William Ury has spent four decades getting people to stop shouting at each other long enough to talk. He’s mediated between warring tribes in the Middle East, sat across from dictators, and helped draft peace deals that most people assumed were dead on arrival. So when the veteran negotiator says diplomacy isn’t dead — it’s just been shoved into the backseat — you listen.
In the latest episode of The Possibilist, Ury makes the case that diplomacy is the unsung hero of global stability. Not the photo-op handshake kind. The gritty, behind-closed-doors, get-your-hands-dirty kind. And he’s not wrong.
The Art of the Possible
“Diplomacy is not about being nice,” Ury says. “It’s about getting to yes when no seems like the only option.” That’s the core of his philosophy. Too often, we mistake diplomacy for weakness. But in a world where nuclear threats, trade wars, and climate crises overlap, the ability to find common ground is anything but soft.
Take the Iran nuclear deal. Ury was part of the backchannel talks that led to the 2015 agreement. Critics called it a surrender. Supporters called it a miracle. The truth is somewhere in between: it was a compromise that kept a bomb out of Tehran’s hands for a decade. That’s not weakness. That’s strategy.
“The hardest part of negotiation is not the talking. It’s the listening.” — William Ury
Ury emphasizes that listening doesn’t mean agreeing. It means understanding what the other side actually wants. In the Middle East, he’s seen how ignoring grievances — real or perceived — fuels cycles of violence. Diplomacy, at its best, breaks those cycles by offering an off-ramp.
Why Diplomacy Gets a Bad Rap
Let’s be honest: diplomacy has an image problem. It’s associated with champagne receptions and empty communiqués. The public sees failed summits and broken promises. They see Ukraine, Gaza, and Myanmar and wonder: what’s the point?
Ury argues that we measure diplomacy wrong. “You don’t judge a firefighter by the number of fires they prevent,” he says. But that’s exactly what we do with diplomats. The crises that don’t happen — the wars that never start, the deals that quietly hold — get zero press. And the failures? They’re front-page news.
Still, the failures sting. The collapse of the Colombian peace deal with the FARC in 2016 (later revived) or the endless deadlock over Cyprus show that diplomacy has limits. But so does a scalpel in the hands of a surgeon. The tool isn’t the problem; the willingness to use it is.
The New Playground: Tech and Climate
Ury points to two arenas where diplomacy is being reinvented: climate change and technology. Neither fits the old model of nation-states haggling over borders. Climate is a collective-action problem that demands cooperation from countries that barely trust each other. Tech — from AI to cyberwar — moves faster than any treaty can.
The Paris Agreement is often cited as a win for climate diplomacy. But Ury notes that it’s not the agreement itself that matters; it’s the iterative process of ratcheting up commitments. “The deal is not the endpoint. It’s a starting point for continuous negotiation.” That’s a radical shift from the old idea that a treaty is a final handshake.
On tech, the stakes are even higher. The UN’s efforts to regulate lethal autonomous weapons (killer robots, in plain speak) have stalled. The Geneva conventions didn’t envision drone swarms. Ury suggests that diplomats need to bring in engineers, hackers, and ethicists to the table — not just other diplomats.
The Human Element
What sets Ury apart from many diplomatic theorists is his emphasis on human psychology. He co-founded the Harvard Negotiation Project, which pioneered the concept of “principled negotiation” — separating people from problems, focusing on interests not positions.
“If you treat the other side as an enemy, you will never see a solution,” he says. That doesn’t mean naivete. It means recognizing that behind every state’s position is a set of fears and needs. Russia’s demand for NATO non-expansion isn’t just about military strategy; it’s about a wounded sense of prestige. Iran’s nuclear program is partly about security, partly about pride.
Ury tells a story from his work in Venezuela, where he mediated between the government and opposition in 2002. Both sides were convinced the other was pure evil. After months of deadlock, Ury got them to agree on one thing: they both loved their country. That tiny common ground became the foundation for a (short-lived) peace.
Is Diplomacy Dying?
It’s tempting to say yes. Populism, nationalism, and a preference for tough talk over compromise are in vogue. The US under Trump withdrew from the Iran deal and the Paris accord. Brexit was a middle finger to multilateralism. Strongmen from Erdoğan to Modi have made national sovereignty a rallying cry.
Yet Ury sees something else: a quiet renaissance. “The number of track-two dialogues — unofficial talks between academics, religious leaders, retired generals — has exploded,” he notes. These backchannels often pave the way for official talks. The Oslo Accords started as secret meetings in Norway. The pandemic showed that even rivals could cooperate on vaccine distribution.
The real threat, Ury argues, isn’t the death of diplomacy. It’s the death of patience. “We want results yesterday. But peace takes time — sometimes a generation.” He points to Northern Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement was 30 years in the making. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison before negotiating apartheid’s end.
The Bottom Line
Diplomacy is the invisible scaffolding of the international order. It’s not glamorous. It’s not fast. And it fails more often than it succeeds. But when it works, it saves lives — millions of them.
Ury’s message is simple: the world is fracturing, but it’s not falling apart. Not yet. The fine art of diplomacy is what holds the pieces together, even when we can’t see the cracks. He’s not asking us to be naive. He’s asking us to be patient. And maybe, to listen.
