Why Is It So Hard to Just Say No?

 

From “Just Say No” to “Could We Maybe Not Upset Him?”

Once upon a time, the solution to a complex social problem was refreshingly simple. Drugs? Just say no. That was the Ronald Reagan era in a nutshell: a firm jaw, a wagging finger, and the confidence that saying no loudly enough would cause reality to fall into line out of sheer respect.

Fast-forward a few decades and we appear to have lost the ability to say no to anyone who actually needs to hear it.

Children are now encouraged to express their feelings, negotiate boundaries, and explore why they might feel like doing something destructive. Meanwhile, tyrants invade neighbors, flatten cities, threaten nuclear annihilation, and the global response sounds like a polite dinner guest asking whether now might be a good time to discuss boundaries.

Why can’t they just say no?

Why do politicians fold like deck chairs when confronted by bullies with tanks? Why do world leaders suddenly develop an allergy to clarity? And why has the United Nations managed to survive for nearly eighty years with all the enforcement power of a laminated poster?

Let’s talk about it.

First, let’s be honest: saying no is hard. Not emotionally hard. Politically hard.

“No” ends conversations.

“No” creates consequences.

“No” requires you to mean it.

And meaning it is where things get uncomfortable.

At a personal level, people struggle to say no because they want to be liked, avoid conflict, and keep the peace. At a geopolitical level, the same psychology applies – just with more acronyms and better catering. Leaders don’t want to be the one who “escalated.” They don’t want history to remember them as the person who upset the man with the missiles. They especially don’t want to be blamed if things go wrong after they said no.

So instead, we get sentences that sound like this:

“We strongly condemn…” “We urge restraint…” “We call upon all parties…”

These are not sentences. They are emotional support phrases. They exist to make the speaker feel as though something has been done without anything actually changing. It’s the diplomatic equivalent of saying “thoughts and prayers” while quietly checking the exits.

Saying no, properly, requires leverage. And leverage requires risk. Which brings us neatly to the world’s most elaborate book club.

The United Nations was founded with noble intent and catastrophic design limitations. It exists to promote peace, dialogue, and cooperation, which is admirable, but it was also built on the assumption that the worst actors would voluntarily behave if asked firmly enough.

This assumption has not aged well. At all, especially when the worst bullies can veto the votes.

The UN can pass resolutions, issue condemnations, convene emergency sessions, and produce an impressive quantity of documents. What it cannot do – in any meaningful way – is enforce compliance when the aggressor has a veto, an army, or a willingness to ignore everyone else. This leads to the strange spectacle of global outrage expressed in committee form.

Aggressors learn very quickly that there is a difference between being condemned and being stopped. One is embarrassing. The other is inconvenient. Guess which one tends to be avoided.

Now let’s address the elephant in the room: fear.

World leaders are afraid of escalation. Afraid of war. Afraid of economic fallout. Afraid of being the one who pushed too hard. And those fears are not irrational. War is horrific. Escalation is dangerous. Nobody wants to roll the dice on catastrophe.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: refusing to say no doesn’t remove risk – it simply postpones it. Europe postponed confronting the Nazis for over a decade - and look how that turned out.

Bullies don’t interpret restraint as kindness. They interpret it as permission. Each time a line is crossed without consequence, the next line becomes easier to cross. This is not a controversial insight. It is playground logic scaled up with flags. History is littered with moments where saying "no" early would have been much cheaper than saying "maybe" forever.

Which brings us back to the Reagan-era irony. “Just say no” was always a ridiculous oversimplification when applied to addiction, poverty, or systemic problems. But applied to aggression? It suddenly looks suspiciously relevant.

Not as a slogan but as a principle. Saying no is not about moral purity. It’s about boundary-setting. It’s about clarity. It’s about communicating, unambiguously, that certain behaviors lead to certain outcomes.

Instead, modern diplomacy prefers ambiguity. It speaks in fog. It hopes that by not provoking, it can avoid being targeted. This works only if the aggressor shares your desire for stability.

Many do not.

There’s also a deeper psychological trap at work: leaders often mistake process for action. Meetings feel like movement. Statements feel like response. Sanctions that can be circumvented feel like punishment. Meanwhile, reality continues regardless.

This is how institutions survive without power. They remain busy. They remain relevant. They remain photographed. They just don’t change outcomes.

The UN survives because it is useful as theater. It provides a stage on which outrage can be expressed safely, without the messiness of enforcement. It allows leaders to appear engaged while avoiding hard decisions. It’s international politics with the sharp edges sanded off.

But the world is full of sharp edges. So why is it so hard to just say no?

Because no one wants to be the adult in the room. The adult has to say things others don’t like. The adult has to follow through. The adult has to accept that being right does not guarantee being popular.

In international politics, popularity is often mistaken for legitimacy. Consensus is mistaken for morality. And delay is mistaken for wisdom. Sometimes, saying no is the only moral act left.

Not loudly. Not performatively. Not with slogans and posters. But clearly, consistently, and with consequences attached.

The irony is that people understand this perfectly well in personal life. Boundaries matter. Enablers make things worse. Silence communicates consent. Yet when scaled up to the global stage, the same principles suddenly become controversial. Perhaps that’s because saying no forces us to confront a grim reality: peace is not maintained by goodwill alone. It is maintained by the shared understanding amongst civilized folk that certain actions should not be tolerated.

That understanding has been eroded not by malice, but by caution. By endless process. By fear of being blamed for doing too much rather than too little.

So here we are, decades after “Just say no,” watching a world that desperately needs someone to rediscover how. Not because no is easy. But because sometimes, no is the only thing that still means anything at all. 

And saying it late is always way more expensive than saying it early.

Rob Parnell