Wednesday 22 April 2009

Main differences between security, trade and environment diplomacy

At the first sight Security, environment and trade diplomacy, seemed to be related, however its distinctions are quite obvious.
Security diplomacy uses the bilateral diplomacy as a base for its negotiations, it also often involves military backup.
Because is related to security has to have confidentiality and discretion, thus the bilateral negotiations is normally the most adopted.
For instance, during the Cuban missile crisis the President JFK’s brother Robert Kennedy was meeting in secrecy with the soviet ambassador in US Dobrynin, together they tried to solve the Cuban missile crisis.
By contrast, the trade diplomacy is more based on the multilateral diplomacy, therefore its negotiations are normally global, for instance the WTO, it is a forum for governments to negotiate trade agreements.
It looks forward to open the markets and appeals for amicable relations, based on transparency between states in order to facilitate the world market negotiations.
Regarding the environment diplomacy, it seems to be the more difficult to handle, despite been the most important as it affects all nations with no exceptions. The climate change is an issue that concerns the world and “recently” became one of the priorities in the international political agenda.
For instance, the well known Kyoto Protocol (international agreement), the US under Bill Clinton government refused to sign it. The US could not commit to reduce its greenhouse gases emissions.
Thus, it can be argued that in the environment negotiations is more difficult to achieve a general agreement.
In sum, security diplomacy involves mainly secrecy and is only carried out by states with no involvement of non-state actors; the trade negotiations by sharp contrast with the security diplomacy, it normally “advertises” its agenda in order to bring business and foreigners investments to their countries; finally the environment diplomacy is by far more “advertised” than the other two, perhaps due to its importance and to bring more supporters in order to achieve its goal: to tackle the environmental problems around the world.

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