Towards inclusive diplomacy

This book is titled Understanding International Diplomacy. What is there actually to understand about diplomacy? In a nutshell, our answer to this question is communication. Or, more precisely put, a peculiar kind of communication: diplomacy is institutionalised communication. It is communication among internationally recognised representatives of internationally recognised entities. The communication is about the public good, it involves the production of decisions, relations and global norms, and it is not confined by the boundaries of the state. This conclusion summarises how we propose to study diplomacy as communication, discusses how our proposal differs from other textbooks and monographs on diplomacy, juxtaposes diplomacy with its conceptual nemesis, anti-diplomacy, and introduces the concept of inclusive diplomacy as a possible framework for addressing the challenges that lie ahead for doing and studying diplomacy. Communication constituting diplomacy and shaping world politics has evolved over time. To mention just the most important landmark developments, the emergence of sovereign statehood provided an impetus for establishing resident embassies that represent these sovereign states abroad. Trying to cope with disaster and learning the lessons of history has transformed diplomacy at several critical junctures. Perhaps most importantly, lessons learnt from WWI singled out secretive practices as causes of war, and embraced the belief in institution-building, above all collective security mechanisms, as a vehicle for leaving an age of major wars behind. More recently, ever-increasing flows of globalisation have stretched the perimeters of diplomacy. We are witnessing a double-multiplication: one of issue areas and one of actors. The double-multiplication increases the complexity of diplomacy. Indicating this complexity, we frequently use the term ‘diplomatic field’ when we address the global age of diplomacy. Navigating this field for the purpose of doing research is not an easy thing to do. We provide a simple map for helping us do so. The map consists of two major building blocks: context and tasks. The context consists of international public law as well as the repertoire of ideas that practitioners take so much for granted and which largely inform how diplomats think about issues in global politics and what to do about them. We refer to this repertoire as deeper backgrounds. The context helps actors orient themselves in the diplomatic field and perform their tasks. All their tasks revolve around communication. We distinguish four clusters of tasks, i.e. messaging, negotiating, mediating and talking. Each of these clusters can

be specified further. Talk, for example, is about cheap talk, rhetorical strategies, persuasive attempts and dialogue. Performing these tasks, in turn, does something to the context. Some performances simply reproduce it as is. Others push and shove it in different directions. The map provides us with clues for what basic units for analysis to look out for when studying diplomacy. The diplomat is embedded in context. This context shapes the agency of the diplomat (performance of tasks) and these, in turn, re-shape the context. But all of this is still at a rather high level of abstraction. Explaining diplomatic outcomes requires more zooming in. We discuss explanations for three degrees of complexity: decisions, relations and world. When diplomats perform their tasks, they make decisions. But how do they make their decisions? We provided the reader with an overview of ongoing debates in the social sciences about what makes agents tick. Four logics of action feature prominently in these debates: consequences, appropriateness, argumentation and practice. Discussing empirical cases revolving around questions whether to continue diplomacy or go to war, we highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of these logics, and made a case for creative eclecticism. There are few terms that are as closely associated with diplomacy as relations. It matters whether relations between states are good or bad, whether they are close or distanced, amicable or hostile, and so on. To a very considerable extent, diplomacy communicates these relations into being. We put three different schools of thought under scrutiny that – explicitly or implicitly – deal with the diplomatic making of relations: Realism, Liberalism and Constructivism. To put it very simply, for a (Classical) Realist the art of making relations revolves around standing apart and balancing; for a Liberal it is about cooperation and even integration; and for a Constructivist it is about generating community. We empirically illustrated the strengths and weaknesses of these frameworks by discussing the evolution of the relations between North Korea and the US, the coordination of the EU Foreign Policy and the dramatic worsening of relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Diplomats not only take decisions and make relations, but they also shape the world we live in. They do this at two levels. At the deeper level, diplomats help engineer, legitimate and reproduce organising principles of global politics, that is shared understandings about who has the right to create global order, by what means and how responsibilities for upholding global order should be distributed among the stakeholders (‘order as value’). At the policy level, they apply these principles to build a stable and regular pattern of global activities and institutions (‘order as fact’). By forging relationships of friendship, rivalry and enmity among states, diplomats establish ‘order as fact’ via competing cultures of anarchy. By establishing international deontologies (‘order as value’), diplomats define, in turn, what objectives (security, redistribution or recognition) are important for them to pursue in a particular historical context and what strategies are most appropriate to use to that end. It would be misleading to think that diplomacy is only about shaping international affairs. It is also, although to a lesser degree, about shaping domestic affairs. Since the end of the Cold War, the re-shaping of political systems in a number of states has preoccupied diplomats, especially at the UN. We are witnessing a new age of interventionism. External intervention is often aimed at remaking states: turning authoritarian systems into democratic ones and replacing war with peace. This raises thorny normative questions. When is intervention warranted? What ought to be the end of such interventions? What ought to be the means used to attain this end?

Discussing these questions, we developed three concepts: societal authorship; peace as restraint, compromise and dialogue; and adaptive repertoire. Taken together, these concepts emphasise that diplomacy ought to reach far – our definition of peace is ambitious – and, at the same time, refrain from superimposing one-size-fits-all recipes onto a highly diverse universe of cases. As the international order evolves, so does the role of the diplomat. These transformations have invited debates about the principles of guiding what issues become subject of diplomatic representation, who is to be recognised as a diplomat, how diplomats are to relate with each other and how they should be recruited and trained in order to effectively face these challenges. The answers we have discussed are not free from controversy. Diplomats have to balance how to represent the interests of their governments while also considering the impact the representation of these interests may have on the international order. The relationship between paradiplomacy and conventional diplomacy remains ambiguous. They may grow together (‘catalytic’ diplomacy), follow different tracks (‘postdiplomacy’) or stay in conflict with each other (‘contested diplomacy’). ‘Smart power’ is likely to emerge as an important tool of diplomatic influence by bringing together hard and soft power via the strategic and simultaneous use of coercion and co-option. The success of the twenty-first-century diplomat therefore much depends on the way in which diplomatic recruitment, promotion and training would manage to adapt to these new circumstances. Last but not least, diplomats also play an important role in the peaceful remaking of the world. Diplomats have now two important instruments at their disposal by which they can reduce the use of violence, both internationally and domestically: preventive diplomacy and international criminal justice. The former is supposed to assist the peaceful evolution of the international order by addressing the direct and structural incentives for resorting to violence. By imposing criminal responsibility directly upon individuals, the latter aims not only to deter actors from resorting to violence in the short term, but also to undermine the legal and moral legitimacy of the method of using force for settling disputes in the long term. Both approaches remain though controversial. On the one hand, the extension of preventive diplomacy from ‘good offices’ to peacekeeping and peacebuilding might involve a fundamental revision of diplomatic tasks, which few practitioners might agree with. On the other hand, the relationship between diplomacy and international criminal justice remains inchoate, not least due to the difficulties experienced by the International Criminal Court in accomplishing its mission and in maintaining the support of its members.