Most Important Aspect of Diplomacy

What is the most important aspect of the new diplomacy?

To fully understand this question I had to look back over the characteristics of ‘New’ diplomacy and read this book which discussed new diplomacy in a lot of detail, the book was by José Calvet De Magalhaes.

Over these past weeks I’ve come to understand that not only is there a ‘new’ diplomacy but there are lots of other ways to operate in diplomatic situations such as bilateral diplomacy, multilateral diplomacy and ‘polylateral’ diplomacy. In order to grow and achieve a better understanding of diplomacy I believe that we must be able to operate on these three levels of diplomacy as this is an integral part of being able to work as a diplomat.

Another important aspect of the ‘new’ diplomacy is the new ways they are now able to communicate between states, in conferences and through propaganda, to a certain extent. Celebrities have now highlighted aspects of a country that need to be addressed; they’ve also worked alongside NGOs to bring more support to this region because we tend to care more about what a celebrity is doing than what a politician is doing unfortunately. In 1996 a similar method was used in the Ottawa Process where ‘new’ diplomacy used other means of communication between international organisations and conferences to carry out a treaty banning anti-personnel land mines.

As we can see all three methods of diplomacy; Bilateral, Multilateral and Polylateral are a collective method where issues arise and are dealt with in an effective way using these methods, lively debates can occur and resolutions can be discussed. However, Multilateral and Bilateral are the main means of resolving conflicts nowadays and the use of polylateral diplomacy needs to be used more in order for it to become a more effective form of diplomacy used in certain situations.