“The issue confronting the world today is not simply one of age. It is whether a generation of political leadership whose intellectual formation occurred during the Cold War and the ideological struggles of the twentieth century possesses the epistemological tools required to navigate the far more complex crises of the twenty-first.”

In 2018, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), widely regarded as one of the most sophisticated multilateral nuclear agreements ever negotiated. The accord had emerged from years of painstaking diplomacy involving the United States, Europe, Russia, China and Iran. Its architects believed that complex security challenges could be managed through verification, diplomacy and mutual accommodation rather than military coercion. Many viewed it as a model of twenty-first-century problem-solving in an increasingly interconnected world.

Less than a decade later, the Middle East once again finds itself trapped in a cycle of confrontation. The collapse of the nuclear accord was followed by escalating tensions, sanctions, military exchanges and eventually a broader regional conflict involving Iran, Israel and the United States. Whether one supports or opposes the agreement is not the central issue. The more important question is whether the abandonment of a painstaking diplomatic framework reflected a broader preference for coercive instruments of statecraft over negotiated solutions.

A similar question can be asked elsewhere. More than four years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe remains locked in its most dangerous military confrontation since the Second World War. The conflict has produced staggering casualties, immense economic disruption and profound geopolitical consequences, yet a durable political settlement remains elusive. In South Asia, the unresolved Kashmir dispute continues to cast a long shadow over........

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