21^st Century Diplomacy

Ernst Sucharipa [1]

To Abba Eban, the late great Israeli statesman and diplomat, we owe the rediscovery of the following statement which he attributes to President Jefferson: ”For two years we have not heard from our ambassador in Spain; if we again do not hear from him this year, we should write him a letter”[2]. Many things have changed in diplomacy since then. And yet, the diplomat’s craft[3] has an astounding potential for survival. Its more or less imminent death has been predicted many times, mostly in the context of revolutions in communications technology. Today, of course, we think of the World Wide Web and its consequences for a profession, which relies so much on words and knowledge management. But in all likelihood the advent of the telegraph was even more decisive. When the first dispatch sent by cable reached his desk in Whitehall, Lord Palmerston is reported to have exclaimed: ”This is the end of diplomacy”. Similarly, Queen Victoria, when consulted whether the British Legation in Rome should be elevated to the status of full Embassy, is said to have immediately rejected this proposal because, in her assessment, given the new telecommunication techniques, the time for ambassadors, their pretensions and privileges were definitely over. [4] Here, of course, Her Majesty was wrong.

Diplomacy today is vastly different from what it was in the 19th century; it will continue to evolve and change. Tomorrow’s diplomacy will be even further removed from the famous pictures of the dancing Congress of Vienna, where the foundations for the structure of diplomacy for many decades, indeed for two centuries, were laid. At the height of the rigged elections in Zimbabwe earlier this year, the International Herald Tribune carried a picture that contrasts perfectly with the images the Congress of Vienna has left on our minds. It shows Pierre Schori, the Permanent Representative of Sweden to the UN and former Secretary of State for Development Affairs, who was head of the EU election-monitoring group, after his eviction from Zimbabwe.[5] He is in jeans and leather jacket, one hand grasping a wad of documents and in the other his mobile phone, standing all alone on what is obviously a busy London street, reporting to his EU superiors on the situation in Zimbabwe. Modern diplomacy will be more of this than the dancing type.

This contribution will deal with the following issues:

· what has changed, what will continue to change in diplomacy as a profession and in the environment in which it operates;

· what are the requirements for diplomacy in a ”globalized” world;

· how does modern information technology effect the organization of foreign services;

· what will the future of European diplomacy look like; what are the tools for the diplomat in the new 21st century, what qualifications must he (or increasingly often she) bring to this profession; what do they have to be taught, what do they have to train themselves in?

Changed interstate structures

With recent additions, the membership of the UN now totals 191 Member States, nearly four times the number at its foundation in 1945. This multiplies the instances of possible interactions between states, still the primary, but no more the sole subjects of international relations. At the same time some traditional categorizations have lost their meaning (East versus West) or tend to forego significance (North versus South). Others are becoming essential: rich versus poor, inclusion or exclusion from the process of globalization; good governance versus undemocratic, dictatorial regimes.

More and more states are members of an increasing number of international organizations to which they delegate – to varying degrees – the administration not only of foreign policy but also of economic, social, environmental issues and other areas hitherto exclusively in the domain of domestic politics. Some states have clear federative structures and their federal entities are also, at least to a limited extent, active on the international scene. Regional structures often transcend national boundaries and become internationally relevant.

New international actors

States have lost their monopoly as subjects of international law. Today, international organizations and other entities are recognized as agents under international law. In addition, a host of other international actors, irrespective of their legal status are relevant for our observations: business is active across national and international borders; multinational enterprises can boast balance sheet numbers that, individually, leave the GNPs of smaller and medium sized countries far behind. More than 15.000 NGOs (non-governmental organizations) directly involve themselves in international affairs[6].

Institutions like the International Red Cross, Amnesty International, Médecins sans Frontières, Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch and also religious organizations can look upon strong international public support for their activities. They act through staff that today no doubt also fulfill many functions similar to those of diplomats. Indeed, they probably would qualify as diplomats, if they wanted to. The UN-organized world conferences held at Rio, Vienna, Beijing, Cairo, Kyoto, Monterrey and Johannesburg have become examples for the active engagement of NGOs in international affairs. Many important areas of today’s international relations (human rights, development cooperation, environmental politics, sustainable development and others) would be unthinkable without the active contribution of the NGO community.

