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.