New Diplomacy: a manipulative behaviour to reach state's goal...

Old and New diplomacy are not two separated things. They are closely linked. Diplomacy is evolving jointly with globalisation; it’s adapting to the changing world order. Nevertheless, the featured of old diplomacy cannot be neglected. These are, as seen in the introductory lecture, secrecy, the threat of force and the negotiation of high politics. On the contrary, ‘new diplomacy’ is understood as having open negotiations with non only states but also non-states actors about ‘low’ politics. However, some argue, as a critic of ‘new’ diplomacy, that real negotiations are still being made between state’s representatives in secret meetings. In my opinion, this is one of the main arguments when talking about the relevance of ‘old’ diplomacy today (the other one being the fact that embassies are still existing, but this is not the point I want to develop here).

To illustrate my argument, I chose the Indian and Pakistan diplomatic negotiations in January 2009 about Kashmir. The context of this is that the diplomatic discussion after the November 2008 attack in Mumbai as freeze between these two countries. In her speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London in February 2010, the Indian foreign Secretary, Nirupama Rao said that the Kashmir discussion is a topic that ‘must be discussed bilaterally’. http://www.iiss.org/whats-new/iiss-in-the-press/february-2010/india-and-pakistan-finding-the-right-forum-for-dialogue/

Here is a good example of the fact that the ‘old’ diplomacy system prevails in a time when we talk about ‘new’ diplomacy, openness and non-state actors. Indeed, there was no Kashmir representative in the discussion between India and Pakistan. Furthermore, on top of that discussion agenda appeared new issues such as the rivalry over Afghanistan and sharing Himalaya river waters (IISS). Thus, the Indian foreign Secretary talks about better communication and responsive dialogue between India and Pakistan, but what did they actually talked about? What were the decisions that the discussion led to? Who was present? Most probably just close related government’s representatives. She just said that the bilateral dialogue was actually better. But we already knew that there was a bilateral discussion in private. But maybe, just the fact that she actually gave a public talk made the discussion look more ‘open’. In my point of view, it is just manipulation of the medias to look like it was. But the public did not know anything new after her speech from what they knew before it in that specific topic.

So in my point of view, the openness of ‘new’ diplomacy is not really relevant and is extremely questionable.