Old and New Diplomacy, UK, USA and Russian Federation

The Big Three. Really?
I would like to pay the attention to US and UK relationship and changes within last five decades. I will have to mention The USSR (later Russian Federation) as it was and is in one or the other way important neighbour for both. How drastically can change the relationship between states due to the leadership or sometimes not reasonable leadership ambitions.
1941 USA, UK and USSR - allies, the Big Three. Everything is achievable and enemy will finally be defeated. The relations between the Northern allies and Soviets are tense but reasonable, thanks to enormous risks (on both sides) that leaders were willing to take for the sake of stability in the World. Can we say that W.Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and J. Stalin were good diplomats? I believe we should.
Unfortunately as soon as Germany was defeated common enemy disappeared and everybody wanted a bigger slice of the "power" pie. Was UK really as strong member of the Big Three? Can we say that there were The Big One, The Big Red One and UK. UK was never equal in military power to the other two. Soon the USSR became potential enemies to the Northern Big Two (UK and USA), rather than valued allies (Constigliola 2010:2). Was the Cold War was inevitable?
Next question is complicated and requires imagination. If the Cuban missile crisis would take rather tragical turn. Soviets would attack USA, USA would attack Soviet Union and so on. Which position do you see United Kingdom taking during that period of time? Would UK be powerful enough to help their main allies or even protect itself? If USA and Soviet Union would have destroyed themselves, would UK be the new and only superpower?
During the Cold War UK and USA relationship varied and it continuous to do so now. What is really strange is that in the last two decades it is less to do with both countries still being an allies, but more with personalities. The highs of friendship and interstate cooperation could be mentioned as "Thatcher - Reagan" , "Blair - Clinton" and "Blair - Bush" coalitions. So how much can a relation between leaders affect the interstate cooperation?
Sadly but half a century on and USA and UK (and EU) are again at the very low level of cooperation with Russia. Back to the basics of secret spy assasinations and so on.
Thousands of possible outcomes of any diplomatic relations between states, but modern diplomacy has got some guidelines rather than ambitions to follow.

A change in diplomacy?

Diplomacy as observed in the beginning of the 21st century could without a doubt be considered as radically different from what is used to be in the distant past however the change seems to be found in its means rather than in its end. If one chooses to define diplomacy as an art of leading negotiations between individuals or nations, one would eventually agree that the end (or aim)would be, in most cases, to find an agreement that satisfies as much as possible the interests of the parties involved in the negotiation. In which case, the nature of diplomacy would be the same regardless of the time, location or purpose of the negotiation. In other words, the aim of diplomacy has never changed, it seeks to promote collaboration between individual interests.

However, what has changed over the centuries are the means of diplomacy. It is unnecessary to underline the importance of technological and scientific progress in the area of international relations (globalisation?). This progress has created an intertwined world system in which nation states find it easier to communicate and trade with each other but a lot harder to promote their own national interest since from having to deal with solely their neighbours in old times, they now have to promote their national interest as related to the whole planet (the Cold War is a good illustration of this).

How then, can states find a common agreement in an internationalized system? In my view, modern diplomacy is holding the international system together by maintaining an economical race. Every state is trying to make as much surplus value as they can and are in perpetual competition with other states which has sufficed in maintaining a relatively stable world order since states are too occupied to think about their economic growth to be thinking about making war to each other.

The main issue however, is how will diplomacy be able to deal with issues which are not of primary interest to the concerned states. I am here mainly referring to the issue of environment. The success of environment protection will depend on the ability for nation states to forget their national economic self interest and think about what is profitable for the whole planet.

Organisations such as the United Nations seem to fail in this kind of problem solving since the whole organisation is built around the interest of individual state interests and international treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, destined to protect the environment, are not signed and ratified by all states (precisely the states polluting the most).

New Diplomacy will therefore have to use its new tools (technology, science, etc..) to deal with new international issues that seem worse than ever before.

The evolution of diplomacy: an adaptation to globalisation?

What I consider to be the most significant change in the nature of diplomacy is not directly related to its nature. Indeed, for me, the most significant change in the nature of diplomacy has to do with its need to adapt to the new world structure that is caused and at the same time enhanced by the process of globalisation.

This means that it is not only the openness of the meetings and the transparency of their agenda, the inclusive aspect of negotiation about any kind of political matter (‘low politics’) that brings a change to the subject of diplomacy. I think these three changes altogether have the same importance and they cannot be taken separately. That is why I talk about the process of globalisation, which implies on one hand modernisation, and on the other hand more connection between states.

- Modernity but also technical and scientific innovations and progress provided a significant development in communication. Every single time we do have more new and better communication tools, actors and networks, which enable individuals, states and those who I call ‘new communication actors’ (non-state actors) to actually communicate better, faster, in many different ways, from/to anywhere, with so many different tools.

