THE ART OF DIPLOMACY

Author: Selman Özdan 

The diplomat should have the ‘right judgment’, ‘a readiness of mind to be able to give a proper answer to matters that are unforeseen’, ‘an evenness of temper’ and should be ‘courteous, civil and agreeable’ . Skilled diplomacy, François de Callieres (the eighteenth century French diplomat and special envoy of Louis XIV) argued , will alleviate distrust and tension among states and is an art that does not permit blunders, infelicities or indiscretion. Impetuous and thoughtless statements, immoderate attitudes and erratic speeches made by presidents or other senior officials may be enough to kill the art of diplomacy and harm international relations. The legal scope of diplomacy requires that state officials who conduct international negotiations should avoid bringing to the table their own personal interests, desire for revenge and ambitions in order to accomplish the main purpose of diplomacy which is the settlement of complex relationships or disputes.

Defining Diplomacy

Diplomacy is a significant instrument of international communication for conducting both complex and regular issues among states. As a system for official dialogue, diplomacy establishes communication channels between states. As a communication technique, diplomacy ‘is an ancient institution and international legal provisions governing its manifestations are the result of centuries of state practice’ (Shaw 2014: 546). From the perspective of the state, diplomacy is an important system for formalising, managing and implementing foreign policy (Berridge and Lloyd 2012) from which it can be scarcely divorced. Morgenthau and Thompson (1985: 563–565) list four tasks that diplomacy must achieve in order to promote the national interests by amicable means and underscore that the following four tasks are ‘the basic elements of which foreign policy consists everywhere and at all times’:

(1) Diplomacy must determine its objectives in the light of the power actually and potentially available for the pursuit of these objectives. (2) Diplomacy must assess the objectives of other nations and the power actually and potentially available for the pursuit of these objectives. (3) Diplomacy must determine to what extent these different objectives are compatible with each other. (4) Diplomacy must employ the means suited to the pursuit of its objectives. Failure in any of these tasks may jeopardize the success of foreign policy and with it the peace of the world (Morgenthau and Thompson 1985: 563-564).

Diplomacy provides the intellectual and peaceful grounds for complex inter-state relations for the smooth functioning relations. It is ‘the application of intelligence and tact to the conduct of official relations between the governments of independent states’ (Roberts 2009: 3). Diplomacy is not only the mediator during states of tension or war, it also serves as a necessary protocol to abide by sovereign equality principles among states and when considering human rights on a global scale. Diplomacy, as the language of peaceful and sustained dialogue, involves inter-state relations or ‘other collectivities on the basis of intermediation, reciprocity and formal representation’ (Spies 2019: 8).

Representation of the state at a senior level abroad is the most essential duty required of diplomacy. This duty involves negotiating solutions to complicated international problems. It follows that the principle purpose of applying diplomacy is ‘to enable states to secure the objectives of their foreign policies without resort to force, propaganda, or law’ (Berridge 2010: 1). Diplomacy offers states an active and formal framework by which to engage inter-state relations. In complex relations among states, diplomatic agents are crucial for peaceful settlement. Hamiton and Langhorne 2011: 264) rightly emphasize that without ‘diplomatic intermediaries of some kind or other a state’s system would be almost unintelligible’. Diplomatic language requires expertise thereof; state agents who conduct international negotiations should master the language of diplomacy and have comprehensive knowledge of the protocols on conducting negotiations. Tension among states may result from failed diplomacy and, more ominously, as Toynbee (1947: 285 cited in Spies 2019: 23) notes, war among states may be the outcome the human race must endure for failures in diplomacy.

Diplomacy is ‘a matter of human skills and judgments’ (Watson 2005: 41). Some leading diplomats, such Kissinger (1957, 1994) and Watson (2005) consider diplomacy to be an art, but one which demands more of the statesman than the analyst, as Kissinger (1994: 27) observes: The analyst can choose which problem he wishes to study, whereas the statesman’s problems are imposed on him. The analyst can allot whatever time is necessary to come to a clear conclusion; the overwhelming challenge to the statesman is the pressure of time. The analyst runs no risk. If his conclusions prove wrong, he can write another treatise. The statesman is permitted only one guess; his mistakes are irretrievable. The statesman’s instrument is diplomacy which is ‘the art of relating states to each other by agreement’ (Kissinger 1957: 326). Diplomacy is ‘the application of intelligence and tact to the conduct of official relations between the governments of independent states or the conduct of business between states by peaceful means’ (Satow 1979:3) Skill, sensitivity or intelligence are not ‘the result of conscious deliberation or reflection’, but these diplomatic skills are ‘background dispositions acquired in and through practice’ (Pouliot 2008: 258).

Since ancient times, diplomatic agents, as peacemakers, mediators or high-level representatives, have been assigned to act and speak on behalf of the state. They were deemed to be the messenger or herald who was the sine qua non communicator among state leaders or other political entities (Bull 2012). Diplomatic agents, as Bull (2012: 173) points out, ‘are specialists in precise and accurate communication’, and are ‘experts in detecting and conveying nuances of international dialogue’.

Senior state officials, such as the foreign minister, president, prime minister, have, without doubt, more leeway than well experienced and professional diplomatic agents to promise and rescind commitments. Further, though state officials are surrounded by far-sighted and intelligent experts, they hold the constitutional power to take substantive decisions without consultation (Spies 2019: 25–26). Senior officials who have a strong background in the field of diplomacy and have a strong knowledge of foreign policy have been proficient at international negotiations and relations.

