ABSTRACT
A chapter on ‘remaking states’ seems an odd addition to a book on diplomacy. According to conceived wisdom, diplomacy is about deciding what happens among states and not within states. The UN Charter, for example, is very explicit about safeguarding state sovereignty and the collective security mechanism designed for this purpose. But there is nothing explicit on remaking states. If anything, sovereignty and remaking states seem to contradict one another sharply. Remaking states, however, has always been part of the state system and it has always had a strong diplomatic dimension to it. Take the post-WWII occupation of Germany, for example. France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the US agreed to carve up Germany into four occupation zones. The Western powers tried to re-build the state along liberal democratic principles in their zones. The Soviet Union attempted to re-build state institutions believed to be capable of transforming the polity into a communist system. Agreeing on the general re-building design, the Western powers decided to merge their three zones in the 1948 London Conference and, therefore, made it possible for the Federal Republic of Germany to be founded in 1949. This was, among other things, a major diplomatic success. It was a major diplomatic success for the three Western powers (and West German actors) to agree on a course of action. The West German Constitution was as much authored by West German political elites as it was authored by the three Western allies. By the same token, the failure of these allies and the Soviet Union to converge on a plan for solving the German Question was a major diplomatic failure. The Democratic Republic of Germany was founded the same year, Germany remained partitioned until the end of the Cold War and severe international crises surrounding the German Question remained on the diplomatic agenda.
