The making of the world

On 1 November 1814, the Great Powers of Europe met in Vienna to decide the new rules of international order in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. On 18 January 1919, diplomats from over thirty countries arrived at the Paris Peace Conference for the negotiation of the peace treaties ending World War I. On 25 April 1945, diplomats from fifty countries convened in San Francisco to draw up the UN Charter. In all three circumstances, diplomats negotiated a number of fundamental principles about who has the right to create international order, by what means and how responsibilities for upholding international order should be distributed among the stakeholders. In other words, they were involved in making the world! But what exactly do we mean when we say that diplomats make the world? One interpretation is that the making of the world involves the condition of arranging human relations and activities into a stable and regular pattern. This is what is usually referred to as ‘order as fact’, which is the opposite of disorder, chaos, instability and lack of predictability (Hurrell 2007: 2). ‘Order as fact’ (Æ glossary) is primarily achieved by establishing effective conflict-preventing rules and institutions. Martin Wight, for instance, thought the main task of diplomats was to ‘circumvent the occasions of war, and to extend the series of circumvented occasions; to drive the automobile of state along a oneway track, against head-on traffic, past infinitely recurring precipices’ (Wight et al. 1978: 137). The drafters of the UN Charter were determined, for instance, to create a system of collective security capable of successfully withstanding the type of diplomatic and military aggressions unleashed by Germany, Italy and Japan during the 1930s. Nevertheless, the heroic image of Wight’s diplomat as a protector of world peace is not always easy to reconcile with the practice. Diplomacy also has a long ‘dark’ history of being used for drumming up support for war (e.g., Napoleon’s expansionist diplomacy), undermining norms and institutions

of international cooperation (e.g., German and Italian diplomatic contempt of the League of Nations in the 1930s) and for maintaining nations under imperial control (e.g., British diplomacy in the nineteenth century). This is why the making of the world also has a norm-oriented dimension that is, ‘order as value’ (Æ glossary). One could think of ‘order as fact’ versus ‘order as value’ as two distinct levels of world-making. At the deeper level, one finds the norms, principles and shared understandings that frame diplomatic action (see also the section on deeper backgrounds in Chapter 5). At the policy level, one finds the pattern of diplomatic activities and institutions emerges from the application of these values in practice (see also the section on diplomatic tasks in Chapter 6). An imperialist world order is shaped and sustained, for instance, by the belief in certain hierarchical values regarding the political and normative worthiness of certain types of political communities. A world order governed by international institutions is underpinned by the belief in the primacy of international law in regulating states’ behaviour. In other words, ‘order as value’ creates the conditions of possibility for ‘order as fact’, that is, for the type of international society to live in. The questions to concern us then are how do diplomats shape ‘order as value’, how do they render it into ‘order as fact’ and what challenges do they face while making the world? The following two sections address these questions from two different perspectives. The first one draws on Alexander Wendt’s work to explain the making of the world via diplomatic interactions. The key argument is that ‘order as value’ is largely shaped by how diplomats treat each other. By developing relationships of friendship, rivalry and enmity among states, diplomats help establish ‘order as fact’ via competing logics of anarchy. The case of the diplomacy of the Third Reich is then discussed to illustrate the conditions under which a culture of anarchy (Æ glossary) could diplomatically degrade. The second approach draws on John R. Searle’s deontological theory to explain the diplomatic construction of the world via the assignment of functions to objects and beings. The deontological perspective emphasises the role of collective intentionality in creating ‘order as value’ and the importance of international treaties, diplomatic precedents and soft law in establishing ‘order as fact’. The case of climate change negotiations provides the background for understanding empirically how this process takes place.