The higher lens : 14
The Myth of Neutrality: Why Diplomacy is Never Just Dialogue
Neutrality has long been the diplomat’s virtue , the quiet ideal that promises balance, patience, and restraint. It is the posture of those who claim to see both sides while belonging to none. Yet, in the theatre of global politics, neutrality is less an ethical position than a strategic illusion. The language of diplomacy is never innocent; it carries the weight of power, history, and hierarchy. When states speak of “dialogue,” what they often mean is delay. When they speak of “neutrality,” what they often protect is influence.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of Palestine and Israel. Western governments continue to preach even-handedness, condemning violence “on both sides,” as if both sides held equal power, agency, and survival. But neutrality in a context of occupation is not balance - it is blindness. When one state’s defence becomes another people’s destruction, diplomatic neutrality transforms into moral cowardice. The refusal to name oppression is not diplomacy; it is complicity dressed as decorum. To speak of “peace talks” while financing one side’s arsenal is not dialogue : it is choreography.
Recent antisemitic attacks in Manchester also remind us that political outrage must never spill into prejudice , that condemning a government’s actions can never justify hatred toward a people.
The recent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, mediated in part by international and U.S. diplomacy, offered a brief pause , and a moral test. While the guns fell silent, disputes over hostages, borders, and humanitarian access continued to simmer beneath the surface. The ceasefire itself revealed not the end of conflict, but its fragility , a reminder that peace cannot rest on pauses alone. Diplomacy, when reduced to negotiation without accountability, becomes performance: a ritual of restraint that leaves root causes untouched.
This distortion of neutrality has deep roots in the performance of leadership itself. Figures like Donald Trump turned diplomacy into a spectacle of dominance, measuring power not by persuasion but by provocation. His so-called “Deal of the Century” reduced decades of Palestinian suffering to a real estate negotiation, erasing sovereignty with the stroke of a pen. Yet even in the post-Trump era, the language of neutrality persists , repackaged, polished, and still unwilling to confront the asymmetry of global power. The diplomat’s handshake, after all, is rarely free of fingerprints.
The myth of neutrality survives because it offers comfort. It allows nations to appear virtuous without confrontation, and individuals to appear wise without commitment. But diplomacy, at its core, is not the art of avoiding conflict , it is the art of engaging it without violence. To claim neutrality in the face of injustice is not balance; it is abdication. As Hannah Arendt once warned, “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.” Neutrality, in this sense, conserves the very power structures diplomacy claims to transcend.
Perhaps true diplomacy requires something more radical , moral engagement disguised as restraint. It demands that we listen, yes, but also that we name what we hear. It is to hold dialogue not as an end in itself, but as a bridge between empathy and accountability.
Because in the end, diplomacy is not about being neutral. It is about being human , and having the courage to care, even when silence seems safer.
Vlera Gara