Diplomacy of the future

Future has already arrived. Diplomacy is radically and visibly changing. Facing new challenges, it is transforming its structures and methods, while integration diplomacy and para-diplomacy suggest new models. Probably, in the 22nd century today’s diplomatic models will disappear while diplomacy as an art of resolving the conflicts by peaceful means will survive.

What will diplomacy look like in one hundred years? Will it change? These are the questions usually asked by the people who regard modern diplomacy as something highly traditional, covered by the veil of secrecy and elitism. The illusion is nourished by the conduct of certain diplomats who even today look like tribal chiefs proudly goose-stepping with bird feathers on their heads (as a retired Italian diplomat wrote in his memoires). But everything is changing at a breathtaking pace.

Future has already arrived. Diplomacy is radically and visibly changing. Facing new challenges, it is transforming its structures and methods, while integration diplomacy and para-diplomacy suggest new models. Probably, in the 22nd century today’s diplomatic models will disappear while diplomacy as an art of resolving the conflicts by peaceful means will survive.

What will diplomacy look like in one hundred years? Will it change? These are the questions usually asked by the people who regard modern diplomacy as something highly traditional, covered by the veil of secrecy and elitism. The illusion is nourished by the conduct of certain diplomats who even today look like tribal chiefs proudly goose-stepping with bird feathers on their heads (as a retired Italian diplomat wrote in his memoires). But everything is changing at a breathtaking pace.

Future is already around the corner. Ardent neo-liberals have the reason to wonder: do we really need diplomats if a businessman can come to terms with a counterpart dodging the inevitable red-tape of foreign policy agencies? At the dawn of this century young people ecstatically applauded Zbignev Brzezinski who suggested converting the building of the US Embassy in London (discarded as useless) into a students’ hostel. The business world is stubbornly enticing most gifted graduates offering salaries incomparable to government allowances. Designers of the world market games theory promise an unprecedented discharge of adrenaline and an opportunity, with luck, to get rich here and now.

Democratization and Crises

Chief.
The beauty of Native Americans

Under the circumstances diplomatic service is becoming irrevocably democratized and prepared to open its doors to all (even females!). The only thing needed is to pass a screening contest and more or less to speak a foreign language. At the same time, if you want a job in an embassy, you needn’t become a diplomat. Today many professions are in demand, and in some missions career diplomatic service officers make only 15-20% of the staff.

Crises of the recent decades have only aggravated the problem. Heads of foreign diplomatic services, even so reputable as the US State Department, consistently complain of chronic underfunding and the budget entirely incomparable with the budgets of national security, defense and law enforcement agencies. The process of “optimization” is still underway in the ministries of foreign affairs. Having lost its status of a “monopolist guardian” of state interests, modern foreign policy agencies have to display unprecedented flexibility in finding new, primarily less costly, forms and methods of work. An urgent item on the European Union’s agenda is whether money should be spent on bilateral relations or spending should be limited to pan-European diplomatic structures. Modified voting mechanism delineated by the Treaty of Lisbon and the corresponding EU Common Foreign and Security Policy may well lead soon to the abolition of traditional bilateral embassies.

There are plenty “money-saving” projects. For a number of years Norway has been discussing, and it sometimes resorts to, old practices of ad hoc embassies. Indeed, why should the country spend so much money on an embassy maintenance, rental payments, and personnel costs, while an Ambassador back in his ministerial office can communicate with his foreign colleagues via the Internet, and visit the hosting country only on special occasions? Those willing can follow suit of some Latin American countries which establish a joint (three-party format) embassy abroad with an annual replacement of the Ambassador by rotation.

Another headache for diplomats is summit meetings which have become more frequent. Personal likes and dislikes of presidents and prime ministers, and unexpected emotional statements often perplex even seasoned professional diplomats. A Russian Ambassador once expressed his doubts as to whether diplomats were becoming simple waiters and maitre d’hotels, for during a high level visit embassy functions most often boil down to hotel and airline ticket reservations, transportation and catering provisions. As early as in 1925 a renowned French diplomat, Jules Cambon, dropped a hint of doubt thereupon: democracy will always need presidents and ministers, but will it need diplomats?

Non-governmental organizations are also squeezing out professional diplomats. They are becoming persistently visible in the world politics, taking part in negotiations, and sometimes throwing sand in the wheels of state leaders and diplomats.

However, high technologies have become the primary challenge to diplomacy. The favorite story of diplomats is that two centuries ago an American Ambassador to Spain had failed to be making any reports to Washington for about two years running. Thomas Jefferson suggested that they waited for another year and if the Ambassador failed to become available then they would send him a letter. Decades later the birth of a telegraph became a revolution. Having received his first cable, British Foreign Minister Lord Henry Palmerstone exclaimed: “By God, this is the end of diplomacy!”

