The New Diplomacy

Richelieu ‘perceived diplomacy as an instrument of power to be used continuously, rather than occasionally as events required’ (Feilleux, 2008: 40)´.

Although, this module had not covered my interest on diplomatic jurisdiction, I had enjoyed and learnt so many new concepts and ideas that were absoultely new for me or that I had wrongly understood. For example I was completely unaware of the origins of diplomacy and when I had started preparing for my essay I realized that my understanding was muddled up with the historical context of diplomacy since Greece and so on, after further reading and research now I am very pleased to know that the real origin of diplomacy is other and could trace back to XV-XVI century in France and the culmination of the thirty years war in Europe, also is extremely important to underlined on the value of the French Cardenal-duque Richelieu writings performed in ‘Testament Politique’ that are of paramount importance on the development of the theory of diplomacy, as the main focus of his arguments on diplomacy as a method used by states to pursue its national interest: ´the interest of the state was primarily and eternal that it was above sentimental, ideological or doctrinal prejudices and affections (Nicolson, 1954: 51). In fact since Westphalia Treaty states are the only sovereignty among nations, consequently states use diplomacy to promote its foreign policy by loobing the domestic affairs of other countries.


Also I have learned the increasing value of the NGOs role in world politics as before I use to understimate it. The influence of NGOs in world politcs is challenging the modern international system, it does not matter if actually is in a low level the most important is that the first step was done and the public support is very influencial in its evolutionary process. I strongly agree that through cooperation and communication in the future NGOs will gain global influence in such a level that would open a new chapter in their involvemnt in world politics. Despite this is a long term perspective, its viability is base in the extensive involvement of the people.

Another topic that interested me was Public Diplomacy as an aspect of the New Diplomacy, and the polemic opinions among some authors regarding this theme. While for Berridge public diplomacy is merely a euphenism for propaganda, for other such as Nye public diplomacy is seen as the way to build up relationship. I absolutely agree with Berridge argument, as public diplomacy is so many times used to influence politics through the public, for example many countries use propaganda as a strategic way of communication to promote themes such as the prevention of spreading of communism in the Cold War period.

To conclude I have improved and gained much more knowledge in this module than I had expected when I started. Now my wrong ideas about diplomacy had gone, but my worry about the disadvantage of the influence of high politics over diplomacy in modern politics still relevant , as I understand that diplomacy allow states to act unilateraly in certain serious cases, such as international conflicts in which secrecy plays an important role: ´The idea that statecraft and international relations form some separated practice that can be removed from other forms of politics and government, with its own separate rules and philosophies, is unjustified in an age where everything is connected´(Ross 2009: 26)´.

Kissinger's Diplomacy

According to Kissinger, no country has influenced international relations so decisively and ambiguous as the USA. Moreover, no nation has been more pragmatic in its daily conduct of diplomacy and ideological in the pursuit of its historic moral convictions. Moreover, Kissinger describes two opposing attitudes towards foreign policy. The first is that America's best serve its values, reinforcing democracy at home and became inspiration for other countries. The second is that the values of the USA are spread around the world, the mental attitudes are the product of American experience and inflict a global international order based on democracy, free trade and international law that has not really existed is utopian.

In line with Kissinger’ idea, the USA has the best management system and the rest of the world can achieve peace and prosperity only perceive the American reverence for international law and democracy. Furthermore, the American perceptions of international politics face the European diplomatic traditions of the Paris Conference of 1919. The European leaders seek to restore the old system and methods, while the Americans believe that the Great War broke out because of the vicious European methods. In addition to this, Kissinger established 14 points of Wilson, which clearly exposed that the international system should not be based on the equilibrium of forces and the ethnic self - determination, and diplomacy must be guided by explicit agreements. Americans attribute the troubles of Europeans in their system of balance, while the Europeans to the Americans - for their global reformist policy. In fact, both approaches to foreign policy are products of their own unique conditions. Balance of forces guarded the American security and the collapse leads to an involvement of America in international politics. Europe has been pushed to the policy of balance of power when the dream of a world empire collapsed and growing number of countries. The system of balance of forces is intended to limit the ability of states to dominate the one above the other; its objective is stability and moderation. The concept of balance of power reflects the views of all major political thinkers of the Enlightenment - the universe exists as a result of interaction of international relations principles.

