"It's a necessary quality of a diplomat or a politician that he will compromise. Uncompromising politicians or diplomats get you into the most terrible trouble"
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Keegan’s line reads like a gentle reprimand dressed up as common sense: compromise isn’t a moral weakness in politics, it’s the job description. Coming from a military historian best known for narrating war as lived experience rather than abstract strategy, the warning carries an implied after-image: bodies on fields, cities reduced, conflicts that begin in speeches and end in logistics.
The intent is corrective. Modern political culture loves the “uncompromising” figure because absolutism sells clarity. Keegan punctures that romance. His subtext is that purity is a luxury civilians can indulge; statesmen can’t. Diplomacy isn’t a seminar where you “win” by being right. It’s a pressure valve for competing interests, fears, and misread signals. Refusing to bend doesn’t preserve principle so much as convert it into a trigger.
The phrasing matters. “Necessary quality” sounds clinical, not aspirational, and that’s the point: compromise is closer to sanitation than heroism. The second sentence sharpens into consequence: “most terrible trouble” is deliberately unspecific, a historian’s refusal to name a single war when the pattern is the lesson. He’s pointing to escalation as a political technology: when leaders can’t give an inch, they outsource resolution to force.
Contextually, Keegan wrote in the long shadow of the 20th century, when nationalist pride, ideological rigidity, and “no concessions” postures repeatedly turned negotiable disputes into catastrophes. He’s not pleading for mushy centrism; he’s arguing that the alternative to compromise is often not victory, but calamity.
The intent is corrective. Modern political culture loves the “uncompromising” figure because absolutism sells clarity. Keegan punctures that romance. His subtext is that purity is a luxury civilians can indulge; statesmen can’t. Diplomacy isn’t a seminar where you “win” by being right. It’s a pressure valve for competing interests, fears, and misread signals. Refusing to bend doesn’t preserve principle so much as convert it into a trigger.
The phrasing matters. “Necessary quality” sounds clinical, not aspirational, and that’s the point: compromise is closer to sanitation than heroism. The second sentence sharpens into consequence: “most terrible trouble” is deliberately unspecific, a historian’s refusal to name a single war when the pattern is the lesson. He’s pointing to escalation as a political technology: when leaders can’t give an inch, they outsource resolution to force.
Contextually, Keegan wrote in the long shadow of the 20th century, when nationalist pride, ideological rigidity, and “no concessions” postures repeatedly turned negotiable disputes into catastrophes. He’s not pleading for mushy centrism; he’s arguing that the alternative to compromise is often not victory, but calamity.
Quote Details
| Topic | Decision-Making |
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