The making of relations

Diplomacy makes relations. Whenever we hear that relations among states are deteriorating, stabilising or improving and so on, diplomacy has something to do with it. This chapter provides an overview of what kinds of relations diplomacy makes and unmakes, and, equally important, how it does so. This chapter’s organisation follows Chapter 7. We provide an overview of scholarly approaches, and discuss their strengths and weaknesses by putting empirical cases under scrutiny. Scholarship on international relations is frequently divided up into three major paradigms, i.e. Realism, Liberalism and Constructivism. Dividing up the field in this way has its pitfalls; there are plausible alternative organisational devices that stress more what contending schools of thought have in common than what keeps them apart (Kornprobst 2009). Nonetheless, dividing scholarship up into these three paradigms provides for a good overview of similarities and differences of international relations thought on the making and unmaking of relations. First, we deal with Realist approaches that link security imperatives to balancing behaviour, and balancing behaviour to the making of relations. Our illustrative case revolves around Washington’s diplomatic efforts to dissuade North Korea from becoming and consolidating itself as a nuclear power. Second, we investigate into Liberal approaches that put more emphasis on economic motives, connect these to the creation of cooperation-facilitating institutions and from there to the making of relations. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this lens by examining EU foreign policy. Third, we take a look at Constructivist scholarship that addresses the generative mechanisms through which relations are produced and reproduced. As an empirical illustration, we discuss Eritrean-Ethiopian (friendship to enmity) relations.