The Patterson School
of Diplomacy and International Commerce
University of Kentucky

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John D. Stempel
Patterson School of Diplomacy
Rev. Nov. 1995

RECASTING DIPLOMACY

There will always be room for diplomacy, but in its present form, it is largely an 18th century relic that badly needs rethinking and refashioning. --Walter Laqueur

Missing from debates on the clash of civilizations and the post-Cold War evolution of foreign policy and international affairs has been a serious look at "diplomacy." As bipolarism crumbles and old ideologies disintegrate, the world has faced a rash of new difficulties as religious, ethnic and national antagonisms have flared concurrently with the emergence of transnational problems such as the world health crisis of AIDS, the spread of drug use, environmental degradation, and burgeoning refugee issues. Rapid communication and much faster transportation, plus the astounding increase in the number of nations from the 50 which founded the United Nations to over 180, has changed the nature of diplomacy, substantially increasing its importance as normative and scholarly concept, pattern of behavior and profession.

The dictionary definition of diplomacy is "the art and practice of conducting negotiations between nations," and "skill in handling affairs without arousing hostility." Reaching back into antiquity, diplomacy involved mediation, or managing an entity or an individual's relationships with an "other" (sometimes defined as "enemy," sometimes not). It was only with the development of the modern state system, dating from the 16th century that diplomacy took on its more narrow current contemporary meaning: managing the foreign affairs of states at the governmental level. Today, both scholars and practitioners suggest this narrow interpretation has lost its utility.1

To "be diplomatic," however, has long involved astute skills of tactful conciliation and negotiation. Diplomacy has always included the notion of communication, as well. Added to those meanings in recent decades have been persuasion, conflict resolution, and a whole host of managerial activities centered around economic development and nation-building, such as economic aid and Peace Corps activities. These tasks have required organizational structures that many nations are now being forced to adjust to significantly changed circumstances (as the current American administration indicated at the end of January 1995 it is beginning to do).

The thesis of this paper is that awareness of these changes is lagging, and that "diplomacy" as an organizing concept can perform a highly useful integrating function at this period in history on theoretical, practical, and even normative levels if academics, professionals and citizens focus on the opportunity. Component elements necessary to create a broader holistic conception of diplomacy have been quietly emerging. Disparate developments in science, religion, and psychology have also potentially strengthened both the need for, and effectiveness of, diplomacy and diplomatic approaches to a whole range of political and social problems. These developments need to be assimilated into diplomacy.

On both normative and practical levels, the rise of religious fundamentalism as a political force and challenge to widely-accepted values has emphasized the need for intercultural diplomacy. At the same time fundamentalism calls into question the post-World War II Western aspirations for a "universal" culture based on what many emerging nations see as an unnecessarily narrow set of values.

The world political and social environment over the past five years has been gradually working free of many of the hierarchical constraints of bloc politics that bound it for 45 years. Values that were not open to question earlier are again on the table. Issues such as economic aid, market access, refugee flows and humanitarian intervention have risen in importance and taken on new dimensions. The breakdown of bipolarism opened the field for more active diplomacy, ending an era of containment which "allowed no role for diplomacy until the climactic final scene in which the men in the white hats accepted the conversion of the men in black hats."2

As the so-called "sole remaining superpower" in a period when superpowerhood has lost most of its meaning, the United States and others face a world in which diplomacy is both less important for direct survival as draconian security threats recede, but even more vital to national well-being and long range prosperity than at any time since the American War of Independence. There is a urgent need to put the post-Cold War period in historical perspective and deepened American understanding of its current historical situation.3

Other changes in the world have also expanded the scope for diplomacy beyond the traditional western perspective which evolved over the past 300 years. The gradual metamorphosis and weakening of the concept of the state, political and economic interdependence and interpenetration, the emergence of multinational (corporate, political and nongovernmental) and subnational (cities, states and provinces) actors, and emergent cultural clashes have not only complicated analysis and removed old guideposts, but opened the way to expand our understanding of what diplomacy means and how it can be practiced.4

