Having read White’s chapter for seminar 2, what are the most important issues he raises concerning the nature and development of diplomacy?

Brian White first started defining the term using two different perspectives on world politics, that is, the macro and micro viewpoints. The first he argues, focus on international relations as a whole, while the latter is only concerned with states and their governments. Then, White defined diplomacy as a means of communication between states and took us to 2500 BC where the earliest diplomatic document was written from one kingdom now the Middle East to another, Northern Iran.

Brian White distinguishes two forms of diplomacy which are namely traditional and new diplomacy. To start off with, our current diplomatic system has its origins in the fifteenth century in Italy where the first permanent embassies were established and another diplomatic system developed afterwards.

In traditional diplomacy, the actors are states and it is a communications process between modern states. After the Italian experience, other European states imitate them and since then, embassies worldwide became a way of conducting state interests. Diplomacy was organised bilaterally, that is, between two states and most importantly undertaken in secrecy which was easier to achieve since it was based on a two-party basis. As to the agenda of traditional diplomacy, one could say that for a century, foreign policy was seen as the gaining of more territory for example accompanied with issues of peace and war. Traditional diplomacy played a major role in maintaining order in 19th century Europe. However, its success is only limited to that particular century as it has failed to prevent the First World War which led to a broad view that a new form of diplomacy was needed. Two elements of traditional diplomacy were seen as awkward which were extreme secrecy and that diplomacy should not be only limited to the aristocracy. The reason for this was because there was an urgent call for involving the public and the need to establish an international organisation such as the League of Nations that would peacefully solve issues between states and deter potential aggressors by collective action. In this form of diplomacy, states were still seen as major actors but not the only and most important ones as they had to share the international arena with other actors such as NGOs. Another important change was that states were no longer only concerned with issues of ‘high politics’ such as security but rather 'low politics’, that is, social and economic welfare of their citizens. Diplomacy also played a great role in the cold war and ‘cold war diplomacy’ means the different aspects of diplomacy that emerged in that period which was the necessity to avoid a global nuclear conflict that could annihilate the international system. The end of cold war, White states, produced optimism that diplomacy could resolve international issues. Nevertheless, the war against terrorism significantly challenged the role of diplomacy in World Politics since George W Bush response to 9/11 suggested that military force was the only viable option.