On the whole, the USA, in relation to Kissinger, must take into account the fundamental values of the first society in history, established in the name of freedom. The traditional American idealism must be connected with a careful evaluation of current realities to create an appropriate set of USA interests. Implementation of the American ideals will be pursued by patiently accumulating partial record. Finally, prosecution of former goals - peace, stability, progress and freedom of humanity - will be endless voyage.

My understanding of the diplomacy today.

Generally speaking my understanding of diplomacy changed completely since I started attending this module. I have never actually been thinking about the role of diplomacy in a world of modern politics before – I just had a very imprecise idea about it. I thought that it is secretive and is very needed because diplomats have a big influence on international political decisions. My first impressions about the new diplomacy were as well quite different at the beginning than they are now.

In the first place I thought that the main trait of the new diplomacy was that it rejected all of the means worked out through the decades by the traditional diplomacy. In fact all of the old ways have been improved and combined with the new things. For example the most traditional bilateral diplomacy didn’t fade away with an appearance of multilateral conferences.

My second impression about the new diplomacy was that it is designed to maintain world peace and solve international problems. In fact I realised that the main diplomatic actors – states try usually and mainly to achieve their goals and improve their national image. As a contrary a lot of others actors appeared. They took a role of taking care of internationally important issues. Different kinds of NGOs created hundreds of experts on different areas of international political life.

As a result of attending The New Diplomacy classes I understood that new diplomacy is very complex. It appears in different areas of political world and it’s used in a lot of aspects. The good example is public diplomacy or trade diplomacy.

I was expecting to gain knowledge about how current problems and conflicts aroused. It was true because during the seminars we discussed as well about what’s happening now. Contribution of other students helped me a lot and because of them I got interested in many new things. It was very helpful that all of us are from different parts of the world because we had different points of view about one issue.

In fact working in diplomacy seemed to me a prestigious job with only a lot of benefits. Because of things that I learned during this semester I have better outlook on a work of a diplomat. It has a lot of disadvantages as well. Nowadays the majority of decisions affecting international politics is made on high-level summits of states’ officials. Diplomats are becoming less and less important because of the appearance of NGOs and other non-state actors. The case of WikiLeaks shows that their work is just doing what government tells them to. And due to ICT revolution they’re on ‘the leash’ all the time.

In my opinion role of diplomacy is fading away. It might develop into a new system of running world politics based on NGOs and high-rank state officials with no need of embassies and ambassadors anymore. It could become more and more globalised and modernised. Of course states would still need consulates to deal with their citizens’ problems abroad but only to practical purposes. I hope that I’m wrong because I quite like the idea of professional diplomats.

The New Diplomacy and I

At the beginning of this semester I was extremely excited about this module for I have been fantasizing about a possible career in the diplomatic service for a little while now – without having a perfectly clear idea of what this would actually entail nowadays.

In my ‘first impressions’ I suspected we would be dealing with the shift from ‘high’ to ‘low’ politics to address the multitude of tasks diplomats are facing these days and had a general idea that there was an ‘old’ diplomacy (a mean history teacher had once given me the horrendous task of writing an essay about the diplomacy of Fürst Metternich from Austria and what Woodrow Wilson would have thought about it) which had mainly been conducted in secrecy and that in recent years there had been a challenge to that. Of what exactly this new diplomacy consisted I didn’t know.

Over the course of this module I did not only learn how this change from matters of war and peace to an agenda so diverse that diplomats need to be dossier agents and not the generalists of former times came to be, I also learned that the challenge to ‘old’ diplomacy was much less recent than I had believed. I also began to grasp what this new diplomacy really is.