It is clear that the relationship between diplomacy and military force is changing as well. Despite the so-called end of the "balance of terror," conflict remains an important target of diplomatic effort. Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans notes that conflict within states now supersedes conflict between states (in 1992, 29 of 30 recognized conflicts were intrastate struggles); Leslie Gelb speaks of "quelling the teacup wars," and notes:

The main strategic challenge for the United States is to develop plans for multilateral action to stem civil wars without drowning in them.5

The increase of terrorism and the potential proliferation of nuclear weapons makes diplomacy even more important in security terms. Moreover, the coordination of diplomacy and force in what are called "Operations Other than War" is becoming a more important issue as the mix of problems confronting world leaders changes. Meanwhile, for less-than-great powers, traditional security concerns continue to require as much if not more diplomacy than before.

Ironically, the United States has a peculiarly unique view of diplomacy that complicates its task. America's understanding of, skill at, and respect for diplomacy has not reached the same level as its competence in defense and corporate finance, for example. David Newsom, three-time Ambassador, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and now Acting Dean of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, put it succinctly:

The American view of diplomacy is a mixture of ignorance of its details, suspicion of its objectives, contempt for its importance and fascination with its romance.6

This stems largely from historical accident. The Golden Age of American diplomacy which flowered during the struggle for independence was followed by a century of isolationism in which suspicion of European diplomacy flowered in the new democracy. The end of isolation in 1917 was not fully accepted by the overwhelming majority of United States citizens until December 7, 1941, and not fully realized in practice until the United States' emergence as the leader of the anti-communist bloc in the 1950's. Today, many again yearn for a return to some form of disengagement.

The ensuing Cold War period left diplomacy relatively frozen vis-a-vis principal adversaries, yet the United States developed a large and active diplomatic/military establishment as part of its hegemonic superpower responsibilities. America now is struggling with a redefinition of its role as well as decisions on how to adjust its organizational apparatus to current realities, including the increasing importance of value issues on which there is but a limited domestic consensus.7 Beginning in the final years of the Bush administration and continuing with a vengeance under Clinton, both criticism and analysis of U.S. foreign policy and operations have reached new heights even as overall intellectual coherence has disintegrated and clarity has been supplanted by controversy.

Ironically, though classical diplomacy was regarded as the province of elite specialists and the United States has remained wary of international diplomacy and diplomats, many of the techniques of diplomacy (stripped of their mystique) are the same ones democratic politicians, labor negotiators, and other communicators use as a matter of course. A paradigm shift which increased the consciousness of diplomatic behavior, particularly as a conflict resolution and a communications tool, would make "diplomacy" both as a concept of management as well as a collection of skills more acceptable and valued and strengthen the hand of those seeking to make and keep peace.

Diplomacy has also spread to the subnational level. In an era where city and state officials and private citizens increasingly and routinely negotiate with foreign governments and businesses, they use "diplomacy," much like the gentleman who did not realize he was speaking prose until one of his literary friends enlightened him. Many techniques of diplomacy are very familiar to experienced negotiators in many fields, and within the past few years a sizable literature on bargaining and negotiation, including cross cultural elements, has evolved.8

For diplomacy to remain an important and effective tool of statecraft and increase its potential for conflict reduction, it needs to be recast. It must be expanded intellectually and philosophically to take account of altered circumstance and related intellectual developments so than its practitioners can broaden the scope for diplomatic action. Consistent with current efforts in science to seek more holistic explanations and linkages that move away from the mechanistic models of the universe that began to loose their explanatory power around the end of the 19th century, diplomacy can more fruitfully be viewed in comprehensive terms that reach substantially beyond its classical dimensions. In short, if the "clockwork universe" model has given way to the organic growth model, new scope for diplomacy has opened up.

Since diplomacy is both functional concept and activity, such a reexamination must draw in theoreticians as well as practitioners and organizational managers. Given the rising importance of ethics, religious issues and cultural differences as value questions, such a recasting should profitably expand to include theologians and cultural anthropologists. This would generate greater understanding of and insight into new varieties of diplomatic problems, value questions, and political challenges coming forward as a result of changing citizen perceptions as well as more pointed challenges: increased political activity by Islamic and Hindu fundamentalists and the emergence of variant economic and social approaches in Japan, the states of the ex-USSR, and elsewhere.

