Editor’s Note (June 22, 2025): In light of last night’s strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, this essay — written before the operation — feels unexpectedly timely. It explores how states interpret conflict, and the role of trust in managing perceptions between rival powers.
In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, statues are ferried past a fire by anonymous “carriers” — their shadows mistaken for reality by those chained to a wall. Plato neglects to comment on the source of these figurines; we are left to speculate about who might have carved them, or from what.
But in foreign policy, truth arrives shaped — hewn from chaos by diplomats and intelligence services, then lit from behind to cast legible silhouettes for their principals to act on.
Imagine, for a moment, Plato’s cave under siege by a hostile tribe. Rocks are constantly falling into the open mouth of the cavern. Some are thrown deliberately by the assailants as weapons, while others fall into the chasm from erosion and natural disaster.
Here a state’s diplomatic and intelligence services are not mere puppeteers of shadows on a limestone wall — they are stonemasons tasked with sorting through the rubble and selecting rocks to carve into the statues that cast them.
The stonemasons do not have perfect information, and they are not a monolith. Some are particularly talented at carving, while others specialize in geological science. They may debate amongst themselves which rocks are worth carving, and how fearsome an idol to sculpt from each.
A bold few may venture outside the cave to speak directly with their assailants. They may ask, “Why did you throw that rock?” and attempt to persuade their aggressors to stop. They may warn of unintended consequences, or threaten retaliation after a particularly large barrage.
Upon their return to the cave, these envoys will inform the selection and sculpting of the day’s stones. Based on their interactions with the enemy, they may draw attention to some new boulders, or encourage their fellow masons to pay less mind to others.
The risk is that these diplomats, enamored with interpersonal understanding, might be tempted to explain away deliberate provocation. Perhaps they understand rock hurling to be an immutable part of their adversary’s culture; perhaps out of strategic empathy they recast aggression as “self-defense.” In any case, their carvings often soften the contours of real threats — sometimes dangerously so.
The security services, on the other hand, are trained in distrust, and risk miscalculating if they isolate signals from context. They are prone to carving grotesque idols from unremarkable stones, inferring malicious design from random noise. They rely on diplomats to provide necessary context and rightsize their paranoia.
The debate among these two factions of stonemasons is the crucible that molds great power politics. Diplomacy exists to inform this concert within one’s own political system — and to influence it in others.
Assuming the Worst
Every cave is damp with the air of conspiratorial thinking and misjudgment.
The world caught a glimpse of this in the run-up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election — when leaders in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army had convinced themselves that the Trump administration would deliberately provoke an armed conflict with China for some imagined electoral gain.
Such speculation had no basis in reality. The shadows witnessed by PLA leaders were the product of monstrous, inaccurate idols concocted by China’s own security services. And yet they were real enough to prompt the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to reach out and defuse the situation.
The October-surprise-that-wasn’t is an extreme example of threat inflation, but not an isolated one. Certainly across my own hundreds of conversations with Chinese diplomats, I have been asked questions that betray a deep misunderstanding of America’s interests and political system — and made me fear what kind of idols are being carved in the caves at Yan'an.
Idealists go wrong in assuming trust can override this dynamic. It can’t — and it shouldn’t.
Responsible policymakers must assume that every rock is thrown intentionally, and that more will follow. It is generally less costly for the stonemasons in any political system to mistake a pebble for a boulder, and for their principals to cower at its towering shadow, than to overlook an acute threat. This is especially true in a state gripped by nationalist panic — doubly so for a democracy that holds decisionmakers accountable for perceived weakness.
The default state of great power rivalry is one of structural distrust. Although we may wish it were not so, states are largely confined to operate within the two squares of a prisoner’s dilemma that assume betrayal. Effective strategy demands subscribing to the least charitable interpretation of an adversary’s behavior, even at the risk of distortion and threat inflation.
Balancing Deterrence and Reassurance
Still, one of diplomacy’s core functions is to actively shape how an adversary perceives the stones hurled in its direction — illuminating them from different angles as circumstances require.
Sometimes states have an interest in cultivating and exploiting misjudgment. Their diplomats might strike a threatening tone, and attempt to portray their arsenal of rocks as larger or more formidable — thereby scaring a rival’s leadership. Some level of misunderstanding is helpful in compelling cooperation and deterring aggression. But it is also this brand of diplomacy that undergirds the Madman Theory of geopolitics and gives rise to brinksmanship.
More often, a state’s diplomats seek to minimize and make excuses for the rocks hurled by its own warriors — to reduce the chance of retaliation, and get away with hurling more. They might disclaim responsibility for some stones clearly thrown in earnest; or explain them away through whataboutism and victim-blaming. Goodwill exists to paper over the most nettlesome boulders — to buy time, excuses, or deniability.
Finally, there are times when states have an interest in correcting genuine misperceptions — clarifying that a rock was not thrown, but fell accidentally into the mouth of the cave. The October-surprise-that-wasn’t joins a long tradition of crises conjured from paranoia. (Stranger still are those rare occasions when dueling clans share an interest in denying a particular stone was cast at all).
Trust is most valuable in this last mission: helping diplomats from rival tribes adjudicate between run-of-the-mill gaslighting and earnest attempts to clarify a potentially dangerous situation.
Such trust isn't born of goodwill, but learned through painstaking repetition. Over time, rival masons are able to read the difference between rocks hurled deliberately and those that simply tumble into the cave through accident or incompetence — and when their counterparts are being truthful about which is which.
Influencing the Rival Concert
The small band of stonemasons tasked with venturing beyond their cave does not engage a unified adversary. They engage only one faction — often the least empowered — of their counterparts in a rival clan. Typically this means a foreign ministry tasked not with shaping internal consensus, but with managing external impressions.
This is especially true for China, where foreign-facing diplomats, technocrats, and scholars are often dismissed as “barbarian handlers” — intermediaries meant to absorb foreign sentiment and repeat Party-approved narratives, not to steer deliberations within the PLA or Politburo.
Yet even a disempowered counterparty can serve as a window into the rival cavern. Diplomacy is not always about extracting commitments. It is often an exercise in inference — studying how a rival’s stonemasons will interpret the rocks hurled their way, and subtly steering their internal debate.
Skilled envoys may seek to preempt the worst instincts of a rival’s security services. They may proactively justify their decision to cast a certain stone — or, just as critically, explain what is not being done — to help disarm suspicion or stall escalation.
At times, diplomats even weaponize the internal dynamics of their own systems. They may present themselves as the rational faction within a contested policy process: Work with us while you can. Others are less patient, less predictable, and harder to persuade. The implied threat is that a failure to cooperate risks empowering those who see no value in cooperation at all.
This isn’t always a bluff. In systems gripped by paranoia, even minor diplomatic slights can tip the balance toward escalation. Here, too, trust plays a role in helping diplomats discern which signals can be safely ignored, and which demand careful calibration. Misjudging this can mean negotiating against one’s own interests on the one hand, or alienating the few remaining allies of pragmatism on the other.
Between great powers, diplomacy is rarely a negotiation between coherent states. It is an effort to shape the conversation unfolding inside a rival’s walls — not merely to project intent, but to guide the chisels of another clan.