I learned about the new openness and inclusiveness and para-diplomats and how the involvement of new non-state actors from all sides of the political spectrum, plus some well-know actors, like heads of state, in new roles, had changed the face of diplomacy – beyond recognition, some claim. Others, I found out, conservatives like Berridge, who became my diplomacy guru, are much more critical and don’t see these novelties as a radical changes but rather as just another step in a long evolutionary process.

This debate followed through the whole module: was the new actually that new? And did it make the old obsolete? I learned about the traditional institutions, first and foremost embassies, and was surprised by their flexibility and ability to retain their relevance. The two visits were especially insightful and awakened my interest in the question why bilateralism was still so relevant even though multilateralism and summitry seemed to be very compelling alternatives.

I was intrigued by the discussion of propaganda vs public diplomacy which helped me to understand a whole variety of issues such as why Obama went to the trouble of addressing the Iranian people personally in a video message or why the German government sees the need to spend so much money on the Goethe Institute to promote its image abroad.

Then, fantastically, Wikileaks happened. While surely being embarrassing for the US and possibly unbalancing some established relationships of trust which are so important for diplomacy, it was an amazingly interesting event to follow and comment on, evaluating it against the backdrop of everything that we have learned in this module.

All those things and many more which I gained knowledge of from the lectures, seminars and all the books and articles (some of which were truly eye-opening!), fortified and supported my belief that diplomacy, regardless of if we call it old or new, is one of the fundamental pillars of world politics. Even if diplomatic channels are sometimes ignored when a nation decides to act unilaterally, the variety of issues which are nowadays found on the agendas of a diplomat make apparent the fact the diplomacy permeates every aspect of political life.

The most important thing for me, personally, is that, at the end of this module I am still as excited about diplomacy as I was before but so much more well informed. My understanding of diplomacy has not fundamentally changed, but has deepened and broadened. And most important: It has left me with a lot of hope! While getting into the classical diplomatic service is a threateningly difficult task, this module has showed me that there are so many other actors actively and meaningfully involved in diplomacy, that I only now realized the variety of possibilities open to me and everyone else interested in diplomacy! Thanks, new inclusive diplomacy!

PS: I would like to end on a humorous revelation about corridor diplomacy Wikileaks has failed to reveal:

The Environmental Diplomacy of non-state actors

These days, the environmental discourse is dominated by the paramount topic of climate change and how to fight it. Most conferences, summits and informal gatherings revolve around it in one way or another.
The significance of non-state actors in these kinds of negotiations is especially intriguing due to its omnipresence. While I would not (yet) argue for the complete end of the primacy of states, “diplomacy now involves many more participants who are experts in matters other than diplomacy and hold their position outside foreign ministries”(1). This is especially true for environmental negotiations, for most of the problems transcend the borders of states and thus fall into the realms of non-state actors with a claim to represent the civil society as a whole, which is not properly represented by the states.

First, however, who are those non-state actors?
They can be subdivided into three categories: Business groups, environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) and the media.
Business groups have a variety of ways to influence negotiations and have played advisory roles to governments or even sponsored big media campaigns, based on self-sponsored scientific research, which involved TV, radio and newspaper advertisements and even public speeches. In the early days of the climate change discourse those efforts were aimed purely at discrediting proof for climate change or lobbying against the Kyoto Protocol and the like, outlining how bad emission cuts are and how they could ruin the economy and trade competi-tiveness. Especially notorious was the Global Climate Coalition. However, business groups are not a monolithic bloc and in recent years some have changed their tune, now recognizing the potential dangers of climate change and instead advertising their efforts to contribute to fighting it(2). This however has been harshly criticized by ENGOs as ‘Green-washing’ (See Greenpeace: Change your act, not your image).