DIPLOMACY AS CONCEPT

Diplomacy most broadly understood can be described as a positive value concept encompassing a set of skills; a preferred way to approach issues at the subnational/national/ international levels. Diplomacy in its conflict resolution and community-building aspects can certainly be argued normatively (as well as studied empirically) as a preferred approach to most political issues, even those alleged to be purely domestic ones. It is normatively preferable to a confrontational approach, and frequently more descriptively accurate. For example, Sam Huntington's thesis might have been more accurately titled " Interaction Among Civilizations" than "Clash Among Civilizations." The latter characterization automatically skews his predictions toward security issues; the former suggests a much broader approach which permits an easier approach into the realm of values and discussion of which human needs are bargainable interests and which are not.9 Why take the narrow road? Few businessmen start out to arrange a deal on confrontational principles; most politicians have to build consensus.

Moving to more philosophical and theological grounds, it is time that international relations and diplomacy caught up with the revolution in science and philosophy underway for the past several decades. The emergence of more organic models emphasizing probability and chance has opened up the prospect of science and religion coming together in a new relationship. Templeton Prize winner Charles Birch's On Purpose and David Bohm's Wholeness and the Implicate Order set forth a new grounding for science. Such material has until now remained far from the diplomatic enterprise, but it has serious implications for it. Diplomatic scholars and practitioners do not necessarily need to get lost in scientific or religious thickets, but they should know that the relationship between the sacred and the secular is shifting significantly in ways which emphasize collaboration and understanding rather than hierarchy and confrontation, just as collegial decision-making is drawing more attention than top-down direction.

An excellent and provocative place to begin is A New Vision of Reality: Western Science, Eastern Mysticism, and Christian Faith, by Father Bede Griffiths, an Anglican Monk who ran an ashram in India for 30 years and was an intellectual soul-mate of American Catholic writer Thomas Merton. Griffiths stresses the common elements in Christian, Islamic, and Hindu theology, and links them to a reborn unity, inclusive of diversity, which he calls the "perennial philosophy." The important difference between this and many religious views (particularly fundamentalisms of all faiths) is its support for contemporary science, rather than challenge to it. The implications for diplomacy among different religious communities are clearly spelled out: with tolerance and understanding based on a holistic concept of the universe, it is much easier to bring other problems into line and to resolve conflict.10 Griffiths offers theological, intellectual and practical reinforcement for the conception of a unity of mankind which could temper excesses of egoism, unbridled sovereignty and dehumanization of peoples.

A logical scheme for bringing these various elements together emphasizes communication and diplomacy, both paradigm and skills, rather than brute force, religious conversion or nationalism. Such an approach may in fact be the best way to deal with destructive identity group conflicts. Given the rising salience of religious issues between peoples, it is fair to say that if religion has much to teach diplomacy in terms of transcendental, if not transnational, issues, then diplomacy has some important dialogue with religion about how to go about dealing with a world in which nuclear violence still makes Armageddon an all too possible scenario. Diplomacy, properly expanded and used, may even significantly help defuse the implacable hostility of the Khomeinis and others. Until now, most diplomatic studies have ignored the impact of religion (except for fundamentalism) on diplomacy. An excellent and balanced study of this phenomenon is now available, which emphasizes the more positive effect of mainstream religious involvement in contemporary diplomacy, such as the Catholic Church's role in the shift to democracy in Poland and Latin America.11 Theologians, led by Dr. Glenn Stassen of Louisville's Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Peter Paris of Princeton Theological Seminary, have already begun work on a thoroughgoing review of "Just War" and "Just Peace" doctrines.

The expansion of national interaction, at least among the larger powers, set in the context of greater interdependence as well as independence, has also opened the way to redefine and question more secular values. The struggle going on within the United States to define what the country stands for -- and what resources it is willing to expend to accomplish which goals -- is being repeated elsewhere: in Europe over Bosnia, in East Asia over North Korean nuclear proliferation, and in Africa over myriad questions of public order.