Diplomacy through Social Media: The Necessity for Courteous Language to Deal with Nasty Situations

Diplomacy is the essential instrument which is employed to conduct international relations, minimize external threats and benefit from opportunities to improve security and promote prosperity of a State (Burns 2019: 21). So, it is a delicate instrument which does not properly work with poor knowledge of diplomacy. To be able to speak the language of diplomacy, an intermediator or negotiator is expected to be skilled in avoiding tension and to settle disputes between parties. However, diplomats or other State officials are, increasingly using a watered-down language whose few and hence inflated words no longer have any true meaning; a consummate consensual language that panders to the taste for tautology and disables contradiction; a discourse which has an answer to everything because it says practically nothing; a language unanswerable because it churns out propositions that leave so much room for interpretation that listeners are free to hear what they hope for. (Young 2007: 85)

Oglesby (2016: 242) remarks that to create authority ‘words are played like strings to hold the tensions between parties until each resonates to the text at its own native frequency, creating harmony’. In the contemporary world order, social media (such as Twitter) provocatively, intriguingly or blatantly sways society’s moral and/or political preferences. Social media is the reality of the contemporary age. State agents are increasingly using social media (Straus 2018) to expand their sphere of influence and social media. According to Duncombe (2017), it has become one of the most effective channels of diplomacy. Duncombe (2017: 547) also remarks that diplomats are ‘increasingly relying on Twitter in their daily practice to communicate with their counterparts’. Presidents, Prime Ministers and politicians also recognize social media as a highly effective channel by which to make policy announcements, pass opinion on current affairs, and generally rally their supporters to their cause or point out the flaws and absurdities in their opponents arguments. However, diplomacy, and particularly its language, fails when it is erratically and untactfully used on social media because this exchange occurs in front of a global audience, and any erratic statement may spark a negative reaction. As Bryant (2012) has noted, ‘the diplomatic world is considered to be one of protocol and discretion, yet an increasing number of foreign policy officials and diplomats are conducting their business in the most public way possible, on Twitter’. Diplomatic failures are not very well received and can even cause dismay within a State. It is the hallmark of Twitter that statements can very quickly reach a very broad spectrum of social media users. Reactions, whether appreciative or derisory, will be posted quickly and in their thousands if the tweeterer is a known figure. Like a viral infection, social media may easily spread millions of items of false, biased and misleading information, resulting in the deprivation of truth. SooHoo (2019: 1) states that the ‘Internet’s tsunami of opinions overwhelm us as we attempt to discern truth. And there are consequences when we swim in an ocean of opinion that obfuscates facts’. For statesmen and diplomats discretion in social media is essential to avoid unintended consequences. Burns (2019: 21), who was an Ambassador of the USA to the Russian Federation, rightly states that diplomacy is ‘by nature an unheroic, quiet endeavor, less swaggering than unrelenting, often unfolding in back channels out of sight and out of mind. Its successes are rarely celebrated, its failures almost always scrutinized’.

In both ancient and modern considerations of diplomacy, courteous language and attitude are necessary, even if what is to be said is unpalatable. As Goldberg (1927: 77) once said, diplomacy ‘is to do and say the nastiest things in the nicest way’. On social media, dialogues, texts or messages can very quickly circulate throughout the world and may lead to misinterpretation, misinformation, hostile attitudes or benightedly spreading news. Even among diplomatic agents, an inadvertent verbal transgression may cause an international conflict and send a sarcastic message to the other state party (Oglesby 2016). International negotiations or foreign policy issues should not be carried out by anyone, not even senior state officials, who do not belong to diplomats’ epistemic community which is ‘a network of professionals with recognized expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within that domain or issue-area’ (Haas 1992: 3). In respect of social media such as Twitter, State officials who do not belong to that epistemic community should either avoid using social media for governmental declarations or always take advice from experts to avoid undermining the art of diplomacy. Social media can easily succumb to information pollution. Social media may not be a reliable source of information because intentional misleading has become ‘fashionable and normalized’ (SooHoo 2019). According to the Pew Research Center (Smith 2018), the vast majority of ‘social media users frequently see people engaging in drama and exaggeration, jumping into arguments without having all the facts’. State officials who indiscriminately feed on the polluted information can make statements which are incorrect, misleading or erroneous. As MacKenzie and Bhatt (2018: 3) state social media ‘seems to be the space in which we see so much evidence for these kinds of epistemic vices’. Social media may allow systematic manipulation with disinformation in respect of statements made by State officials. In respect of foreign policy or international negotiations, misinformation and phony entries on social media can corrupt diplomacy.

State officials who are out with the diplomatic epistemic community should consult their experts in each stage of the negotiations. As Oglesby (2016: 249) states ‘diplomats choose words to be precise enough to communicate clearly to diplomatic interlocutors yet elastic enough to plausibly suggest the alternative meanings the diplomat’s political masters need to manage their domestic politics’. Burns (2019) emphasizes the importance of a diplomat to her/his own country. A diplomat serves as a translator of the world to the State and State to the world. A diplomat serves also as an ‘early-warning radar for troubles and opportunities; a builder – and fixer – of relations; a maker, driver, and executor of policy; a protector of citizens abroad and promoter of their economic interests; an integrator of military, intelligence, and economic tools of statecraft; an organizer, convener, negotiator, communicator, and strategist’ (Burns 2019: 21–22). Those functions can only be realized in the realm of the diplomat’s epistemic community.