21st century: the era of new diplomacy?

Diplomacy. We often use this term under various circumstances and in different situations. But when we start thinking, it is not so easy to define what diplomacy exactly is - especially in its practical sense. We read in ‘A dictionary of diplomacy’ that: ‘diplomacy is the conduct of relations between sovereign states through the medium of officials based at home or abroad, the latter being members or states’ but it could be also ‘diplomatic missions to foreign states’ or ‘communications system of international society’ (Berridge G. R. James A. 2003 p. 69-70). Perhaps ‘diplomacy’ contains all of them and even more. However, the question now arising is: when and how did it actually start? Is diplomacy still the same as hundreds of years ago?

As I see it the most visible change in diplomacy is that rather than typical bilateral treaties states prefer multilateral conferences. Therefore they even created platforms to do it. Those are international organisations such as European Union or United Nations with all of their associations. The international conferences create good opportunity to discuss many important issues. Additionally those issues are more and more often not as significant as for instance a hundred years ago. They are concerned for example with trade, health care, human rights, people’s safety or environment. Moreover they claim that universal values are the most important issue nowadays. Loads of conferences about world peace or human rights have been taking place.

Additionally, other actors arrived to the scene: NGOs and international companies. The position of NGOs on the foreign policy scene has already moved from episode to supporting actor. A good example is Ottawa Convention of 1997 about banning antipersonnel mines which was created because of the pressure from International Campaign to Ban Landmines (Brown, B. 2001, ‘What is the New Diplomacy?’ in American Foreign Policy Interests, Vol. 23, p. 3-4). The Organisation was formed to achieve this task and succeeded. Thousands of NGOs were involved. The Mine Treaty was such a big and valuable success that the Campaign and their founder (Jody Williams) received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1997.

At present times the difference between contemporary and traditional diplomacy can be easily detected. First of all, diplomacy in traditional terms was mostly concerned with political and military issues. It was bilateral and nearly all of the discussions between diplomats were secret. To show how it all worked we could mention Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. It was secret arrangement signed by foreign ministers of Third Reich and Soviet Union that included detailed division of Central Europe between those two countries before Second World War (Biskupski M. Wandycz P. 2003 p.147). Only they knew about it. Nowadays it is unthinkable that two countries could just share third one between them without any notice.

In conclusion, modern diplomacy is more flexible than traditional one. It tends to adapt to the new world order.

However, whether the ‘New Diplomacy’ works and to what extend is debatable. The world became multipolar and the academics have the right to hesitate over the higher moral aim of diplomacy as opposed to the individual states’ interests.