The primary question regarding American behavior is becoming not how much attention the country will devote to "foreign" affairs, but how it will manage the mix of "intermestic" issues. Although many give lip service to this idea, it is not just the present administration that does not seem to understand that the dividing line between foreign and domestic politics has been dissolving for twenty years. Elitism in diplomacy is fading and public opinion is becoming critical to the value-sorting process in ways it has not been since at least World War II, as a recent study by the American Assembly points out.12 This will inevitably require greater attention to normative questions as well as practical ones. Moreover, the American diplomatic establishment, never well-heeled, has over the past eight years been put on starvation rations and even threatened with a reorganization that amounts to disintegration just as a period of great challenge and ferment is at hand.

Intellectually in international relations, familiar classical conflicts between realism and idealism are being argued out between those who believe in the power-first "neorealistic" school of international relations theory and adherents of National Security Advisor Tony Lake's "pragmatic neo-Wilsonianism" and other like-minded approaches. Both behavioral and normative issues and questions are undergoing renewed attention, and both normative and behavioral scholars each have something to offer the other. Low intensity conflict, big emerging markets, and the clash of paradigms vie for attention.13

The key question of the role of force in international relations and the relationship between force, diplomacy and even ethics is also under reevaluation. Since the Gulf War, traditional questions of what constitutes a "just war"--and even a "just peace"--are being argued afresh.14 Those who traditionally downplay force of any kind are challenged by those such as former Secretary of State George Shultz, who argues against force as a "last resort:"

The use of force, and the credible threat of the use of force, are legitimate instruments of national policy.... The use of force obviously should not be taken lightly, but better use force when you should [italics Shultz] rather than when you must. Last means no other, and by that time the level of force and the risk involved may have multiplied many times over.15

"Diplomacy" is generally viewed as the opposite of "force," and diplomats as compromisers versus the military as fighters. Indeed, all nations' organizational arrangements split the diplomatic and military units into separate departments or ministries. Intellectually as well as practically, however, it is more consistent with reality to consider purposeful interaction as a continuum ranging from informing to persuading, through negotiating and bargaining, to coercing rather than as a dichotomy. Contemporary interest in the continuum of operations from humanitarian assistance to low intensity conflict is often expressed this way. The Patterson School and the U.S. Army War College will be hosting a conference in Lexington on this topic in late September this year; other professional meetings have touched on these issues in the same way.

This return to Clauswitzian first principles is likely to tighten up discourse and force proponents of diplomacy and negotiation to recognize and deal with the element of coercion in every negotiation. Conversely, those who stress the importance of force would be pressed to visualize force as part of a more comprehensive process, helping to curb the American tendency to see both peace and strength in military terms.16 Astute practitioners, both diplomats and military officers, have always understood force and diplomacy are part of a continuum; not everyone does--peace groups, for example, often reject this suggestion. "Bridging the gap" between theory and practice has acquired a new vitality in contemporary circumstances.17

Accompanying the question of using force is the psychological component of both diplomacy and war, the issue of the "enemy." Much exceptional work has been done on this and other psychological aspects of diplomacy as well. Beginning with the idea that negotiation itself takes place with an "other" who may be seen as a friend, neutral or enemy, the idea of Track II diplomacy (also called "citizen" diplomacy) has been developed and used effectively in a number of areas, including U.S.-Soviet relations and the Middle East.18 It was particularly helpful over the past several years in shifting both Palestinian and Israeli attitudes enough to permit the successful 1993 peace accords. Such a focus reduces the tendency to instinctively portray all opposition evil, pressing for both intellectual and practical balance. Too little of this approach has been integrated with more traditional theory and practice, despite the fact that raging ethnic and racial conflicts force this need upon our consciousness.

Cross-cultural studies have come to the fore as religious, ethnic and nationalist issues move up the world political agenda. For example, the United States and Europe have had to face the issue of whether all fundamentalist movements are inherently hostile to basic American values and how best to deal with them if they are/are not.

