A Diplomacia Global

Diplomacia Global - Diplomacia en el Mundo Moderno

por University of London & SOAS University of London

What is Diplomacy?

Well, I suppose the standard definition would have to be the execution of foreign policy and the management of international affairs, which is what you would get in a textbook. But that doesn't tell us everything we need to know. I think it's often forgotten, perhaps, how dull a lot diplomacy actually is, pushing paper left and right, writing reports, attending long functions that you probably don't want to be at. So I think there's a variety of different levels there. There's the sort of the high end peace conferences and sort of the gold standard diplomacy that we might think of. But it's very easy to forget the sort of the lower ranks, the lower divisions of diplomacy and the less interesting stuff. So if I was to define diplomacy, I think it's some sort of balance between the two.

>> I think of diplomacy in fairly expansive terms. I try not to delimit it so much as to provide room for diplomacy. So I think of it in the broadest terms as any sort of interactions between people or things in which those people or things are representative in some way of a broader kind of category or polity.

>> Well, it's a very good question, Simon. I think the word or the expression I like the most is actually from the Vienna Conventions, which is creating friendly relations between countries. And I think it's quite sort of a gentle term, friendly relations, but there's quite a lot loaded in there. So overall, I would say that the purpose of diplomacy is about developing some form of appreciation, understanding, and friendly relations with countries. Of course, achieving that is far harder than setting it out as your purpose.

>> It's actually quite a complicated process. In that, when I first studied, when I was a student 30 years ago, I very much understood diplomacy as something which was almost purely high politics. Involved statesmen, decision makers, very much along the lines of foreign policy analysis. And that was probably because my background was all in international relations. And then I became a historian, and over my career as a historian I began to wonder whether one could understand diplomacy in ways which were more expansive than what I had learned as a student. And so recently, I've actually been working on this idea of making the study of diplomacy as a more interactive process. And when I mean interactive, I don't just mean the interaction between, obviously, statesmen, diplomats and the people in the realm of high politics. But what I'm very interested in is the interaction between the diplomat statesmen, the kind of people who are seen to be the primary performers of diplomacy with the public. So I'm very interested in the kind of what's called audience or reception of diplomacy. And how the diplomatic process can actually be affected by this interaction that goes on between the high politics type of performers and the audience or the local population. So maybe they're are looking at diplomatic events and others who are involved in diplomacy in a much wider sense of the word.

>> We could definitely go historical. We won't go historical. I'd say attempt to stick with sort of a, well I said I wouldn't go historical but I'll go historical. A Harold Nicholson type cut of sort of the mediated or negotiated relations between representatives, but I wouldn't get stuck at representatives of states. So in a sense, the easiest definition, the one that I use to teach generally tends to be mediated or negotiated relations between representatives of polities, in the sense of political communities. So you can speak of a diplomacy of the European Union or diplomacy of the United States. But you can also speak of a diplomacy of a city, a region, like the diplomacy of Quebec for instance, is a fourth.

>> Well diplomacy is, on one level, diplomacy's something we do every day. So even though it's become this kind of high status profession, in fact when you handle a meeting, when you handle your personal relations, when you handle almost any aspect of your life, you'll often use the same skills that you'd see a diplomat use.

Success in Diplomacy

>> Successful diplomacy is about reaching some kind of agreement, bargain, compromise that everybody can live with. So the sort of old idea that if nobody's happy with an agreement, then it's probably a decent agreement, because everybody has some complaints about it, but everybody signed up to it. Yes, everybody has to give a little bit. You're not going to get all of what you want. So to go back to the Syria example, the United States really does not want President Assad to be part of the solution, but it's pretty clear President Assad will be part of the solution. The Americans are going to have to give on this. On the other hand, the Russians and Assad are going to have to give some other things in order to get the Americans to buy in to any kind of final solution. So there are various ways to describe this, but essentially successful diplomacy is where in effect, some kind of agreement, deal or compromise is reached. Everybody gives something. But whatever the worst harm is, is to some degree contained.

>> Well, I think the starting point is, are you talking? I think one of the features, you go back to antiquity here, you look back through history. The starting point is, is there some form of dialogue and some sort of connection between two states or tribes or civilizations or forms of power? So, I would start with some form of dialogue. And as we know, if you look back in antiquity. Generally speaking, at most times, some form of diplomatic relations were supported, even when societies or civilizations were at war. So clearly, even going back 2,000 years, people would have recognized that you needed things like parley, the ability to talk to each other and the ability to send delegates, and the ability to make representations. So I think these things have always existed in human affairs, but I would say the starting point is some form of dialogue. Clearly from dialogue, you can build some form of understanding of reciprocal positions, and then we get into the negotiation, adaptation and all the higher forms of state craft.

>> I suppose the obvious answer is do you have a clear, written, agreed outcome? A nice treatise, bviously, a good indication of successful diplomacy. I think there's also an aspect of what Richelieu talked about continuous engagement, continuous dialogue. So the idea that you end up with a nice peace treaty or a nice treaty or a nice agreement is nice and neat, but there's also the aspect of that continual dialogue and maintaining the dialogue even if other relations are not so successful. So maybe successful diplomacy sometimes is just keeping talking.