Traditional Diplomacy

Traditional diplomacy: What are your impressions of the ‘old’ diplomacy? Has it become outmoded?

Traditional Diplomacy started out in Ancient Greece and began as a type of communication, done by peaceful means so basic tasks included: conveying messages, meeting and greeting people as well as accepting gifts on behalf of their State, Acting out as a stand-in to deal with legal and ceremonial situations, negotiating unions for peace and in times of warfare, and worked as stand- ins for the conduct of trade and military agreements and collecting information that was useful to their State.
My personal opinion would be that these functions of an ambassador wouldn’t have really changed that dramatically perhaps the ways in which things are dealt with now but otherwise it’s the same functions applied in ‘New’ Diplomacy.

In dealing with this question I thought about getting a case study and I found one online about Western Sahara where the use of traditional diplomacy hasn’t really worked in that, after Spain decolonised this area Morocco and Mauritania occupied this area for a while, Mauritania withdrew due to military pressure but Morocco still remained. Traditional diplomacy was suppose to help guarantee Independence of Western Sahara however, actors now focus on holding this referendum and securing humanitarian aid which deals with aspects of this problem but does not focus on the main one which is their need for independence and also due to it’s lack of indigenous empowerment the likelihood of achieving stability in this region without experience will become slightly problematic.

What is now necessary is to connect peace building with aid and also develop new policy on how to accomplish better peace building, get non- state actors involved in the development of the region such as traders and to recognise the cultural background of these people that will have an effect on the way in which the state will be managed.

So to conclude, ‘old’ diplomacy is still used to deal with matters that affect states and state to state negotiations. So perhaps in dealing with this case study in Western Sahara we have seen that although basic functions of traditional diplomacy are used but not carried out effectively alternatively with the ‘new’ ways of diplomacy negotiations and peace with be carried out to a better advantage.