It is neither necessary nor desirable to enter the often-sterile debates among behavioral and non-behavioral social scientists on empirical versus normative dimensions to recognize that both are in play, and both are necessary for dealing intelligently and wisely with today's world. There is room for everyone's contribution. (From some of the acerbic and frenetic debates in academia, one senses a role for diplomacy, at least diplomacy-as-civility, in this arena as well.) Theorists of all schools have much to be modest about, as John Lewis Gaddis has pointed out is his review of failures to predict the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Russia.19

DIPLOMACY AS ACTION

Diplomacy as behavior, a system of approaching issues and problems, offers less fanatic and lethal, as well as more fruitful, ways to approach both intellectual and practical questions than confrontational approaches do. It helps ground theory in practice, and encourages groups to alter the views of those who define them foremost as the "enemy." It also offers a broader basis from which to approach organizational reform. Renewed interest in ethical issues in international relations also suggests a natural broadening of diplomatic concerns. Multicultural nations such as Russia and India see such considerations as important to their perception of both domestic and international relations. Diplomats can not deal with such issues as Bosnia and foreign assistance without involving the value dimension; hence wise intellectuals and effective policy makers must do so as well. The pressing need is to bring them into better communication with each other in a suitably expanded framework.

On the practical side, particularly in the post-World War II period, there has been controversy over the question of what activities constitute the operational core of diplomacy. In the early post-World War II years, not all students or practitioners accepted giving foreign assistance or an organizing information efforts as "diplomatic" activity, for example. The United States proved flexible and pragmatic in integrating these newer forms of overseas activity into its diplomacy. In the post-Cold War period, even as early as the mid-1980's, the use of political party institutes for instruction in campaign and governing techniques under the aegis of the National Endowment for Democracy, for example, emerged as an extremely useful tool to educate Russia and the other countries of the ex-Soviet Bloc in concepts and skills needed to organize democratic government in a market-oriented world. Over 40 years ago, such aid had to be offered covertly.

As definitional questions shade further into operational ones, it should be reemphasized that the points made above apply to most so-called "domestic" political issues as well as foreign/domestic issues. The heart of democratic politics is the idea that people can be persuaded to support specific policies or candidates, and that compromise is the stuff of politics. The linkages with diplomacy-as-negotiation/bargaining are easy to establish: understanding the other side's position, seeking common ground, bargaining across issues, seeking agreements all can support are the stuff of congressional and local politics. The role of force is less salient in national and local affairs, because the structure of authority backed by legitimate force is more clearly defined and understood, and has time and tradition built in as well. However, lest one think that there is qualitative difference, a look at the breakdown of civic order in many parts of Africa and elsewhere suggests the national/international distinction on the relationship of force and politics, even within states is quickly blurring as well.20

CONCLUSION

Enhancing understanding of diplomacy, moving strategy to the fore and increasing skill at diplomatic behavior and techniques will require major emphasis at intellectual, educational and organizational levels. It also requires specialists to communicate more deeply and effectively with one another. The good news is that this can be done simultaneously and incrementally; the bad news is that we have such a long way to go.

The most difficult task will be the intellectual and educational one. Americans, professional elites as well as citizens, are woefully undereducated, often on understanding foreign cultures and almost always on interconnections between different elements. The gap between the two elsewhere in the world, with more rigid class, status, and educational distinctions are even worse.

Unfortunately, the divisions of specialization in academia do not sufficiently encourage or reward those multidisciplinarians on whom the burden of integrating knowledge falls. Few American universities have courses that deals specifically and in depth with negotiation and bargaining. The few courses that do concern themselves with negotiation and bargaining focus on a limited range -- on labor negotiation or legal arbitration issues. Some family counseling activities focus on negotiation within marriage and the family. This is better than nothing, but a prime task at all levels is to increase knowledge of the basic skills relating to negotiation, bargaining, conflict resolution and community-building.

There is no reason why material on these subjects should not be taught in the average public high school, not just in magnet or college-prep institutions. There is every reason to do so. Many churches recognize the need for instruction in constructive community building. Those who seek a less litigious society should certainly support such activity. Some already do, through mediation and arbitration centers which seek negotiated rather than legal solutions to problems ranging from domestic relations to commercial disputes. The better people are at dealing with each other and resolving conflicts, the smoother entire political/social systems will work.

