So the great American diplomatic machine has finally ground to a halt. Not with a bang, but with the ignominious departure of Vice President Vance from the Switzerland talks, leaving the US-Iran deal in tatters. One might almost feel a pang of nostalgia for the days when Washington could at least maintain the theatre of competence. Now we are treated to the spectacle of a superpower walking away from its own negotiations, like a petulant child overturning the chessboard.
This, dear reader, is not a failure of diplomacy. It is a symptom of a deeper intellectual and moral decadence that has infected the Western body politic. Compare this to the Congress of Vienna in 1815, where Metternich and Castlereagh spent months crafting a balance of power that kept Europe stable for a generation. Or even the Camp David Accords of 1978, where Jimmy Carter’s painstaking mediation produced a framework for peace between Israel and Egypt. What do we have today? A vice president who cannot be bothered to stay in the room. The contrast is as stark as it is embarrassing.
I am reminded of Edward Gibbon’s observation that the decline of Rome was hastened by a loss of civic virtue, a retreat from the public sphere into private indulgence. Vance’s abandonment of the talks is precisely this: a leader more concerned with domestic political calculus than with the intricate work of statecraft. The West, particularly the United States, has become a civilisation of short attention spans and instant gratification. We no longer have the patience for the slow, grinding process of diplomacy. We want results now, and if they do not materialise, we storm out.
But let us not mistake this for mere incompetence. There is a pattern here. The collapse of the Iran deal follows the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the failure to manage the Ukraine crisis, and the general disarray of Western foreign policy. These are not isolated incidents. They are the products of a culture that has abandoned the ideals of classical liberalism and the Enlightenment in favour of a confused mix of identity politics and moral posturing. We lecture the world on human rights while we cannot even maintain a coherent negotiation with a nation that has been a pariah for decades.
The irony is that Iran, for all its faults, has shown more diplomatic consistency. They sat, they waited, they watched the West fumble. And now they will reap the rewards of our disarray. They will likely resume their nuclear programme with renewed vigour, and who can blame them? When the sheriff cannot keep his own deputies in line, the outlaws will take control of the town.
Some will argue that the deal was flawed from the start, that Iran is untrustworthy. Perhaps. But the mark of a great power is not the perfection of its agreements, but its ability to manage imperfect realities. The United States once understood this. During the Cold War, it negotiated with the Soviet Union, a regime far more dangerous than Iran, because it understood that diplomacy is not a moral exercise but a pragmatic one. Today, we have exchanged pragmatism for a hollow righteousness that collapses at the first sign of difficulty.
What does this mean for the future? It means the end of the American century is accelerating. The vacuum left by Washington will be filled by other powers. China is already positioning itself as a mediator in the Middle East, brokering deals between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Russia is strengthening its ties with Tehran. The West is retreating into fortress mentalities, believing that if we ignore the world, it will go away. It will not.
I am often accused of being a pessimist, a Cassandra crying doom. But history does not lie. Every great civilisation that lost its nerve, that abandoned the difficult art of governance for the easy pleasures of distraction, has crumbled. The Roman senate debated which exotic animals to import for the games while barbarians gathered at the gates. Our modern leaders debate social media policies while Iran enriches uranium. The parallels are uncomfortable, but they are also true.
I can already hear the rebuttals: The deal is not completely dead. There will be other talks. Perhaps. But the pattern is set. The West has revealed its fragility, its inability to sustain long-term commitments. Vance’s departure from Switzerland is a symbol of a broader condition: a civilisation that has lost the will to negotiate with its own complexity. We are witnessing the self-inflicted decline of a once-great order. And we are doing it with all the grace of a spoiled aristocrat who has forgotten what it means to rule.
