Stop confusing diplomacy with making 'deals'

That language may work in business, but such transactional thinking does real harm in geopolitics

- ATOM ARIOLA GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

THE MORE “deal” language is used in the media, the more it shapes how events are understood.

(GAVRIIL GRIGOROV Associated Press)

SOMETHING STRANGE has happened to the language of politics. Everything is now a “deal.”

Not a framework, not an accord, not a negotiated architecture — just a deal. The word appears everywhere, from headlines to cable news chyrons, as if it were the most natural way to describe diplomacy. But it isn’t natural. It is imported. And its quiet dominance marks a shift in how political events are not only described, but conceived: as transactions to be struck, rather than systems to be built.

What looks like harmless shorthand is doing more work than it seems. Because “deal” is not just a word; it carries a set of assumptions. It suggests two sides, clear terms and a moment of closure. It implies that problems can be reduced to a negotiation and resolved with enough leverage and timing. That may work in business but it does not describe the reality of geopolitics, where multiple actors operate at once, where interests overlap and where outcomes depend less on a single agreement than on whether anything holds together over time.