Diplomacy in Disguise

Does 'old' diplomacy have any contemporary relevance?

As outlined in the previous blog entry, there are a lot of challenges to the old way of conducting diplomacy. However, Berridge (Berridge, 2010) argues that the French System is still at the basis of the diplomatic order – though sometimes in disguise.

I believe that this disguised ‘old’ diplomacy is still relevant today.

The reason for this is, first and foremost, because of an undisguised reality: resident embassies still exist all over the world – resident embassies, those embodiments of the old diplomacy, whose requiems have been sung for decades.

This may seem surprising, with all the competition the rise of ‘new’ diplomacy has brought for this old institution: Chief executives and ministers are more eager to deal with diplomatic issues themselves at summits, the media provides 24/7 news coverage from all across the globe and time and space are shrinking due to the increased speed of travel and real-time communication.

The fact that embassies prevail against those odds proves, that the tried and tested methods of ‘old’ diplomacy must still have some kind of relevance, for some of their vital tasks can simply not be substituted by other means.

One of the Clingendael discussion papers outlines, that “the opening of access to so many different people […] means that foreign ministers are dealing with many more clients than they did even ten years ago” (p36).

Personally, I believe that this only means more and not less need for embassies, for who else is going to deal with those clients on a daily basis? Agreeing with Berridge, embassies are simply the most efficient way to achieve continuous negotiation, provide executives with better first-hand information than the media can provide, while providing consular service and advice to heads of state at summits, while skillfully adapting to technological innovations.

Another aspect of ‘old’ diplomacy which is very much in use today – and rather successfully so, I claim – is the reliance on bilateral negotiations and the resulting treaties.

Authors consensually assert that multilateralism is one of the key features of the ‘new’ diplomacy, however negotiations on an international basis, especially at summit level, are extremely slow, difficult and often unsuccessful with regard to binding commitments, as we have seen at the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

If such a deadlock is reached, governments often turn to bilateral agreements: “[They] may become more popular as the lack of movement in the US, in particular, slows agreement on comprehensive international action," Jason Anderson, head of European climate and energy policy at WWF claimed.

This trend is exemplified by cooperation agreements between the US and partners like Mexico, Russia and Brazil or the signing of a US-Chinese and a US-Indian memorandum on the cutting of greenhouse gases and the cooperation on energy efficiency.

China and India also signed a bilateral agreement between themselves with a focus on greenhouse gas reduction and renewable energy.

Furthermore, the EU, too, works together closely with China on a bilateral level (Even though the EU constitutes of several countries, it still remains a two-party engagement) which resulted in the agreement to establish a Europe-China Clean Energy Centre in January 2009. Exact information on this here.

The same reasoning has been employed before when the NPT proved insufficient to control Nuclear Weapons and to make for binding reductions in nuclear arsenals: The largest reductions

in Nuclear Weapons have been brought about by the bilateral START I treaty between the US and the Soviet Union/Russia. A treaty so successful is has just been renewed.

Comparable to the embassy case above, again, the ‘new’ diplomacy does not render obsolete the ‘old’ mechanisms, but rather complements them on various occasions, for example by providing an impetus to make concessions on a multilateral level after bilateral success.

Therefore, I conclude that the ‘old’ diplomacy has a lot of contemporary relevance, for the conduct of diplomacy is not restricted to the exclusive use of only one mechanism: Old and new aspects can co-exist and even reinforce each other, ‘old’ institutions like embassies may adapt to new technology, and, as Berridge puts it, some of what we call ‘new’ may actually just be an ‘old’ concept in disguise.