white on diplomacy

B. Whites chapter about Diplomacy gives a very useful overview about this topic, starting from the historical development of diplomacy traced back to 2500BC up until today. He divided the chapter into ‘Old Diplomacy’ and ‘New Diplomacy’ and highlights at the end of the chapter he analyses the new challenges to diplomacy like terrorism. Whites regards diplomacy as a key tool to stability and order in world politics.

To define the wide usage of the term diplomacy he divides it in ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ perspective of world politics, while ‘macro’ refers in a wider sense to a ‘process of communication’ and negotiations between states and non-state actors in global politics. Diplomacy at a ‘micro’ level refers to state policy, where diplomacy is used as ‘policy instrument’ especially in foreign policy ‘rather than a global process’.

White refers to Old Diplomacy as a time where diplomacy was bilateral and state based, therefore the public was not involved and diplomacy was carried out in secrecy. Diplomats or Embassies became an important instrument for state interest and was connected to the home foreign office. Later on it became professionalized and Extraterritoriality and Immunity became important characteristics of it. This laid the foundation of diplomacy today.

New Diplomacy developed after the diplomatic failure of the First World War. White points out that two new features of diplomacy were: first, diplomacy should be made more public and second the establishment of international organisation, like the League of Nations. Disputes could be settled and it could act as deterrent to avoid war multilaterally. Developing countries have the most underdeveloped diplomatic service and international organisation acts as a compensation of it.
A significant development in diplomacy is that it is no longer state based. Non-state actors become more important and had to be involved in the diplomatic system. Diplomacy is therefore more inclusive today, but on the other hand it transformed diplomacy into a more complicated mechanism.
The Cold War diplomacy was dominated by the avoidance of a global nuclear war between the two superpowers USA and Soviet Union. White argues that it was a dangerous form of diplomacy. But after the end of the Cold War, optimism spread around diplomacy, that it could resolve all major international conflicts. This optimism disappeared quickly with the occurrence of new problems.
Nowadays with diplomacy it is hard to tackle terrorism, like Al Qaeda, because it is not located in a specific country, it is more a global network. Therefore ‘Old’ and ‘New’ diplomacy is not really affective because it is difficult to negotiate and communicate with them. White argues that the US reaction of the 9/11 underpinned diplomacy in that way that the US used unilateralism instead of multilateralism.



Seminar: ‘old diplomacy’ vs. ‘new diplomacy’

We had the discussion in the seminar if such a thing like ‘New diplomacy’ exists. In my opinion the term ‘New diplomacy’ is misleading. It emphasises that the style of diplomacy changed completely. Especially after the WWI and now terrorism challenged diplomacy, and therefore it has changed, but old attributes of diplomacy continued. Therefore it is not something completely new it has been adjusted to modern politics. In my opinion it would be better to call it ‘transformed’ or ‘modern’ diplomacy.