Brian White on Diplomacy

Brian White was able to raise important issues concerning the nature and development of Diplomacy. He defined Diplomacy as the fundamental relations in attempting to establish a more stable and orderly global system. He firstly differentiated the two major perspective on Diplomacy. Such as diplomacy in the macro and micro perspective. In this sense, we can be able to understand Diplomacy as a system which not only evolve in the state-centric approach, but also in terms of understanding it from world politics, this comprising of all actors that make up the system, like non-governmental and international governmental organizations. He raises important arguments in Traditional diplomacy, new diplomacy, cold war diplomacy, diplomacy after the cold war, diplomacy & the war against terrorism and diplomacy & foreign policy.
In traditional diplomacy, he argued that “global diplomatic system has its origins from the fifteenth-century Italy where permanent embassies were first established. He was able to characterise the defining features of traditional diplomacy, such as the ‘structure’ which was the institutionalization of diplomacy, which means that diplomacy is no longer an “irregular activity undertaken by ad hoc representative” rather taken as a profession by diplomats. He also raises issues in the traditional diplomatic process which he argues involved a bilateral process that includes secrecy as a tool. Finally, he argues that traditional diplomatic agenda was narrow in comparison to later periods. In this sense, he was trying to point to the fact that diplomacy was an instrument which is use to reflect the preoccupation of political leaders themselves.
In New diplomacy, he revealed the changes that was different from the old one. New diplomacy is now more open to public scrutiny and control and paved way to the establishment of international organization. However, he argued that the structures remains the same, except for the fact that it has become more complex owing to the emergence of new actors. He also argued that the new diplomacy now focus more on ‘low politics’ ( economics, welfare) contrasting to high politics of the old.
Furthermore, he raises important issues on diplomatic relation during the cold war, which he termed ‘cold war diplomacy’ . His point here, is that cold war diplomacy was a bilateral process which distinctive feature was not to rely only on political and psychological terms, but to rely on reasoning, which means total war was avoided.
Also, important issues he raised about new diplomacy after the cold war and on terrorism is that, the optimism diplomacy created after cold war, was short lived, which means that though diplomacy helped in the ending of the cold war, however, challenges will always arise, such as the emergence of terrorism.
Finally. He argued that diplomacy has a major role to play or plays in foreign policy, because foreign policy implementation requires the negotiating skills of diplomats.