Diplomacy as an occurrence has been around since the dawn of history. It is thus, as one would expect, because man has had to interact with his fellow man since then, and before. The earliest written examples appear in Thucydides’ accounts of the Peloponnesian Wars, where one encounters the diplomatic problems between the city-states of Athens and Sparta, and between external states such as the Middle East.
The process was one of protracted negotiation on a bilateral manner. It was state-oriented and was mainly concerned with the notions of war and peace. The meetings were generally held in secret and the results of them were, in the most part, a secret until history illuminated them.
This method of diplomatic conduct continued for a great many centuries, until a slight development was made in Italy in the 15th Century. The studies of people like Machiavelli led to the partial institutionalisation of diplomatic instruments and saw their activities put in the hands of the elites. The motivation behind a certain policy remained very state-centric and was left mainly at the behest of the personal ambitions of the heads of state involved.
This was the system of diplomatic interaction that was used up until the First World War (1914). ‘But while most diplomacy was bilateral, there were brief manifestations of multilateralism. The great alliance formed to resist the Napoleonic bid for European hegemony met in Vienna to shape the peace following his downfall; the Great Powers concerted together to resist tendencies from time to time thereafter; the Congress of Berlin in 1878 struck a series of multilateral deals over the Balkans and the fate of the Ottoman Empire; the European powers collectively carved up Africa; a series of increasingly despairing collective attempts were made in the years leading up to the First World War to handle the tensions caused by the erratic nature of the Kaiser’s diplomacy…’ However, ‘…its usability was gradually undermined by a growing series of bilateral, sometimes secret, alliances which proliferated as the century ended and the international community drifted towards the abyss of 1914.’
‘A little over four years later … The Habsburg, Ottoman, Tsarist and Hohenzollern empires had been swept away. Rightly or wrongly the survivors tended to regard excessive armaments, the absence of collective security and balance of power diplomacy as fundamental causes of the appalling experiences through which they had just passed. A new and powerful player had come on the scene in the form of the United States, with a quite different agenda from the old players, an agenda in which moral factors were given more weight than Realpolitik and under which collective security was to be achieved through a multilateral institution known as the League of Nations.’
This shift in emphasis, further propagated by massive public support and a desire for greater scrutiny of states’ actions led to a further complication of the international system. The international agenda was broadened to include topics such as the welfare state and elements of both high & low politics were discussed within the new forum. Other actors were recognised for their significance as people grew to recognise the changing shape of the global platform and the relative inability for states to handle these issues on their own.
This was the golden era of optimism and liberalism, but it was short-lived. The failure of the United States to ratify its leaders’ own inception meant that the League of Nations became a damp squib and was never able to live up to its desired role. Its failure to prevent conflict in both Manchuria and Abyssinia further highlighted its redundancy, culminating in the Munich Crisis of 1938, and it was not long before the world was witness to the second devastating war in a generation.
One of the most surprising developments to come from the conclusion of WWII was that the victorious powers saw the failures of collective diplomacy as their ineffectual useage, not the theory behind it. As a result, under the guidance of the USA and the UK, the United Nations was born (1944). It was designed to succeed where the League of Nations had failed. The two administrations recognised that it was not the idea that was at fault, but the limited powers and lack of support from one of the world’s foremost powers that had led it to its disastrous fate.
As the global political climate sunk into the Cold War it was heartened by the fact that the new International Governmental Organisation (IGO) was given a fresh mandate; designed to be universally inclusive – pushing the doctrine of ‘collective security for all’. More powers were developed and its scope was widened to include financial, political and military objectives.
The advances in military technology witnessed through WWII served as a wake up call for states and made them aware of the growing possibility of an apocalypse. The term Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was coined and people began to search for new methods of diplomacy. The main focus of all diplomatic exchanges was now the avoidance of nuclear war.
In 1961, deep into the Cold War, diplomacy was codified under the auspices of the Vienna Conference, and suddenly the concept was given more concrete foundations and guidelines. It was explicitly defined and new forms of diplomacy were developed; summit diplomacy; crisis diplomacy and nuclear diplomacy, to name but a few.
The process of decolonisation that followed the conclusion of WWII meant that the number of states increased rapidly. This meant that more and more views had to be taken into account and the idea of multilateral diplomacy was further empowered – the more voices there were, the more potential conflicts there were that could arise.
