ABSTRACT

In his 1998 book Diplomacy for the Next Century, the Israeli diplomat and academic Abba Eban argued that, formally speaking, the Cold War came to an end neither with the fall of the Berlin Wall nor with the collapse of Soviet Union, but rather with the treaty between NATO and Russia, signed in Paris on May 27th, 1997. The same pattern has seemingly repeated itself over the span of the last two US presidents. First, Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 with the following rationale: The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. This nomination was made hot on the heels of number of overtures that the then Presidential Candidate made to the effect of making “diplomacy a top priority,” a message of change that was also echoed within Diplomacy Studies.