Talleyrand 2.0

By Myron Gananian (March 2025)

President Trump has been called every pejorative possible, so it is not unreasonable to tag him with yet more names that, over the last 200 years, have meant double-dealer, venal, shrewd, sly, self-serving, traitorous, and unpatriotic, cutting short the never-ending list. Trump is calling upon himself the same disdainful tirade just as happened to Talleyrand long ago for dealing with the enemy! This has been the Rubicon of the US diplomatic doctrine since the beginning of the 20th century. “Do not go anywhere near the enemy.” Above all, they do not deserve the honorific of our contact, and furthermore, it is a violation of our Judeo-Christian principles of punitiveness, vindictiveness, shunning, and hostility toward those who do not reflect and duplicate our values. Note the Versailles Treaty after WWII, sponsored by President Wilson, son of a minister. Why the stock State Department press release: “We will not dignify that assertion with a response”? All this a reflection of Bret Stephens’ profound summary of US dealings abroad: “It is one thing for the US to be the world’s policeman and another to be its priest.” Once the enemy, always the enemy. Our military is charged with implacability, not our State Department. The heavy weight of New England and its Ivy League schools filling the halls of State have perpetuated this attitude of superiority and diplomacy at a distance. This influence was developed in more detail in a previous article on these pages.

It is instructive to place the peace efforts of Talleyrand and Trump in contrast to those of our fainéant State Department. So, what more do Trump and Talleyrand have in common? A lot, it turns out. This commonality has placed both against the prevailing orthodoxy. Primarily, both view the usual foreign relations of their nation as self-defeating, leading to a predictable decline. Talleyrand, a Bishop, excommunicated by Pope Pius VI, was Napoleon’s Foreign Minister and, as such, made every effort, covert as well as by subterfuge, to ensure that France did not experience a permanent decline from Napoleon’s foolhardy adventures. One of these efforts, exposing Napoleon’s follies, resulted in a famous rejoinder from the General, “A turd in a silk purse.” Few of his shrewd, farsighted sleights of hand surpass the miracle of the Congress of Vienna after Waterloo, for which the prelude was held in the capital of the defeated nation, Paris, and one of the victors, Tsar Alexander I, stayed with Talleyrand in his home! Picture Truman staying in the residence of Von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s Foreign Minister. Because of his uncanny ability to place himself in the mind and soul of the enemy, France remained intact at the conclusion of that Congress, despite 10 years of Napoleon’s megalomaniacal adventures from the English Channel to the Pyrenees and Moscow, all ending in disaster. To this day, Napoleon and not Talleyrand is the greatest hero in French history, reflected in the rest of the world. Not many here know of Talleyrand.

There is more. Both believe that the essence of diplomacy is dealing with the enemy, not by exchanging cannon fire, but by as direct a contact as can be created. Best face to face. Our State Department is not charged with the task of belligerence or intransigence, that belongs to the military. There exists in our recent history two glaring examples of the distortion, if not the complete reversal of roles, in which we will see our State Department taking on the role of the Department of Defense.

A truly sordid tale. A review of the events before and after the bombing of Kosovo in March 1999 will show the rare word from Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William S. Cohen, a Republican, with every comment justifying NATO’s war on Yugoslavia coming from the Secretary of State, Madeline Albright. In fact, while she announces the coming bombing, Cohen is behind her, mute. US State Department declares war.

On 3 September 2013, Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hegel, Republican, and Secretary of State, John Kerry, under Obama, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after the civilian gassing by Assad of Syria to discuss options. Not a single diplomatic effort was suggested by either Secretary or members of the Committee. Hegel’s words were the more muted, while Kerry went back and forth about risking war but was full-throated in his recommendation for air strikes, even going so far as to say they should be “targeted,” a State term stolen from the military to show that the intention was really not to bomb them to smithereens but just enough to come to heel and obey. The State Department declares war.

It is safe to say that the true concept of diplomacy is dead. If the US does not respect it, then no other nation will resort to it. With whom will they play Diplomat if the US does not want to play? We should not pay $57 billion annually for and support a state department that deals only with the likes of Paris, London, and French Guiana. It doesn’t require a graduate of the Foreign Service School at Georgetown to do that. We need folks who can go into the Lion’s Mouth: Beijing, Pyongyang, Damascus, and Moscow, the only locales where diplomacy can exert its ordained influence. Diplomats must stop declaring war.

A review of available State Department goals and mission material will show an endless drivel of such things as helping US citizens abroad, countering terrorism, spreading democracy and prosperity throughout the world, shaping the international environment so Americans and the international community can thrive, and protecting and promoting the American way of life, part of an endless list of pablum. The word peace appears once, and nowhere could I find the phrase “preventing war.” It is an anomaly that our President has to hold the reins in our country’s peace efforts, not trusting even his own State Department. War is always the easier option, the road more traveled. Best of all, one is likely to meet more people on it.

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Myron Gananian is a retired physician living in California.

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