The engagement of ENGOs has continuously grown since the Rio Summit and more and more varied ENGOs attend the big environmental events. Plus, the relationship between NGOs and formal negotiators and governments has become more and more mutually supportive (as always, with exceptions!). From ENGOs from the North and South, to student, religious or local groups, sometimes united in cooperation under the Climate Action Network, they all have a number of significant ways to influence negotiations.
They can either participate in the formal negotiations as observers or, now more and more common, as advisors to delegates or full members of national delegations. Due to their specific knowledge of the subject they can provide expert scientific, legal or policy advice.(3)
Another column of ENGO work is that of research-based think-tanks, which develop creative solutions and alternatives outside the formal processes. This activity can range from the publication of scientific reports to the organization of side events with presentations, talks and debates. This enriches the discussion by providing analyses, research and alternative solutions. And can go as far as staging a parallel conference to the Copenhagen Summit, which was even attended by some delegates. Furthermore they can be active as campaigners and create pressure on the negotiators through demos, protests and rallies. (4)
Lastly, one of the greatest skills of ENGOs is the interaction with the media and the expert use of new information technologies. By eagerly giving interviews and providing back-ground material they raise public awareness and achieve that those publications, often featuring details of corridor discussions and biting commentary, were directly distributed to the officials at the negotiations. A great example of the use of new technologies and the impressive responsiveness of ENGOS was Oxfam’s rapid response system during the Cancun Conference. Through these actions they help maintain the momentum and exert a lot of pressure to act on delegates in negotiations.

Lastly, the media. While articles about the environment and climate change had to be searched for in a newspaper just some 20 years ago, the media now features big articles about environmental issues on a regular basis, even outside of great events like the climate summits, and some have dedicated whole sections to the environment. Also, it was first and foremost the media which started linking phenomena of extreme weather to climate change and thus paved the way for governments to openly admit that climate change might indeed be happening and that something needs to be done about it (which most do nowadays, but two decades ago, that was revolutionary!). (2)

To sum up, through those very diverse ways of influence, from advocacy to policy research, from the raising of awareness to exerting pressure, from lobbying to expert advising, most non-state actors have a very significant impact on negotiations. Even though their efforts may not always translate into reliable actions or make their way into the finished treaties, “the most profound enemies of progress on global climate change are not scientific skeptics or well-funded industry opponents, but general misunderstanding and apathy regarding issues and policies at stake.”(2)And it is exactly this enemy that non-state actors usually fight!

(1) Langhorne, R 'Diplomacy of Non-State Actors' in Diplomacy and
Statecraft, Vol. 16, No.2, 2005

(2) Carpenter, C., ‘Businesses, Green Groups and the Media: The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations in the Climate Change Debate’ in International Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 2, 2001

(3) Atiq Rahman and Annie Roncerel, "A view from the ground up" in I. M. Mintzer and J.A. Leonard (eds), Negotiating Climate Change: the inside story of the Rio Convention

(4)Gough, C. & S Shackley, ‘The Respectable Politics of Climate Change: The Epistemic Com-munities and NGOs’ in International Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 2, 2001

'The wheels have been set in motion'

'Nation-states and international organizations remain the major players in the diplomatic process, but the role of NGOs has greatly expanded' (Feilleux, 2009: 105)

Although, NGOs did not participate on the environmetal negotations directly, they play a role as a think tank as they are invited to multilateral conferences as official observers and they are allow to make a statement, this is a step forward for NGOs as before they were slightly allow to intervene. Nevertheless, the question of their significance still doubtful, the updates from behind closed doors displayed in Copenhaguen exemplify it, because there were no agreement in drastic cuts in rich country emissions.

Since the scenario of Copenhaguen was publicly unrealistic, then the NGOs have to move forward from beyond experience sharing and examine how to build collaboration in coming future, by identifying common challenges through the maintenance of regular communication mechanism, and the diferences they are facing as the 'Key elements in NGO effectiveness are skill in creating coalitions, networking, and framing issues in the public discourse in such a way that they will "ring true" (Feilleux, 2009: 106).

