Brian White on the nature and development of diplomacy and Reflection on Seminar 2 - by Ernest Andreyevich Reid

Our main task here is to analyse the text ‘Diplomacy’ (by Brian White) and underline the aspects which might be of particular significance when looking at the sub-discipline of Diplomacy. There will also be a brief reflection on our first seminar (Seminar 2).

Brian White can be seen as very adept in his field, having split his article on diplomacy into three parts, presenting the macro- and micro-perspectives of diplomacy, as well as the challenges it has recently had to face.

The one way of analysing diplomacy, as we already mentioned, is the macro-perspective – i.e. examining DIPLOMACY as WORLD POLITICS, or as White put it, ‘process of communication… central to the workings of the global system’. This is, probably, the more optimistic and, in a way liberal, approach. Here, diplomacy is seen as the key to the resolution of conflict and creation of stability and order via DIALOGUE and NEGOTIATION. Once institutionalised, diplomacy has gradually caused the states to evolve from functioning purely as a 'night-watchman' into setting agenda for people's welfare alongside their security. In his article, White has suggested diplomacy can be analysed in terms of STRUCTURE, PROCESS and AGENDA and has also chosen to look at diplomacy in temporal, rather than spatial dimension. Hence, there are 5 historical periods of diplomacy:

Traditional Diplomacy (originating possibly around 2500BC)
New Diplomacy (starting with Woodrow Wilson’s creation of the League of Nations)
Cold War Diplomacy (1945-1989)
Diplomacy after the Cold War (starting in late 1980s)
Diplomacy after 9/11 (11/09/2001 – PRESENT)

The other, micro-perspective – is based around the subject of FOREIGN POLICY. Just as Marxism sees the state as the ‘instrument of the bourgeoisie’, this approach sees ‘diplomatic machine’ as the instrument of the state, used to promote its NATIONAL INTERESTS - ‘political instrument, rather than a global process’. This is the more negative and sceptical approach echoing ideas of Realists and neo-Marxists. The strong states tend to prefer ‘MIXED DIPLOMACY’ to the ‘PURE DIPLOMACY’, adopting a ‘STICKS and CARROTS’ strategy and using (/abusing) their military and economic superiority to keep the ‘handicapped’ developing states down, which, in their turn, look up to international organisations (e.g. United Nations) as their only way of exercising power on the international arena.

More recently, the state-based diplomacy has faced major challenges from global governance organisations (e.g. UN), multi-national companies (e.g. Shell), stateless insurgent trans-national actors (e.g. Al-Qaeda) and other international non-governmental organisations (e.g. Greenpeace). Nowadays, diplomats enjoy less autonomy and flexibility of actions. Diplomacy itself has become a more open and multilateral process, although elements of secrecy and bilateral agreements are still present. In his book ‘Politics among Nations’ Hans Morgenthau actually supports the idea of diplomacy being closed to public, as that might cause the people of the states involved in negotiations to think their governments are weak and hence not suitable for defending their national interest. All in all, diplomacy has come a long way.

I believe we have had a very good seminar. Some of the students have yet to contribute; nevertheless, we had quite a stimulating and profound discussion. Hope everyone was happy with me taking the lead and starting our colloquium. I liked Farah’s statement about the resemblance between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ diplomacy. Carol raised a number of valid points about the ‘revers de medaille’ that is diplomacy – the ongoing Realpolitik and, in particular, America’s unilateralism, despite all the efforts of multilateralism and open negotiations and conference diplomacy. Francis came up with an interesting case about Venezuelan response to the recent Israeli attack on Palestinians and made his point clear. Everyone who took part in the discussion had something useful to say. What we have gathered from our seminar is that the temporal dimension offered by Brian White is more complex than it seems, as the 5 periods given in his article overlap, rather than just end succeeded by the next one – e.g. New Diplomacy was never given up upon; there are still elements of Cold War Diplomacy at present etc.

This blog is a wonderful idea and a tremendous way of sharing our ideas with each other, which prepares us for our future careers.