Their activities are enforced by new phenomena such as international ”movements” comprising individuals, NGOs, interested States and individual representatives of public opinion which, acting jointly, pursue important international agendas: the Landmine Convention (Ottawa convention) would never have been concluded without such an international movement. The same holds true for the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court.

All in all we see a multitude of different actors engaged in international affairs[7]. To a considerable extent the lines between them tend to become blurred; they share common tasks and interests, they are interconnected, they initiate action and reaction. Attempts by traditional diplomacy to shut out NGO activities are short sighted. More often than not NGOs help to advance causes, which will shape the future of international relations or help to address future global challenges. In addition they can represent a democratic element much needed for diplomacy to retain its legitimacy. Of course, their participation on the international arena also raises a number of important questions, in particular as to their accountability and representativity.[8] But the fact remains that to a large extent NGOs indeed represent international civil society and move issues forward. The same goes for important international enterprises that have started to acknowledge corporate social responsibility (CSR) and have joined the UN’s global compact initiated by Secretary General Kofi Annan.[9]. In his study on ”Polylateralism and New Modes of Global Dialogue”[10] Geoffrey Wiseman proposes that ”traditional state-centered bilateral and multilateral diplomatic concepts and practices need to be complemented with explicit awareness of a further layer of diplomatic interaction and relationships. Accordingly, the diplomat of the future will need to operate at the bilateral level, the multilateral level and, increasingly, the polylateral level (relations between states and other entities).”

In addition it can well be argued that we soon will enter a phase in which the “monopoly” of states in the conduct of foreign affairs will be further reduced to the extent that more and more actors will no longer depend on states to represent them or their interests abroad.[11] Many entities other than states already today conduct their own “foreign policy”. The agents helping them to do so will need many of the skills usually associated with “traditional diplomats”. “Post-modern” diplomacy might therefore become a profession, which also includes agents not engaged in the service of a state but of international organizations, NGOs, business, sport federations and other entities operating on the international level.

Foreign Policy goes national

Today, foreign policy issues tend to dominate the newspapers in Europe, but more and more so also in the United States and elsewhere. Foreign policy actors have become public figures. Foreign policy is open to day-to-day public scrutiny and criticism. For the diplomat this means that she or he is also becoming more or less directly answerable to the public. The public expects explanations, journalists need to be given background interviews, Parliaments ask for information. Many foreign policy issues have fully entered into the domain of national and even regional and local politics. Foreign policy today has to do with many issues in our daily lives. What used to be ”low politics” (as against ”high politics”) has become normal work for the foreign policy agent: regulations for trade and investment, addressing environmental issues, regulating entry into the country and dealing with problems of migration, finding solutions to questions of road transit often endangering the living conditions of many people.

At the same time, for all these issues there are domestic ministries, experts in other government offices who increasingly are also establishing foreign contacts. They are directly interacting with their homologues in other countries and are regularly traveling to international conferences. This situation is bound to clash with the traditional ”gatekeeper” function[12] of foreign ministries, which hinges on the (false) assumption that domestic and international affairs are conducted in two very different political arenas. In the age of globalization foreign ministries would be ill advised if they tried to maintain this claim as justification for their existence. If insisted upon too long, other ministries will simply bypass Foreign Affairs. It is not realistic to assume that in today’s world the Ministry for the Environment or the Ministries for Justice and for Home Affairs, just to take a few examples, will not have international contacts and that a modern diplomat can be an expert on detailed issues of environmental policy, or judicial and home affairs.

But the diplomat has to be able - on the international level - to assess the political consequences and possible trade-offs of a specific action or non-action in those areas of policy. This assessment can then lead to instruments of traditional diplomacy, e.g. if certain measures have to be explained or a demarche has to be delivered to the host country[13]. Diplomats have to learn this new mode of cooperation with their colleagues from other ministries. Modern diplomats must learn to share their competence with other officials if they do not want to become redundant[14]. They have to take great care to make clear to their colleagues from line ministries what exactly the added benefit they can provide is.