Moreover, since I´m speculating about the role of NGOs highlighted on environmental negotiations, it might be also be of some use to analyse the outcome of Cancun climate talks concluded on December 2010 in Mexico. Although, the great effort of environmental NGOs made during the talks to lobby, campaing and communicate, the result was mixed with bite-sized progress as the talks did not go far, following a last-minute agreement the talks established a global climate fund, while once again falling short of the emissions cuts needed, there is a great to do for next year as the big challenges remain, thus, Cancun is a new starting point for negotiations.

As climate change is a common environmental issue, NGOs are building up the way and its job is

of extreme importance for future conferences. The wheels have been set in motion, moving forward much stronger outcomes are needed with a biding, equitable, agregate emission target for developed countries for next year in Durban, to ensure that these wheels don´t fall off: 'If nonstate actors do not compare with nation-state in shaping world events, they increase the complexity of diplomacy and diversify the way in which it is carried out' (Feilleux, 2009: 102).

The efforts made by NGOs to have a significant impact in negotiations not always materialize into reliable compromise solutions from states. However, the door still open and the wheels have been set in motion, the task now is to continue influencing and raising awareness on the public opinion of the significant impact of campaining and advocacy, 'To those who regard the state as an obstacle to world order, the development of an alternative diplomacy embracing non-governmental NGOs and transnational movements offers the prospects of an international order trascending the states system' (Mellisen, 1999: 24)

The goals of Cancun Climate Summit 2010 were so important if we compare with Copenhaguen conference that concluded with countries making only non binding commitments in the conference. However, since Copenhaguen and Cancun, there are clear signs that the parties still interested in reaching an agreement, this is the oportunity for NGO's to show that they can devise a way forward over some environmental fundamental issues, also they can play a role in improving environmetal protection awareness and in organizing local governments and enterprises to tackle climate change issues by providing expert scientific advise and alternative solutions.

My understanding of diplomacy today

At the start of this module I was not entirely sure what "New Diplomacy" was going to give me at the end of the day. But after reading this very interesting module i have become more and more interested in diplomacy, but also more confused.

New Diplomacy or diplomacy in general is very complex and I believe i does not have to be that way. It has become evident that different skills are required in different diplomatic situations. Instead of dividing it into many categories it ought to be less complex. International Relations in general is a complex area and it becomes contagious on the components within in it. Many of these different ways of diplomacy are intertwined with each other with few differences.

Moving on and disregarding from the the different sub-categories within diplomacy it clearly shows a difference between old and new diplomacy. Old diplomacy will probably never die out entirely. But it is changing. Influences from non-actors are ever increasing and they have become so influential that they cannot be disregarded. Wikileaks recent revelations about the U.S diplomats and their statements has given diplomacy a smaller crisis and Wikileaks a dream situation. French President is an emperor without clothes. Germany's chancellor is made of Teflon. Sweden's Foreign Minister is a medium sized dog. Russian President is Robin and Prime Minister Putin is Batman. Abu Dhabi's crown prince calls Iran's president to Hitler. Chinese diplomats call North Korea a spoiled child and so on

Privacy is an absolute condition in the intimate conversation between states that represent the core of classical diplomacy. Trust has decreased around the world and it is likely some time before diplomats dare to speak openly with their American colleagues again. Certainly there are talented American diplomats, but they rarely have a strong position. U.S. State Department has a weaker role in the administration compared to the Pentagon [defense] and CIA [intelligence]. Of those working in American embassies is less than half of employees in the State Department. And American diplomats often work on entirely different qualifications than diplomatic skills. This is called "spoils system" and has old roots in the United States and means that a politician who won an election thank his party colleagues by giving them jobs in the administration, such as diplomats.

As a trained diplomat you have to know everything you say and do, or you will fail and that is how your counter-party will interpret you. This means that one must be very careful what you say. Especially when it is said and put down in writing and filed. Yet i believe Wikileaks are unlikely to cause harm in the long run. Even in the future, the world's nations will try to resolve conflicts by talking confidentially out of the limelight.

I never thought diplomacy played such an significant role in today's international relations as it does and this module has definitely given me a broader and new perspective on what diplomacy contains.