If enhancing diplomacy to improve negotiation and bargaining is a normative good, then more effort should be expended in this direction. The academic culture is under pressure to produce empirical knowledge; more effort should be given to linkages between normative elements and empirical studies. There has been modest positive movement in this direction over the last five years; there needs to be more.

Support for international education has languished for some time. Funding took its first significant upturn for the better in the United States since 1970 last year with the passage of the 1991 National Security Educational Act (Boren Bill). However, while this laudably provided more funds for international students, its program component focuses primarily on language and area studies. Financial support for broader multidisciplinary efforts, including development of course instruction, role-playing, negotiation and bargaining is lacking. Even the U.S. Foreign Service Institute (FSI) had only ONE course in negotiation among its 60-plus offerings for the second quarter of 1994, and two short ones for the third quarter. Business education is somewhat better, but is just now turning to explore the cross cultural dimension.

Beyond formal educational experiences, professionals in the press and elsewhere should be given incentives to do more work and research in this area. Any professional should be asking himself or herself "What am I doing to keep up with a changing world?" More journalism of a higher order, such as David D. Newsom's regular column on foreign affairs issues for the Christian Science Monitor, and Thomas Friedman's pieces for The New York Times, would significantly upgrade public understanding of diplomacy as well as the relationship of contemporary issues to each other. Such efforts need to be more closely keyed to popular, not elite, issues. Integration of government and business, Japanese-style, has more limitations than originally realized, but breaking down barriers and increasing understanding, in some fashion, between business, government and academia is essential for developing comprehensive understanding of the contemporary world.

On a more institutionalized basis, specific provision should be made for educating state and local officials in the realities of international negotiation and diplomacy. The increasing prevalence of former state officials in national office (Clinton, Reagan, and Carter come immediately to mind) suggests that it is clearly in their own as well as society's interest. Senior-level and middle-level professional seminars should be provided for such officials, perhaps by a consortium of universities and think tanks, including the Council of State Governments. Would the Clinton administration be coming under such fire if its key players, especially many of the neophytes in the White House, had received significant practical instruction in the interconnections between domestic and foreign policy?

Similarly, as so many scholars and practitioners have noted, each new American administration reinvents history. New political appointees certainly need instruction that goes well beyond the scope of this argument, but it should not be beyond the Foreign Service Institute's (FSI) capability to organize some mandatory organizational training for new assistant secretaries and other key political appointees. It would certainly be in the interest of an incoming president to see this done. Much the same thing has already been done for ambassadors and their deputies with very positive results.

In a holistic spirit, the FSI might also consider conducting familiarization courses for journalists and businessmen in the spirit of breaking down institutional barriers and stereotypes, specifically the view of diplomats as "weak-kneed cookie-pushers." The State Department ran a Scholar-Diplomat program for many years which facilitated exchanges and familiarization in that way. Such efforts have been shown to pay for themselves many times over.

A change of paradigm, even just a plain increased general realization that "foreign affairs" now involves substantial non-national and sub-national inputs, are both needed. At a minimum, nations and their component parts need to be aware of what each other are doing. Increased communication and better coordination would enhance effectiveness on both sides and expand the range of policy tools to advance national objectives with maximum consensus.

One good start would be a sustained effort to develop and discuss national goals. There have been several efforts to do this, most broadly with the Rockefeller Commission in the 1960's. None has been an unqualified success. Many believe Americans do not like nor do this sort of thing well, but present circumstances suggest it is worth another try, since the more amorphous value issues are back on the table. Perhaps this should involve not just one commission, but several, including a dialogue within and between Councils on Foreign Relations, foreign policy associations and other such groups. This could be continued over time, and include a broad-gauge effort to analyze the federal structure and federal-state (and local) interaction aimed at a more rational organizational restructuring. Absent such an effort, the body politic will be pushed this way and that by fanciful and unhelpful congressional efforts to abolish the CIA or cut the defense budget in half, and the country will again be left unaware of rising threats and unready to meet future challenges.