I think this increases the interdependence among these actors, which brings me to my second point:

- More connection between states has been possible because of the development of communication, but I also think that the latter provides the former. No matter what path we think is the right here, we still have the same result: a rise in communication and more interdependent states.

However, Hans J. Morgenthau talks about ‘the decline of diplomacy’ caused mainly by the development of communication. I think this period of decline – he sets it in the period right after the Second World War - was a ‘necessary evil’ in the fact that this permitted new actors (non state-actors) to become significant in the world structure. At some point they became so paramount that they were allowed and added to many negotiation processes and meetings. This is even more relevant now that states interconnectedness has brought, in a certain extent, some order and peace to the international system. Therefore, state actors do not need to focus only with issues related to security in terms of peace and war, but can also deal with other subjects (the so-called ‘low politics’ = environment, financial matters, human rights, refugees, etc. ). Because now there are new topics that do not concern exclusively sovereign states, non-state actors can join the negotiation-table that has been increasingly intrusive, transparent and opened.

All this, in my point of view, is the result of the process of globalisation: the nature of diplomacy had to adapt with the new on-going process in the international system: globalisation. So, to conclude: what I consider to be the most significant change in the nature of diplomacy was its need to adapt itself to the new phenomenon of globalisation, which made a change in diplomacy nature itself (features of ‘new diplomacy’: open, inclusive and low politics).

The Interdependent World & Diplomacy

I think that the most significant change in the twentieth century was the increase in diplomacy resulting directly from growing number of international actors. The 20^th century world has become more interdependent. This new era has changed the so-far prevailing picture of the world politics- making it more pluralistic in terms of actors engaged in global interactions, and making those actors, in turn, more dependant on each other. From the neo-liberal point of view, still growing mutual dependence between actors in the international politics should be seen as a positive phenomenon as it creates the world wherein cooperation is a necessary feature. Since now on the actors in world politics were no longer able to cope with the problems on their own, they must have cooperated. The contemporary world has seen the emergence of many international organizations that were created to manage the interdependent system and facilitate cooperation between various actors in the global political arena. The number of member states of the United Nations has tripled since 1945- from 51 original members to 185 in 1997 and the number of international organizations has grown to nearly 6000. Moreover an open trade system resulted in growing number of international economic transactions over the past few decades. Movements of capital, goods and services, people and enterprises across international borders created highly interdependent world with complex web of economic relationships and links. Thus states were compelled to set up diplomatic relations with each other in order to coordinate the international behaviour in economic issue-area. In addition the ways that states were dealing with each other have altered more in the past three decades than over the 350 years since the Peace of Westphalia. Now not only foreign offices of different states have got direct contacts with each other but also other government departments are in touch with their counterparts in other countries.

'New Diplomacy' - chaos and disorder?

Diplomacy is a key process of communication and negotiation in world politics and the most important foreign policy instrument. Diplomacy is characterised by its agenda..So, how would we call diplomacy of today? What issues do diplomats negotiate about in the 21st century politics? Haven't we perhaps seen a rise of a new phenomenon, so called 'economic diplomacy'?The most important issues on diplomatic agenda are no more issues related to peace and war but rather economic stability..
The post-cold war order brought some significant changes to the study and practise of diplomacy. Firstly, diplomacy became more open to public scrutiny and control. Secondly, states are no longer the only actors engaged in diplomacy. Non-state actors, intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations play a big role in influencing and shaping diplomacy. Just to look at the recent example of German Chancellor Angela's Merkel diplomatic talks with U.S President Barack Obama about the future of Opel and General Motors.., Green Peace campaigns to influence changes in climate policy formulations..So, diplomacy is nowadays a complex process with many actors playing the leading roles..They all try to influence inter-state behaviour to achieve their own goals....Is this a threat to stability of the international relations? Does the 'new diplomacy' bring chaos and disorder?My argument is that it does in some ways...We may wake up one day lamenting the loss of the order that the 'old diplomacy' gave to the anarchy of international relations...Challenging!

The Old and New Diplomacy

According to the authors Joseph Nye and Jan Meissen , the roots of diplomacy, the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of states or groups knows as diplomats goes back as far as the ancient Greece in 2500 BC. The diplomacy has begun as simple model of relations between two states which involved regular meets between the representatives or the head of states. Although at the present time, much has not been changed, it occurs in new dimensions with a new agenda and elements,

In old diplomacy, the states are the only actor in the international arena; therefore the system was based on state centric approach. On the other hand, even though states remain the main international actor, other non state actors (e.g Human rights watch) and international govern bodies (e.g United Nation) have join that strongly influence the outcome of negotiations. My understanding about new diplomacy is that, for example, if a someone in the Britain has issues of policy, it can raise to the government which then be taken in to consideration.

The process of old diplomacy was based on secrecy which was only possible to maintain through bilateral negotiations. Even though secrecy still remains as core to the new diplomacy, a great deal has been made to take forwards multilateralism.

