulates reactions. And there comes a point when the one doing the imposing no longer controls anything — he is only managing the consequences of what he himself set in motion.

Because kicking a tree is not the same thing as kicking a rabid dog.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)