Changing the Forms of Diplomacy

  

Diplomacy is the management of change, and for many centuries the institution of diplomacy has indeed succeeded in adapting to multiple changes in an expanding international society. Diplomatic practice today not only deals with transformations in the relations between states, but progressively it also needs to take into account the changing fabric of transnational relations. For diplomats the host countries’ civil society matters in a way that was inconceivable only a generation ago. The ordinary individual is increasingly visible in the practice of diplomacy, particularly in the areas of public diplomacy and consular relations. As to the latter, looking after one’s own citizen-consumers abroad has become a major growth sector for foreign ministries, and there is probably no area of diplomatic work that has more potential to affect the foreign ministry’s reputation at home. Public diplomacy is another such growth sector and anything but an ephemeral phenomenon. There are, of course, vast areas of diplomatic work and plenty of bilateral relationships where contacts with the public abroad have no priority, but the number of countries exploring public diplomacy’s potential will continue to grow. It is probably no exaggeration to suggest that this development is an indication of the fact that the evolution of diplomacy has reached a new stage. Those who see public diplomacy as postmodern Propaganda or as lip-service to the latest fashion in the conduct of international relations therefore miss a fundamental point. People have always mattered to diplomats, but this point has taken on a new meaning. The democratization of access to information has turned citizens into independent observers as well as assertive participants in international politics, and the new agenda of diplomacy has only added to the leverage of loosely organized groups of individuals. Issues at the grass roots of civil society have become the bread and butter of diplomacy at the highest levels. Foreign ministries increasingly take into account the concerns of ordinary people – and they have good reasons for doing so. The explosive growth of non-state actors in the past decade, the growing influence of transnational protest movements and the meteoric rise of the new media have restricted official diplomacy’s freedom of manoeuvre. Non-official players have turned out to be extremely agile and capable of mobilizing support at a speed that is daunting for rather more unwieldy foreign policy bureaucracies. The wider public turns out to be an even harder target for diplomats. Foreign publics do not tend to follow agreed rules, nor do they usually have clearly articulated aims. Many diplomats are baffled by the elusiveness and apparent unpredictability of public groups in foreign civil societies, which makes the challenge of public diplomacy a real one. Working with ‘ordinary people’ is a formidable challenge for diplomatic practitioners who feel more comfortable operating within their own professional circle. Traditional diplomatic culture is slowly eroding and sits rather uneasily with the demands of public diplomacy. Although there are many success stories that can be told, broadly speaking diplomatic attitudes and habits – steeped in many centuries of tradition – are still more peer-oriented than is desirable for foreign ministries with ambitions in the field of public diplomacy. The dominant perspective in diplomatic services is hardly capable of conceiving of the individual in any other than a passive role. For these and other reasons, the rise of soft power in international relations is testing diplomats’ flexibility to the full. Public diplomacy cannot be practiced successfully without accepting that the game that nations play has fundamentally changed, and it implies a rather more important role for the twenty-first century ambassador than is sometimes suggested. In recent decades diplomatic services have gone through other difficult transitions, with states adapting to the growing complexity of multilateral decision-making and learning to live with the rise of multiple actors in international affairs, but dealing with foreign publics may prove a harder nut to crack. Engaging with foreign societies requires a totally different mindset. Among other things it supposes the taking of calculated risks, abandoning the illusion of near-complete control over one’s own initiatives, and it is based on outreach techniques that were unknown to previous generations of practitioners. Newcomers to the world’s diplomatic services therefore deserve good preparation for the changed realities of their profession and students of diplomacy would benefit from new thinking about the conduct of international relations.