Managers of globalization

The globalization of international relations, the internationalization of national policy areas and the growing awareness, that global problems require global solutions signify new important functions for diplomacy. Diplomats have become ”managers of globalization”; they are tasked to manage the ”global village” in which we live[15]. Disarmament, arms regulations, the fight against international terrorism, crime and drug abuse, the protection of human rights, the prevention of climate change and desertification, the promotion of sustainable development, conflict prevention, development cooperation, peace keeping, peacemaking, and peace enforcement, the protection of foreign investments, foreign trade issues… the task list for these ”managers of globalization” appears to be endless. The concept of ”Global Public Goods” developed recently by Inge Kaul and others[16], which would typically include issues like disease control, crisis prevention, harmonization of norms and standards, helps to explain the workload of diplomats in the 21^st century.

Diplomats need to follow developments in these fields proactively, to shape them, to involve public discourse and to give advice to decision-makers on the political levels. They need to be aware of global trends and interests and what they mean for their home country. These tasks are carried out through a combination of bilateral, multilateral and ”polylateral” diplomacy[17] (Wiseman), the latter including - in some structural way – NGOs, advocacy groups and other non-official entities. This development again calls for efforts to bridge the traditional divide between domestic and foreign affairs with foreign affairs moving beyond “gate keeping” to “coordinating” cross border relations.[18]

In the context of multilateral diplomacy the current stage of transatlantic relations is a cause of concern for many intellectuals on both sides of the ocean. There is a real difference in the approach to international law, international organization and multilateral diplomacy. This divergence of views can be exemplified by a number of examples. Among them: reduction of environmentally harmful CO2-emissions (Kyoto Protocol); the establishment of an International Criminal Court; the right of diplomatic protection for citizens of one state, living in an other country,[19] unlawful trade restrictions (WTO-rulings against the United States); and last but by no mean least: the issue of international legality in dealing with Iraq’s program of weapons of mass destruction. On all these fronts we witness an increasing continental drift.

Certainly this tendency has been reinforced by the terrorist attacks of 9/11 that struck US territory and US but also many non-US citizens. Immediate reactions worldwide and specifically in Europe left no doubt about the general condemnation of these atrocious acts and about the willingness to combat, jointly with the US, all manifestations of terrorism. NATO, for the first time in its history invoked Art.V of its constitution, the Washington Treaty of 1949, declaring these attacks an attack on all NATO members. More than a year later, it appears that this chance for a truly common approach - for reasons that still need to be scrutinized - was not used to the full extent. Too many misunderstandings have been assembled on both sides of the Atlantic. They need to be thoroughly discussed in order to achieve not only a better understanding of each other’s positions but also to bring both sides back to resolute action on the basis of their shared common values. The core of the transatlantic ”malaise” (to use a diplomat’s word) can be found in the perception of the USA as a truly exceptional country, or Polis, as the ancient Greek would have said. This ”city on the hill” (or as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright used to say ”the indispensable nation”) will not easily succumb to international regulations, that is regulations among peers. This common American view contrasts with the Westphalian European model of an international system constituted by sovereign equals.

The most obvious manifestation of these two different models can be seen in the approach to the possible use of force outside a Security Council mandate. In the eyes of most Europeans, rule of law is paramount also on the international level and the UN’s Security Council holds the ultimate legal power to legitimize the use of force against a state that breaks international rules and regulations[20]. For the ”exceptionalist” United States such subordination is neither conceptionally right nor politically practical. Hence, the impression, generally shared in Europe, that Washington - while not totally averse to multilateral action - is only willing to engage in a policy of ”multilateralism à la carte.”

Modern means of communications

For many observers, the modern means of electronic communication constitute the most obvious structural change to the environment in which diplomats operate[21]. The diplomat will never win in a speed race against the journalist. Nor should he or she. The press is not the enemy. The media and diplomacy need to be seen as complementary to each other; they also depend on each other.[22] The modern diplomat is aware of that and will consciously integrate the press into his daily work.

Diplomats will use their special confidential contacts, the empathy they have developed vis-à-vis the receiving state and its political class to report on long term trends, analyze developments and, more importantly, to propose modalities for reaction, to describe scenarios for future developments and also to sound warnings if these developments may be disadvantageous or even dangerous for the interests of his or her own country. Diplomats must have the courage to also be the bearers of bad news, although many of their predecessors in ancient times suffered direly from such actions. In particular, diplomats should also have the necessary integrity to use their foreign vintage points to signal developments back home that may harbor problems for the future of their country’s interests.