Since states have been the only influential actors in the old diplomacy, states security seems to be constitute a rather large proportion of diplomatic agenda. To this point of view, we can associate the old diplomacy to realist security point of view. However, after the end cold war period have seen that security has taken a back bench. Nevertheless, environment, economic, welfare, democracy and social affairs have been increasing dominating the diplomatic agenda. The new diplomacy can be associated with liberal point of view, as it accepts the participation of non states actors and tends to focus on different aspects as mentioned above.

In my conclusion, I believe that old diplomacy is the foundation of the new diplomacy. therefore, some aspects of new diplomacy have the traditional aspects of old diplomacy, and it does appears to bring an order in comparison with old diplomacy. Hence, the old diplomacy has been up dated rather than out dated.

Efficiency of the new diplomacy

The most significant change in the nature of diplomacy was when it was changed from the limited resident ambassadors, secret negotiations who had duties on state to state basis to the contemporary one which is open to public judgement and control and also the establishment of international organisations to act on behalf of negotiations especially disputes and deterrent against war.

With the world going global, diplomacy led to the emergence of international and regional organisations which made rules to be followed, permanent secretariats and permanently accredited diplomatic missions that gradually shifted from bilateral to multilateral.

The new diplomacy is also on a face to face basis on discussions and is specialised on training personnel’s on key issues such as agriculture, civil aviation, finance and health and has also increased its involvement in external affairs of domestic ministries. In the case of development, people have had to know about important issues like the environment, population control and protecting national interests within the system.

The new diplomacy has adopted changes in the international system in states and in societies. In the case of public diplomacy, foreign ministers and other governmental organisations have expressed their national images on many issues and with the growing cooperation through globalisation in economy and other social matters, usually conferences are used to hold talks which is important in terms of speed and efficiency for decision making.

Also with the introduction of communication and information technology shows how clear this system of diplomacy has developed, not forgetting the speed of air travel for foreign policy to be made efficiently. The UN can provide an opportunity for bilateral meetings especially to states that have poor communication or diplomatic relations. Example is the Arab-Israeli bilateral talks in Geneva (1973),

Getting Our Way

Hi Guys,

These are the links to 'Getting Our Way' on bbc iplayer that Steven recommended in class.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qpk0d/Getting_Our_Way_Security/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qvkrp/Getting_Our_Way_Prosperity/

Whaling in Antartica

The Sea Shepherd organisation are a group of anti whaling activists who take to the waters every whaling season pursuing Japanese whalers in an attempt to bring a halt to their 'illegal' whaling (done in the name of research according to the Japanese) where up to 1000 whales are slaughtered each season.

"The United Nations World Charter for Nature, section 21, empowers any nongovernmental organisation or individual to uphold international conservation law in areas beyond national jurisdiction and specifically on the high seas."

With much backing from the Australian people and the Sea Shepherd organisation the Australian and Japanese governments are being forced into diplomatic discussions surrounding the legalities of the Japanese whaling.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/19/australia-japan-whaling-lawsuit-theat

The Evolution of Diplomcay

The Evolution of Diplomacy

Okay, I’m totally new to this subject so still learning :)

Diplomacy is always evolving to incorporate the present important issues in international society. Much of the work done by Diplomats is spent revising and regulating international law and introducing treaties to help states collaborate and coexist happily with one another. In Old diplomacy, a secretive affair between two states, negotiations were predominantly centred on matters of state security (high politics). These exclusive bilateral discussions generally took place between elite aristocratic members of society and government, and were handled confidentially with no public acknowledgement. New diplomacy on the other hand is inclusive and involves open participation and multilateral discussions with collective negotiations. Agendas aren’t only about ‘high politics’ but also include ‘low politics’ involving social, economic and welfare issues, for example climate change. With growing access to new technologies and communications, and in an era of globalisation, states are more inclined to work together to address issues more openly involving more than two states and these events incorporate non-state actors in decision making such as NGOs and MNCs. Decisions are openly shared with the public once negotiations have taken place (which are still generally established upon behind closed doors).

I think the most significant change in the nature of diplomacy from those mentioned above is that in new diplomacy non state actors are now largely acknowledged when it comes to negotiations and they can heavily influence decision making. NGOs don’t work along any state sovereignty and they are usually not swayed by one state or another. Their powers are based primarily on the greater common good and generally focus more in areas of environment or marginalized populations which sovereign states might otherwise disregard. NGOs can have a stronger influence on more citizens worldwide than sovereign states as their organisations reach out to a wider audience and multiple nationalities. With the new transparency of diplomatic negotiations as it is today states are being encouraged to also act for the greater common good and not necessarily for their sole survival within the system as was the case prior to globalisation and the inclusion of NGOs in diplomacy.

Sophie