There are words that mark things and ideas we have lost. James Joyce rescued two such words — agenbite (the again‑biting of conscience) and inwit (inner knowledge) — from medieval usage. They haven’t reentered ordinary speech, but they would be useful now. Too many public actors excel at outwitting others while letting their inwit atrophy; and public life often substitutes law or rigid codes for genuine moral self‑examination, stripping agenbite from our collective compass.
Language matters because it shapes moral imagination. Consider how US President Donald Trump speaks of foreign policy. He has perfected a trend that devalues diplomacy in favor of force. His Iran policy makes explicit what earlier administrations disguised: “negotiations” have too often been a cover for subterfuge or violence. When Trump says he answers only to “my own morality, my own mind,” and that he does not need international law, he is announcing a worldview in which agency and ethical restraint are optional. He claims he is “not looking to hurt people,” even as his air strikes and targeted assassinations destroy civilian infrastructure and leadership across Iran. That dissonance between words and deeds is a moral vacuum: inwit absent, agenbite silent.
He frames the current phase as “discussions ongoing.” The passive, impersonal phrasing conceals actors and intentions. “Discussions” — as used here — is distinct from “negotiations.” Etymology matters: “discuss” at its root carries a rougher connotation, while “negotiation” contains Latin otium — studious leisure, a reflective pause for reasoning. Negotiation implies deliberation aimed at mutual settlement; it presumes interlocutors willing to test positions, trade concessions and, ideally, avert the worst outcomes through shared judgment. Discussions, untethered to that tradition of reflective exchange, can become a holding pattern or a smokescreen for preparing force.
That is precisely what has happened. When formal talks were announced in mid‑2025 and again in early 2026, they were interrupted by sudden, spectacular bombing campaigns. The “talks” served as a stage on which force could be rehearsed and justified. For a leader who privileges transactions (wealth, market metrics) and performance (shows of dominance), negotiation is less an ethical practice than a tactical pause before violence. This is not solely Trump’s innovation; it follows an imperial logic that measures value by money and power and treats empathy and respect as optional frills. But Trump makes the logic explicit: if you can negotiate from the vantage of superior force, then “negotiations” become instruments of coercion.
Western habituation to using diplomacy as a prelude to other means is older and bipartisan. The Minsk agreements of 2015, brokered under French and German sponsorship, were widely regarded later by some participants as a way to buy time while Ukraine was integrated more tightly into the West. In December 2021, when Russia massed troops near Ukraine and proposed talks on “indivisible security” — the Cold War axiom that no state should shore up its security at another’s expense — the Biden administration declared the proposals a “non‑starter,” citing NATO’s open‑door policy. Refusing to test the negotiating option foreclosed the possibility that a negotiated settlement might have reduced the risk of war. We can debate whether talks would have worked, but rejecting negotiation out of principle is a surprising gamble when the potential cost is large.
Today’s pattern is clear: diplomacy has been reframed as a phase in which ambiguity buys time for military preparation. Biden’s team exhausted negotiation as a delaying tactic; Trump accepts talks as the platform from which to strike. His Secretary of War, echoing the logic, boasts of “negotiating with bombs.” The phrase should startle anyone who still thinks diplomacy is a sincere attempt to resolve disputes. Threatening to demolish a country’s power grid “very hard and probably simultaneously” is not bargaining; it is a vow to inflict collective suffering as leverage. When the stronger party substitutes bombardment for bargaining, negotiations no longer aim at mutual accommodation but at submission.
But negotiations retain a real function, especially when outcomes are unfavorable for one side. When a weaker party finds itself outgunned or economically crippled, negotiations can convert pain into a settlement that limits destruction and opens a path to recovery. Even when coercion has shifted the balance, the weaker side often gains by negotiating to salvage what remains and end the suffering. To deny that option because it might grant time or dignity to an adversary is to prefer interminable ruin to an imperfect peace.
There are strategic consequences beyond the immediate battlefield. Policies that scorn negotiation erode trust and encourage multipolar adjustments. When leaders treat diplomacy as mere theater, other states look for alternatives to align their security and economic interests. Predictions that sanctions or military pressure would reduce rivals to penury have often been mistaken; economic measures can backfire, catalyzing new financial arrangements and incentives that undermine presumed leverage. The dollar’s dominance is not immutable. Persistently dismissing negotiation and the principle of indivisible security risks accelerating a reordering in which the United States has less sway.
Nor is the Trump approach limited to rhetoric. Private strategizing, according to observers, mixes carrots and threats: partial sanction relief, oil‑price signaling, and offers to benefit elite factions couched alongside explicit threats like seizure of strategic islands or choke points. That combination — buying off elites while menacing the broader polity — might appeal to transactional and coercive logics, but it underestimates national resilience and identity. The targeted side may refuse such mixed offers, preferring to endure hardship rather than cede autonomy or accept humiliation. If the goal truly is stability, blunt force and hedged deals are poor instruments.
All of this returns us to words we barely use: inwit and agenbite. Negotiation presupposes both — the inner voice that weighs ends against means and the moral tug that checks ruthless acquisition. When leaders and their advisers operate without inwit, when agenbite is absent from decision‑making, diplomacy becomes a theatrical interval rather than a moral practice. Discussions can perpetuate ambiguity and provide time for destructive preparations; negotiations, properly understood, are moments of otium — reflective, disciplined, and directed at mutual resolution.
So when do we expect their agenbite to bite? When will the inner mind register the moral cost of preferring spectacle and coercion over deliberation and mutual settlement? The question is urgent because the refusal to engage genuinely in negotiation threatens not only the lives and infrastructures of distant societies but also the normative foundations of international life. If diplomacy is reduced to a cover for force, the space for reasoned compromise narrows and the world grows more dangerous.
Until then, we should restore a vocabulary that makes ethical thinking possible: insist on the difference between mere discussions and real negotiations; revive the moral categories — agenbite and inwit — that demand reflection and conscience; and remember that using words instead of bombs is not weakness but the labor of preserving human life and dignity.