Quite recently the end of diplomacy once again became a topic of discussions in connection with the WikiLeaks shocking publications. Classified diplomatic correspondence came out into public domain. The logical question is: is it possible to preserve secrecy in cyberspace? At a conference devoted to the problems of secrecy an American diplomat made quite a paradoxical suggestion. At times supermarket owners consider the cost of goods that are doomed to be stolen as inevitable loss, he said. There is no problem in calculating losses, as the percentage of thieves in society is quite low and stable enough, thus, anyway, installation of video surveillance cameras and security protection is a far more expensive undertaking. The same applies to diplomacy. In any case, from time to time someone would be carried away by the temptation to sell secrets. The radical diplomat suggested giving up costly cipher traffic and turning to inexpensive Internet communication instead.

Mass media are also aggressively snapping at the heels of diplomacy. Reportedly, one day Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Trudeaux suggested replacing the cost-ineffective ministry of foreign affairs by a New York Times subscription. The Prime Minister suspected that its correspondents were better informed than diplomatic dispatches’ authors. Electronic mass media have become an even more serious competitor to embassies as they report directly from hot spots in real-time format. What about new social networks capable of reporting the news as well as influencing the developments? As a result, high-ranking diplomats are forced to login to social networks more often and to defend their views therein.

Diplomacy on the Defensive

National Day of Sweden,
Virtual House of Sweden,
Second Life

Diplomats are ready to go on counteroffensive. As the digital revolution is gaining ground, new opportunities become available. Decades upon the day when the American Embassy was closed down in Tehran the US State Department decided to establish a virtual web-Embassy to the Iranian capital. There was no prior restoration of diplomatic relations as the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations is not yet applicable to the cyberspace. However, Iranian authorities, taking advantage of such a non-applicability, several hours after the opening of the web-Embassy in the Internet simply blocked the site.

Facing these challenges, the states adopted the doctrine of public diplomacy, a combination of values, propaganda and marketing technologies. With the help of public diplomacy the governments hope to influence public opinion abroad, to build up a positive image, to earn the sympathy and transform the attitude of the world public. Today the diplomats are “stepping out of the shade”, they have to address versatile audiences, mastering debating, persuading and reassuring skills.

An even more attractive idea is to develop public diplomacy without leaving one’s own capital. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sweden has built its House of Sweden in the second life space. A virtual building is the exact copy of the Swedish Embassy in Washington. Foreign Minister Karl Bildt (i.e. its avatar) personally snipped a tape at the opening ceremony. A visitor (his/her avatar) has no difficulty in entering the Embassy building. You are assisted by the personnel avatar that would easily fly you to the needed floor, and accompany you to the hall holding the information on Sweden you need. In such virtual embassies one can take part in the workshops or attend lectures, as well as lease space to hold one’s own meetings and conferences (paid service). Tireless virtual diplomats are ready to help you 24 hours a day. If desired, any ministry of foreign affairs can buy a plot of land or even an entire island in this 3D space and open its own representative office there.

What Will Happen to Diplomacy in One Hundred Years?

In the course of historic development diplomatic models of antiquity disappeared, the medieval model of Vatican diplomacy is gone with the wind, not a trace is left of the ancient Russian diplomatic offices (posolskiy prikaz). Modern diplomacy with its cumbersome foreign policy agencies and permanent bilateral diplomatic missions can share the same fate. The model of inter-state multilateral diplomacy cannot steer clear of transformation. The parameters of integration diplomacy already are and will be changing. An ever-growing network of the so-called paradiplomatic sub-national representations will also put itself on the map. In all probability, the diplomatic field will get significantly wider.

CARPACCIO, Vittore
Arrival of the English Ambassadors, 1500

One can dream up and assume that in the 22nd century relations between highly different actors – humanitarian, commercial, religious, gender – will be qualified as diplomatic. Such prognostication seems to be the memory of the past. For one, in the Middle Ages envoys of the cities, counties, principalities, kingdoms and simply feudal lords turned into diplomats. Apparently, in the future the ground for diplomacy will always be always even in the relations between small groups of people who are aware of their sovereignty and fight for it. Such rosy prospects will give full play to the work of diplomatic academies, schools, and distant (preferably, paid) learning. In such future environment every man will have to learn the art of negotiations, protocol and to master the skills of information collection and analysis (possibly, on own account, again).

Thus, diplomatic models may be changing, while, apparently, diplomacy as an everlasting art of peaceful resolution of emerging conflicts will live eternally, and gifted analysts and seasoned negotiators will always be in demand.