Main distinctions between security, trade and environmental diplomacy.

As we should all be aware, security, trade and environmental diplomacy are totally different from one another. First of all, security diplomacy is the oldest technique of undertaking diplomacy, which is the traditional diplomacy and is only concerned with high politics issues. It is done secretly and mostly involves states operating on a bilateral basis. In this first form of diplomacy, no actors other than states have the power to act or influence foreign policy decisions. However, as we have noted, diplomacy is gradually evolving and priorities are now many, not only related to security matters, but other issues such as trade and the environment are increasingly being on the foreign policy agenda and made public; this trend has been suggested by many to be the demise of bilateral diplomacy for multilateral diplomacy. Thus, trade diplomacy can be carried out bilaterally or multilaterally and it consists of opening the barriers between liberal democratic states to trade between them and there are some international regimes for trade that make the system work which means that it is certainly not only taken on by states. These international institutions have rendered cooperation a lot easier through the establishment of rules and practices and controlling whether governments were following these rules. This highlights that states are having less and less impact on particular issues and are even being monitored by these institutions. The last point, environmental diplomacy is, as its name implies concerned about the environment. Like trade diplomacy, it is done both bilaterally and multilaterally and other actors are involved with a great impact, predominantly non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Noteworthy however is that although the NGOs are really engaged in the process of diplomatic negotiations regarding the environment, their impact is limited since it is only states that can sign, make and implement treaties. That is to say, from a realist perspective, only states are important actors and NGOs are just useless while the neo-liberal institutionalists argue that these institutions should not be neglected in an interconnected world. Successful outcomes to environmental negotiations are hard to be achieved, realists argue because states are imprisoned by their self-interest, this was arguably why the Kyoto protocol could not be respected appropriately despite the pressures put by NGOs; also, Russia ratified the protocol only in 2004 whereas the treaty was introduced in 1997. To conclude then, one could say that even though diplomacy is changing and involving new actors, the main players remain states.