The effects of information technology (IT) on the operation of the diplomatic service

At first glance it might look as if diplomacy has not changed all that much due to the advent of IT, as if diplomacy were to resist change. To some extent this is true, since there are no doubt retarding factors, such as a slower generational change in comparison to the business sector but also the particular relevance of the temporal factor in diplomatic procedure. In diplomacy, probably more than in other professions, a fast decision is not necessarily the best decision. Most importantly, however, we should keep in mind that - again in diplomacy more than in other professions – human input, the human factor has considerable importance. Thus personal contacts, human expertise and experience, in-built controls and feedback mechanisms, characteristic for diplomatic procedures and not necessarily fast or highly efficient, will continue to exert influence over diplomacy making the re-engineering of diplomatic procedures a more subtle and complex exercise[23].

At the same time even in very traditional diplomatic services many changes due to the advent of IT have already occurred, sometimes not easily noticeable since they follow trends that we are observing also elsewhere in society. Some changes are in the early beginnings, so that their true impact has not yet gained too much attention within the diplomatic community. In the following, in view of their likely importance in the near future, these developments and emerging trends will be described in some detail.

Internet as information tool for the diplomat:

Today it has become quite standard for the modern diplomat to have a tailor made mosaic consisting of the web sites of different national and international news agencies on his or her computer desktop or laptop and to consult them first thing in the morning. Secondly, every diplomat needs to have the homepages of all organisations and institutions, relevant for his work, ready on her or his list of ”favourites”. Diplomats today will be electronically connected with colleagues all over the world and thus can quickly and informally gather important information. A tremendous shift in the main focus of diplomatic work occurs: no more factual reporting, no tele-copying of documents that in former times would have been obtained only after using a lot of diplomatic charm on some insider. Internet access increases the amount of information readily available. However, this information needs to be sorted and also be put in context. Factual reporting is best left to the public media. Diplomacy, even more than it has done hitherto, must concentrate on in depth analysis and drafting recommendations for action and reaction

While information gathering has become so much easier, information management has and will continue to become much more important. The days of the old filing procedures are gone; new electronic procedures need to be worked out and established. They need to make collected and saved information accessible to all those within an organisation who need to have access to them. The danger that only highly personalised storage systems are developed must be countered. Easier information access brings more knowledge, which must be administered and managed well. Information managers need to be educated and given adequate places in the hierarchy of foreign ministries.

Let us turn now to the question of working procedures within a ministry: what has the introduction of Intranet systems changed, where will the development go?[24] In the Austrian Foreign Service today, as a matter of course, every officer up to the highest echelon and the great majority of officers abroad are linked up and have easiest electronic access to each other. In addition to electronic mail, electronic files have been introduced in the ministry; speeding up the decision making process without paper that has to be moved up and down the ministry’s scale of hierarchy.

The introduction of Intranet-systems has brought about most important changes for the diplomatic service. Among them:

- direct contacts between all officers, without the need for prior authorization, to get a message, an inquiry, an information note out or to get it received. The welcome results are higher motivation, no loss of time and greater sense of responsibility among younger colleagues;

- development of an informal reporting style;

- teamwork: officers can – independently from their geographic location – work together on a report to the minister, a draft statement, a position paper. The strict delineation between central authority and missions abroad is slowly vanishing;

- ministerial structures and lines of command at missions are being redefined, flatter authority, more delegation of responsibility are necessary by-products;[25]

- introduction of task-oriented structures independent of the physical location of the diplomats involved: limited and geographically dispersed experience or academic background in particular areas (e.g. international law) can more easily be pooled together electronically, thus also creating incentives for the continuous upkeep of specialisation (particularly important for smaller services);

- the introduction of Intranet systems leads to flatter lines of authority and increased possibilities for team working. Task-oriented organisation will change the relationship between the ministry and missions abroad;

- missions ought to be better integrated into the overall structure of the ministry, including decision making;

- integrated resource management needs to preserve the standard functions of missions abroad in relation to their geographic location and combine these functions with new tasks relating to the available expertise in individual missions, which can be employed for specific projects.