As the global market increased in size and complexity too, the number of actors also grew. The world was now open to the idea that states and the new IGO were not the only actors on the global stage. The increased economic clout of MNCs meant that they had a valid role to play and an important input to the global system. The changing face of political structures, due to democratisation, meant that public opinion and NGOs also had to be brought into the equation.
After 1991, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cold War was brought to a long-awaited end. In its wake came a wave of democratisation hitherto not witnessed, as state, upon state sought to obtain the living standards that liberal democracies portrayed. The grip of the central forces had loosened and people wanted to experiment with, and enhance, their new freedom. The obvious effect of this increase in open markets led to an upsurge in the global economy and the increased influence of MNCs and NGOs.
In order to give some order and structure to an ever-increasing global platform diplomatic exchanges were made into frequent, multilateral meetings. These meetings, in turn, were structuralized and periodicalised, in order that the growing agenda may be examined and suitable actions be derived and executed.
The bias of diplomacy was shifted from a mainly military one to include a much wider agenda, including; human rights; trade; wealth redistribution; social justice; terrorism and many more. Coupled with this growing scope was the development of more tools in order to be able to combat these issues; tools such as sanctions, embargoes, subversion and military assistance.
To recap, we have seen a drastic change in the diplomatic issues and instruments used by state and non-state actors since its original development. We have moved from state-centric bilateral alliances to a universal, multi-levelled diplomatic scale with more than simply the interest of states and war in mind. The question then remains, what effect, if any, has this had on international order?
Let us consider some contemporary incidents on the international stage in the hope that we may be better able to answer this part of the question. The problem here is which ones to pick, as covering all of them is well beyond the scope of this essay and the choice of events has a knock-on effect to the conclusion that one may draw. For the sake of balance we shall analyse The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), The Arab-Israeli Conflicts (c1914-) and the Iraq War (1991 & 2003); each one impacting on the way we look at diplomacy and each one different in the diplomatic instruments used and the effects they had on the events.
The Cuban Missile Crisis is remembered as possibly the closest point we have ever come to a nuclear war. During October 1962 America, who had failed to run a successful coup against Cuba, were flying spy missions over Cuba in an attempt to gauge its military capabilities and assess its threat. They found evidence of missile silos and armaments and were concerned as to how they had been developed and from where they had come.
It was not long before they had found the source of Cuban aid – the USSR. What followed was a series of diplomatic exchanges between the US and the USSR to try and reach a conclusion that was mutually agreeable. Threats were made, sanctions imposed and conciliatory offers given. None of these worked and the world edged ever-closer to what seemed to be the only conclusion, nuclear war.
In the end, the two powers averted war through mutual cessation and agreement, with the dire consequences of nuclear war ever-present in their minds. It was a real victory for diplomacy. No lives were lost, no shots fired and both sides came away with concessions from the one another that made them happier in their own security.
‘The Arab-Israeli conflict produced six wars between groups of people asserting different national identities, but claiming the same small, postage-stamp-size of land.’ It rests on the differing claims of legitimacy that each faction maintains - the Jews believing that they have a biblical right to the area, which had been theirs up until around AD70, the Arabs responding that they have lived there for many centuries. Throughout the conflict many leaders (from both the factions and across the globe) have attempted to resolve the issue.
The UK and the UN sought to resolve the issue by using a partition, ensuring that both sects were legitimised and protected within their own boundaries. The Israelis were happy with the idea, but the Arabs were not. As a result a series of bloody conflicts ensued and continue to this day.
Despite several attempts to prevent bloodshed and animosity, through new techniques and mounting pressures the issue remains contentious and hostile. Mediators have been brought in, force has been threatened, and used, by many actors, terrorist acts have been employed and neighbouring states have had their say too, all for to no avail. This, like the issue in Northern Ireland, illustrates how even the use of the extreme measures of diplomacy (negotiations to war) can have limited effects if the parties involved do not wish to cooperate.
In 2003 we were witness to the second attack on Iraq in just over 10years. In August 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait, claiming that it had an authentic, historical, claim on the land. The UN rallied to Kuwait’s defence (under the doctrine of collective security) and a series of measures were discussed. Embargoes and sanctions were desired by the majority of the UN, but the US was unsure whether this course (which it estimated would take a year to have an effect) was the most expedient.
