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How Not to Do Diplomacy: Keep Everyone Guessing

When people talk about diplomacy and how to do it, you hear a lot about being consistent and dependable. Well, consistency is highly overrated. When you’re a superpower, you have carte blanche to ‘do it your way,’ and like a poker game, you’re in a stronger position when the other players don’t know what cards you’re holding. Keeping them guessing is the way to go.

If you want to win in the global diplomatic competition, your best bet is to be as unpredictable as the weather—or even more so. You want your adversaries to be uncertain whether your bellicose rhetoric is meant as a bluff or if you have your finger on the trigger. Your allies or business partners should always be left wondering whether or not you’ll deliver on commitments. This way, you’ll always have the advantage.

Take the Republic of Korea, for example. After South Korean President Lee Jae Myung met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington on August 25, 2025, the Koreans pledged $150 billion in investments from South Korean companies, an order of 103 airplanes from Boeing, and joint work with the U.S. and Japan to develop Alaska’s natural gas reserves. “We really sort of need each other. We love what they do,” Trump said during a press conference after the meeting with Lee. South Korea had already committed $350 billion in investments after the July trade deal that lowered U.S. tariffs on South Korean tariffs to 15 percent from 25 percent.

Sounds like a good deal, a real win-win situation. But that’s not the way a real wheeler-dealer conducts business. You can’t have someone walking away thinking that they’ve pulled one over on you. If you’re going to be seen as strong, you have to show everyone who’s boss.

The U.S. did just that with South Korea on September 5, 2025, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, along with other law enforcement officials, raided a site where a Korean company is building an EV battery plant in the town of Ellabell, Georgia. And while the raid was based on Homeland Security Investigations’ targeting four individuals, none of whom were Korean, 475 people, including 300 Korean nationals, were taken into custody. While some of those detained were working illegally, many of the South Koreans were in the U.S. on B-1 visas to help train the more than 1,000 Americans the company plans to hire. That’ll show them, though. Won’t it?

Well, this one might not work out quite the way we’d like. Hyundai, one of the Korean companies, is temporarily suspending operations, and LG, another Korean company, is informing its people not to travel to the United States. The South Korean government expressed ‘concern and regret’ over the incident and negotiated the voluntary return of the detained Koreans on chartered flights.

At this point, how American workers will be trained to operate the facility, or even if Hyundai and LG will continue with the project, is up in the air. But we have still shown the world that we’re a force to be reckoned with.

Take that, why don’t you!

Charles A. Ray spent 20 years in the U.S. Army with two tours in Vietnam. He retired as a senior US diplomat, serving 30 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, with assignments as ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Republic of Zimbabwe, and was the first American consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He also served in senior positions with the Department of Defense and is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 290 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.