Within the EU the ”COREU” system (Correspondence Européenne) is used for exchange of information and position shaping in the context of the Common foreign and Security policy (CFSP). All foreign ministries, the Council Secretariat and the Commission are interconnected. Per year some 13.000 COREUS are exchanged. Over the last years this number has undergone a steady but fairly slow increase. The number of COREUS initiated by individual countries figures between app. 300 and 700 according to size and related foreign policy importance. Countries holding the rotating presidency generate higher numbers of COREUs. The COREU-System has quickly developed into an excellent information network, an important means for substantial co-ordination and an operative tool to draft and finalise position papers, EU Statements and demarches.

Hyperlinks:

With the further advance of IT the technique of using hyperlinks in reports and information notes will provide additional opportunities. Hyperlinks can lead the reader towards specific paragraphs of a document, background material or other related reports. This technique, once accepted has the potential of reforming substantially the format of reporting and information sharing.

Web-sites:

As a matter of course most Foreign Ministries and more and more individual missions nowadays maintain their own web sites. They assume important information functions: presentation of leading personalities, photographs and CVs, lists of embassies and opening hours, what to do if you are about to become a ”consular case” in a far away country. In addition web sites can be used as policy oriented tools to:

- provide important statements and position papers with some background note (hyperlink);

- put more information within easy reach of visitors: statistics, archival sources;

- publicise position-papers;

- guide visitors through indication of useful links;

- create interactive programmes to generate interest in foreign policy issues or to sound out public opinion, web-chats with the minister, letterbox, etc.

Web-sites assume an important function in the ”representation” of a country, one of the traditional functions of diplomacy. Web-sites need to be professionally developed and maintained. There has to be close co-ordination of the ministry’s central web-site and those of missions abroad to prevent contradictions and in order to demonstrate corporate identity.

Negotiating per Internet:

Within the EU there is by now a fairly well established and totally unspectacular use of the email-system: in many domains EU foreign policy co-operation occurs through working groups. They meet at more or less regular intervals in Brussels. In between meetings, members of the group quite successfully are in contact with each other by COREUs, or less formally, by email and comment on a draft, which might have been established by the chairman of the group (presidency delegation). When they meet again, they have a text on which a fairly large extent of agreement has already been established and in their discussion they can concentrate on the remaining points of divergence.

Techniques for group editing of texts make it possible to integrate IT even more in the negotiating process. There is, however, as yet only limited reported practical experience on the usage of information technology for negotiations. The author has experienced some of the advantages of the tools provided by modern technology for the conduct of complex negotiations when in 2000 and 2001 he served in a pro bono function as the head of the Austrian negotiating team on the issue of restitution of property rights to victims of the national-socialist Regime in Austria. This experience was encouraging enough to recommend the wider use of this tool in diplomatic practice. The conclusions summarized here are drawn from that recent experience.

Negotiating per Internet - Advantages:

- concentration on content and substance, no ”emotional noise”;

- clarity, lucidity of formulation, less misunderstandings;

- facilitates comparison of texts proposed;

- transparency, easy to maintain record of proposals made and revisions added;

- time factor: each delegation can work according to its rhythm, time difference can be turned into advantage;

- easy and reliable method of establishing the final text;

- more than two parties can participate;

- cost efficient

Preconditions:

- partners must share a common view on the purpose of the negotiations and the timeframe;

- ground-rules need to be established (who are the active negotiating partners? with whom can you share the text? who establishes the final text?)

- it helps to have a central facilitator who maintains control over the process and convenes meetings in person, when needed;

- basic trust among negotiating partners must have been established in prior face-to-face meetings and further personal meetings at regular intervals will be needed to advance the process;

- within delegations there has to be a clear understanding about delegation of authority (once a proposal has been made electronically it cannot be easily withdrawn); as head of delegation you must be comfortable with a fairly flat structure of hierarchy within your team;

Knowledge management[26]:

Modern communications technology offers the diplomat easy and fast access to broad areas of information and speedy and reliable methods of transmission. Information gathering has thus become easier, its management, however, more difficult at the same time. The problem, of course, is known in fields far beyond diplomacy: how to filter out from the bottomless resources of the World Wide Web the information that is reliable and useful; how to connect different streams of information to a coherent whole? Modern organizations have to change from being one in which you are rewarded for how clever you are in obtaining information to an organization in which you are rewarded for how useful the information is to the team. The fact that information is so much at the center of diplomatic activity makes this a primary challenge for the diplomat.