At the organizational level, it is again time for a serious comprehensive review of the foreign affairs function across the whole spectrum. Such reviews have been carried out in the defense sphere, beginning with the National Security Act of 1947, and most recently the Goldwater-Nichols reform of the mid-1980's. The initial outputs of the Vice Presidential effort at governmental reorganization announced at the end of January 1995 suggest more a bureaucratic log-rolling, cut-and-paste process rather than a serious study/action mechanism focused on effective reform. Efforts in 1995 by Senator Jessie Helms to force the Clinton administration to accept a downsizing of AID, USIA, and ACDA and the collapsing of two of those organizations into the State Department is a classic example of how NOT to do an effective reorganization which also protects national interests.

Such an effort on the civilian side should begin with, but not be limited to, how the government and other foreign affairs organizations function. The impressive State Department study, State 2000, was a good institutional effort, but limited to suggested organizational reforms within the State Department, NOT integrating the civilian foreign affairs community. Diplomacy, defense and intelligence have to be analysed together. The increasing role of Congress must also be included, particularly the compartmentalizing effects of the committee system as it now exists.

The last 40 years have seen the growth of dozens of think tanks, as well as the development of state and city offices which handle international affairs. Institutional inputs from such institutions are sporadic and often personalized. Such individual contacts are useful, but institutional links are critical. The State Department has one small three-person office to follow non-national governmental affairs, yet important issues, including foreign loans, are often decided at the state level with little or no national input or even awareness. Kentucky's 1989 billion-yen loan from Japan and Illinois' contemporary $100 million loan to Poland come to mind.

Recasting and improving diplomacy will have to be a multifaceted enterprise, but there are practical, intellectual, and normative reasons why it should be undertaken. Academics have a particular role to play in this enterprise, but practitioners are an indispensable component if professional skills are to be developed. A significant effort to look at and educate about foreign affairs must heighten both public and elite awareness of the changing international environment and the expanding importance of diplomacy not only for local, state, and national affairs, but for the international system as well. There is merit in the enterprise, not just the result. Such an attempt will fall short, however, if it is not cast across the broadest possible spectrum and accompanied by an effective intellectual revitalization of diplomacy.

The techniques, skills, habits of understanding that make good diplomats need to be more widely spread in every society, particularly as a counter to religious and ideological zealotry which promotes violent solutions to significant public issues. This is probably the single most important thing that could be done to actively upgrade public participation in foreign policy across the board. Developing the proper organizational structure for this effort to flower is another critical task.

"Diplomacy" as both a conceptual approach to issues and as a set of skills has much to recommend it to help ease chaos and manage the planet. Diplomacy needs to be de-mythologized from its post-Renaissance, state-centered, classical status and given a new vigor. As the world deals with a more probabilistic environment shorn of past ideological rigidities, it is left with significantly fewer reliable anchors for value beliefs and tools for action. Diplomacy can provide some important and effective ones, including restraint on unbridled extremism at home and abroad, as well as some guidelines for shaping organizational and societal change along less violent lines.

FOOTNOTES

1 Harold Saunders, "An Historic Challenge to Rethink How Nations Relate," Ch. 1 in The Psychodynamics of International Relations, Vol I: Concepts and Theories, Vamik Volkan, et al eds. Lexington Books, 1990 and Walter Laqueur, "Save Public Diplomacy: Broadcasting America's Message Matters, Foreign Affairs, vol. 74, January/February 1995, pp. 19-24.

2 Henry Kissinger, "Reflections on Containment," Foreign Affairs, vol. 73, May/June 1994, p. 130.

3 See Godfry Hodgson, "American Ideals, Global Realities," World Policy Journal, vol. X, no. 4, winter 1993-94, pp. 1-6; and Walter Russell Mead, "Lucid Stars: The American Foreign Policy Tradition, World Policy Journal, vol. XI, no. 4, winter 1994-95, pp. 1-17.

4 Henry Kissinger's book Diplomacy, Simon and Schuster, 1994, is an example of the narrow focus of so-called "classical diplomacy." Examples of reaching beyond older forms are The Cold War and After: Prospects for Peace, ed. by Sean M. Lynn-Jones and Stephen E. Miller, MIT Press, 1993; the series in Foreign Affairs on the "Clash of Civilizations," responses and rejoinders in the Summer 1993, Fall 1993 and November/December 1993 issues; and James Der Derian's thorough and thought-provoking On Diplomacy, Blackwell, 1987.

