ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the diplomatic service flourishes because, while preserving and honing some of its core skills, it has changed, adapting to the radically changed environment of a deeply interdependent world and developing new tools. Diplomats were still supposed to travel to new overseas assignments by boat. Foreign ambassadors might call on the political director at periodic intervals as they have done since diplomatic services became established. Independence and sovereignty were secured. With neutrality, a viable security policy had been defined. Actually, the time between 1950 and 1990 was one of massive transformation in the very structure of the global system. Indeed, there are only few not touched by global interdependence and, thus, not obliged to interact with their counterparts in other countries of the world. The flattening of hierarchies would not have been possible in the absence of changes in the distribution and retrieval of information. Information was to go to and to serve the superior.