The easy access to information and the more ”democratic” means of information transfer offered by the Internet and Intranet also change (or at least need to change) the structures of foreign ministries and the relationship with and among representations abroad. The flow of information can no longer be monopolized and hierarchically controlled. In modern diplomacy, as in the modern business world, we need flatter hierarchies and the encouragement of teamwork, going beyond traditionally established boundaries and partitions of labor between the central authority and the field. In his famous book ”The Lexus and the Olive Tree” Tom Friedman recounts the advice he received from a seasoned businessman: ”We are not saying that headquarters doesn’t matter. But we are redefining what the center means in ways that are more inclusive, in ways that allow us to move faster and be more responsive. Any hierarchy that bases itself on denying information to its employees is not going to work. Now it has to be much more of teamwork”. The use of electronic communication seems to have the inherent result of not only calling for but also facilitating teamwork and a broadening of organisational structures. Substantive authority has to replace formal authority. Only those services, which are willing to bring such changes about, will be able to fully make use of the emerging vast new possibilities

The public diplomat

Many of the above mentioned developments (the nexus between diplomacy and internal politics, the broadening of issues to be dealt with by diplomats, the communication revolution and others) have helped to give prominence to a rather new concept in foreign relations: public diplomacy[27]. The diplomat today is above all a communicator and mediator of positions of his/her own country vis-à-vis all sections of the politically informed public in the host country. The main business is no longer discreet and confidential dealings with the foreign ministry of the host country but public diplomacy aimed at explaining and canvassing support for positions among government circles, parliament, the political parties, the business community, the social partners, the media and representatives of academic and cultural life. For this the diplomat must build up and cultivate a dense and stable network of contacts in all areas of society with a view to becoming actively involved in shaping public opinion in the host country.

More than elsewhere this holds true for the relationship between individual countries of the European Union, but certainly also in places like Washington, where the art of public diplomacy has developed out of the more traditional networking and lobbying business and where today public diplomacy literally reaches the sky. A recent article in the International Herald Tribune carried the telling title: ”Construction boom; ambassadors compete; building castles to keep profile high in Washington.”[28]

European diplomacy

Within the EU it has become fairly routine for some politicians (usually from opposition parties) and journalists to question the need for maintaining national embassies in the capitals of other EU Member States. And indeed with so much political activity being concentrated in Brussels and with the aspirations of forming a common foreign and security policy, the continued maintenance of national embassies might appear simply to be the perpetuation of an old and certainly costly habit and hence needs explanation.

Why then do we need bilateral embassies in the other EU countries?[29] This question so much vexed the German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, that in 2000 he commissioned a special study on this issue to be carried out by Ambassador Paschke, a former high level German diplomat and Inspector General (Office of Internal Oversight Services, OIOS) of the United Nations.[30] Ambassador Paschke, some will say not surprisingly, concluded that bilateral embassies remain most relevant, but are undergoing important changes in their activities with the following focal points:

· observing developments in public opinion in the receiving state which impact on decision making on European issues;

· analyzing long term trends, especially in regard of attitudes towards European integration;

· influencing (through direct contacts and public diplomacy) the national preparation of decision-making in Brussels;

· continuing to represent the intellectual and cultural identity of their home country in what will remain a ”Europe of Motherlands”;

· promoting scientific cooperation;

· promoting trade;

· serving as public relation agencies in a Europe where networks will become ever more important; and

· providing consular services, especially for long- term residents.

Thus for the mid term future bilateral embassies in EU countries will remain important for the pursuance of number of essential activities.

Another consideration has to do with a phenomenon, which Ambassador Paschke termed the ”illusion of familiarity”. Often the usefulness of the modern diplomat is put into question because of the close relations politicians develop with each other, their frequent meetings in the UN at regular conferences and even more so within the EU or in other regional settings. The European Union is the primary example of these ”class room” relationships. And indeed, the personal networks of politicians, the ease with which, for example, they can resort to the telephone are fairly new developments in international relations. Frequent, periodic meetings generate the feeling of intimate knowledge not only of the politician as colleague but also of his or her thinking, his or her motives and the background of decisions provided by their home country.

However, more often than not this is a superficial felling, void of deeper analysis and knowledge about the circumstances leading to certain situations and decisions. ”Proximity has not produced intimacy.” (Paschke)