On the Manner of Practising the New Diplomacy

Résumé du livre

He was the first ambassador to present credentials to President Nelson Mandela, and for two years in a row (1997 and 1998), Johannesburg's leading newspaper, The Star, selected him among the 100 most influential personalities in South Africa Abstract The traditional model of diplomacy, founded on the principles of national sovereignty and of statecraft, is becoming less relevant as a field of new, [...] Commentators often consider this new environment in which diplomats operate in terms of "addons" to the traditional diplomatic functions of the old "club diplomacy." Far from being mere "add-ons" to the tried and true ways of practising the diplomatic craft, I argue that the changes brought about by globalism and the forces that are reshaping the international system require a radically new approa [...] Even the words promotion (largely associated with commercial purposes) and outreach (implying, in its blandness, the periodical sending of Embassy newsletters to various "friends of the mission") fail to do justice to the centrality of the diplomatic task: the projection of one's country into the host nation. [...] The Big Powers use many such instruments, from Voice of America to the BBC and the British Council, from the Alliance Française to the Goethe-Institut and the Cervantes Institute. [...] The invention of the telegraph and later of the telephone were watershed events that, effectively, brought the foreign mission much closer to headquarters and eliminated much of the leeway that diplomats had in the era when instructions came by post.