Washington championed the idea of coercive diplomacy, with military threats. America got its wish, and in November 1991 war ensued. At its conclusion, the UN sought the removal of all weapons of mass destruction from Iraq and a comprehensive program of arms inspections and destruction was executed.
Just over ten years later, in September 2003, Iraq was at the centre of another UN posit – should military action be taken in order to assure the world that weapons of mass destruction were no longer in the hands of Iraq? Many members of the UN believed that this was not necessary and that more peaceful diplomatic means should be followed.
The USA and the UK disagreed and as a result they launched a unilateral assault on Iraq in order to quash the dictatorship, install a democracy and remove all weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. To this day no such weapons have been found, the country is no closer to a democracy and the former president, Saddam Hussein, remains at large and unaccountable to the world stage.
‘The contrast between the first and second halves of the 20th century remains a striking and salutary one. The role of multilateral diplomacy and the international structures and disciplines it has created and operated must receive much of the credit for it…but [it] would be unwise to regard multilateral diplomacy as a panacea… For one thing its structure and disciplines remain relatively weak and public support fragile and episodic.’ This succinct statement illustrates the complexity of the question in hand – one can quite easily say that the second half of the 20th century was less ravaged by ‘world’ war, but were the effects any less horrific?
It is true that that diplomacy has changed a great deal over the last 50-100years. However, the extent to which these developments are responsible for the relative calm that Hannay speaks of is questionable. There are many more ongoing conflicts in this era than ever before and the ability for IGOs to impose order still rests upon the ratification of major players in order for it to be a success. Until this changes, and the international institutions are further empowered and respected we cannot possibly talk of diplomacy having any impact on international order.
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One should take care to remember that the types of diplomacy used in any situation should always be examined within its immediate social, political and economic context. There are numerous external factors that should always be heeded and respected in these cases and concentrating on diplomacy and diplomatic changes, although useful and interesting, does not, on its own, serve to answer the question about international order wholly.
For structural reasons, that will become apparent, the terms shall be defined in a different order to that developed in the question.
One country may enjoy a level of economic order not witnessed by the rest of the globe or a state may wish to remain out of a war that involves many other states in the world. Conversely, a state’s form of constitution could be rocked and have an impact on the, otherwise stable, global picture.
Sinclair J.M. - The Collins English Dictionary (1997): Diplomacy.
Developed from ideas in discussion with Dr. M. Doctor and through readings of Hannay D. - The growth of multilateral diplomacy (1996); Jackobsen P.V. – Western use of coercive diplomacy (1998) (Ch. 1, 2 & 7); and Nye J.S. – Understanding international conflict (1997) (Ch. 1, 2, 6, 7 & 8).
This re-iterates the initial proposition that we must look at any ‘diplomatic situation’ within its relevant social, political and economic context; otherwise we would not be looking at the whole picture.
Thucydides’ ‘History of the Peloponnesian War’ (c.400BC).
The first embassies were erected and the idea of having a ‘diplomatic career’ was planted.
Hannay D. - The growth of multilateral diplomacy (1996): Pg. 4
A concept developed by Kaiser Wilhelm II during the period 1888-1918, defined as, ‘policy without morals’.
Hannay D. - The growth of multilateral diplomacy (1996): Pg. 5
The introduction of International Governmental Organisations (IGOs), the League of Nations being the first, was seen as a step forward in aiding states.
For the same reasons as during the Cold War, but now witnessed on a much larger scale.
The War of Independence (1948); The Suez Crisis (1956); The Six Day War (1967); The War of Attrition (1969); The Yom Kippur War (1973) and the Invasion of Lebanon (1982). There have been many more acts of violence and terror between these two factions, but these are the only ‘wars’ that have been witnessed in the 90yr period.
Nye J.S. – Understanding International Conflicts [Longman (1997)]: Pg 151
The British set up a Royal Commission (1936) and recommended partition. In 1947 the UN were called in to control proceedings. They passed resolution 242, re-iterating the idea of partitioning.
The totality of war previously gave a clean, fresh, start to the conclusion of a dispute. Now there can be observers, negotiators and many more bodies involved, in many levels, for years after a conflict.
As with the topic of human rights.
