Diplomacy revised

Looking back at my first impressions of diplomacy at the beginning of the module, I realise that I had a rather narrow perception of diplomacy and the role of diplomats. I thought diplomats would mainly engage in “high politics” and the only “new” factor in the conduct of diplomacy would be that negotiations are less secret and more open to the public.

Throughout the module I learned that “high politics”, in terms of power politics, have become less and less important due to high interdependence between countries especially within the developed world. Diplomats are now more concerned with “low politics” issue areas such as trade diplomacy and public diplomacy.

The attention countries give to the latter has been nicely highlighted during the visit of the Dutch embassy. Our host at the Dutch embassy, who actually was the Cultural & Public Diplomacy attaché if I remember it correctly, emphasised that Public Diplomacy and the promotion of Dutch values has become one of the paramount factors of their work. He explained that culture is the best way of building and fostering relationships with other countries, as it is less political but more about common values and norms. The Dutch embassy is therefore in constant contact with cultural organisations and takes part in a variety of education, arts and sports programmes.

This highlights an vital component of the new diplomacy: diplomats do not only talk to and negotiate with other diplomats, but they engage with a variety of actors and directly with the public. In this regard diplomacy has become more open and accessible to the wider public, but it also has become more inclusive in terms of the actors participating in diplomacy. In some issue areas, particularly in trade and environmental diplomacy, NGOs have become a crucial part in the diplomatic conduct. Their expertise, their networks and their reputation makes them useful partners for diplomats to deal with increasingly complex agendas.

Interestingly, however, as much as diplomacy incorporates new factors of openness and inclusiveness and adapts to the changing environment of world politics, some characteristics of the “old” diplomacy remain persistently.

For example, even though NGOs increasingly participate in negotiations they often remain in the lobbyist or observer position, the exclusive status and the privileges of diplomats remain. Diplomats still enjoy protection and privileges which will probably never be accredited to non-state actors, as they will remain in a crucial, but supplementary role. Also the role of embassies remains essential for diplomacy, even though advances in ICT and transport could make resident embassies redundant. Again the visit of the Dutch embassies offered some interesting insights on this topic, which confirmed the literature by Hocking on EU-oriented bilateralism. Our host explained that through the increasing importance of the European Union bilateral embassies within the EU have become more significant. Since policies when presented in Brussels are often already fixed, the lobbying and the alliance forming process to influence decisions and policies made in Brussels has to take place prior to the negotiations within the bilateral embassies of the member states. Furthermore, in the case of crisis diplomacy the characteristics of the “old” diplomacy, i.e. secrecy, threat of force and high politics, still prevail.

Diplomacy has become increasingly complex as world politics has become more and more complex. In some issue areas the factors of the old diplomacy are dominant, in others characteristics of the new diplomacy prevail. Diplomats had to transform themselves from messengers and negotiators on high politics to communicators with the public and to lobbyists in all kinds of issue areas.

This module has broadened my understanding of diplomacy. Due to the prestigious profession of diplomats, their work often seems far away from the ordinary citizen. However, studying the diversity of diplomatic conduct I can now identify diplomatic practices in the political day-to-day life. Diplomacy is a vibrant and constanly evolving area of world politics, which links changes and events of International Relations to the practice of dealing with them.