Global South Forum Webinar: Diplomacy of the Bully: Coercion, Ceasefires, and the New Architecture of Power

Overview:

We are living through a structural transformation in how powerful states pursue their interests. The post-Cold War grammar of diplomacy — multilateral negotiations, international law, rules-based consensus — is increasingly being displaced by a rawer logic: compel, threaten, and reward on one’s own terms. This forum examines that transformation through the lens of the global south crisis.

In Gaza, the October 2025 ceasefire that achieved through what one senior White House official openly called ‘maximum pressure’ offers the starkest recent example. Trump’s 20-point peace plan was driven less by multilateral consensus-building than by coercing parties into positions through a combination of military support, economic leverage, and personal diplomacy with Gulf states. Hamas itself credited this approach with compelling Israeli force concessions. Yet the same coercive energy that produced the deal now threatens its longevity.

With Iran, the pattern is even more acute. A sequence of failed negotiations, military strikes, and intermittent ceasefires mediated by Pakistan has produced a volatile, unresolved standoff over nuclear enrichment, freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and the future of Iran’s regional posture. The US-Israeli military campaign of 2026, the assassination of senior Iranian figures, and a naval blockade have created a negotiating environment defined entirely by one-sided leverage — a textbook case of coercive diplomacy, with all its inherent instabilities.

Against this backdrop, the concept of ‘bully diplomacy’ deserves rigorous examination. Is coercion an effective path to durable peace? What happens to the rules-based international order when great powers operate purely through threat and reward? And what are the options — and obligations — of smaller and middle powers, regional actors, and civil society in such an environment?