5Leslie Gelb, "Quelling the Teacup Wars," Foreign Affairs, vol. 73, No. 6, pp. 2-6, quote from p. 6; Evans figures from Gareth Evans, Cooperative Security and Intrastate Conflict," Foreign Policy, no. 6, Fall 1994, pp. 3-20.

Indiana University Press, 1988.

7 John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the End of the Cold War, Oxford University Press, 1993, especially chapter 3, which deals with changing moral positions. For an in-depth grappling with structural issues, see Jerel A. Rosati, Joe D. Hagan, and Martin Sampson III, Foreign Policy Restructuring, University of South Carolina Press, 1994

8 Roger Fisher, Getting to Yes, Negotiating Agreement without Giving In, Penguin Books, 1987; Raymond Cohen, Negotiating Across Cultures, United States Institute of Peace, 1991. Even one of the best and most popular self-improvement books, Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Simon and Schuster, 1989, offers the admonition "Think win-win" as its fourth basic principle/habit.

9 See Richard E. Rubenstein and Jarle Crocker, "Challenging Huntington," Foreign Policy, No. 46, Fall 1994, pp. 113-128, for the most powerful riposte to Huntington's argument. Lewis Thomas, in his book The Fragile Species (New York: Collier books, 1992) makes a powerful case for need-conscious politics and foreign policy in chapters 7 and 8.

10 Father Bede Griffith, A New Vision of Reality: Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and Christian Faith, Templegate Press, 1989; especially chapters 1 and 13. Full citations for Birch and Bohm: Charles Birch, On Purpose, New South Wales Press, 1990; David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.

11 Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson, Religion: The Missing Dimension of Statecraft, Oxford University Press, 1994.

12 Daniel Yankelovich and I.M. Destler, eds., Beyond the Beltway, W.W. Norton and Company, 1994, especially chapters 2 and 3.

13 Karen Rasler and William R. Thompson, The Great Powers and Global Struggle 1490-1990, University Press of Kentucky, 1994, offers a superb summary of these arguments in their Ch. 10. Richard Haas, "Paradigm Lost," Foreign Affairs, vol. 74, January/February 1995, no. 1, pp. 43-58 summarizes much the same thing from the policy maker's view.

14 The most recent example of this took place at Gesthsemani Abbey in Kentucky when a combined group of religious scholars, ethics students, and social scientists gathered October 28-30 to begin to formulate such a doctrine.

15 George Shultz, Triumph and Turmoil, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993, p. 345. For contemporary arguments on just war, see James Turner Johnson and George Weigel, Just War and the Gulf War, Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1991, and Johnson's earlier writings on the subject, especially Can Modern War Be Just?, Yale, 1984.

16 Newsom, Op cit., p. 14; Alexander L. George and Gordon A. Craig, two outstanding American scholars, admirably demonstrate the power of such an approach in Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time, Oxford University Press, 1983.

17 The quotation is taken from the title of best current effort to deal with this issue, Alexander George, Bridging the Gap: Theory and Practice in Foreign Affairs, U.S. Institute of Peace, 1993. Richard Shultz, Roy Godson, Ted Greenwood, eds., Security Studies for the 1990's, Brassey's, 1993, deal with some of these same issues in the area of national security and defense.

18 The best compilation of material on this subject, including material by academics, citizens and diplomatic practitioners, can be found in the two-volume work edited by Vamik Volkan, Joseph Montville, and Demetrios Julius, The Psychodynamics of International Relations, Vol I: Concepts and Theories; vol II: Unofficial Diplomacy at Work, Lexington Books, 1990 and 1991.

19 John Lewis Gaddis, "Theory and the End of the Cold War," pp 323-388 in Lynn-Jones and Miller, eds., Op Cit.

20 An excellent, if somber, description of this can be found in Robert Kaplan, "The Coming Anarchy," The Atlantic Monthly, Feb. 1994, pp 44-76.
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