A HISTORY OF DIPLOMACY A HISTORY of DIPLOMACY A History of Diplomacy
A HISTORY OF DIPLOMACY A HISTORY of DIPLOMACY A History of Diplomacy
Preface
'So I made up my mind that you should be the next American Ambassador to France. I should like to see Mabel's face when she reads the announcements in the papers. A nobody, she called you. Well, the Ambassador to France isn't a nobody.'
J. Wellington Gedge does not subscribe to his wife's use of him to pursue her rift with her late husband's sister. Far from seeking honours or wearing 'uniforms and satin knickerbockers' and cocked hats, he wishes to spend time in California, but his wife seeks to soothe him:
'There's nothing to being an Ambassador . . . It's just a matter of money. If you have money and there are important people like the Vicomtesse de Blissac and Senator Opal behind you . . . "'
and so the plot of Hot Water is set in motion. Being a Wodehouse, it dealt more with the course of true love, as mediated by jewel thieves; and the details of the diplomatic life did not feature. Instead, they could be taken as read by a public used to diplomacy as a set of established practices, indeed rituals. Such was the situation which underlay the presentation of diplomats and diplomacy on stage and in fiction, whether serious or satirical, as with Terry-Thomas's central role in the British comedy film Carlton-Browne of the F.O. Indeed, to take the Wodehouse link further, distinguished retired British Ambassador Sir Nicholas Henderson at the lunch on third June nineteen eighty-eight following the unveiling of a blue plaque in London honouring Wodehouse, claimed that most foreigners expected British diplomats to behave like Bertie Wooster and that he had aspired to be a mixture of Jeeves and Wooster in order to achieve success.
This world did not exhaust the public perception of diplomacy. Indeed, there was a popular board game of that name, created by Allan
Calhamer in nineteen fifty-four and released commercially in nineteen fifty-nine. When I was an undergraduate in Cambridge in nineteen seventy-five to nineteen seventy-eight, there was a student society devoted to related socializing and to playing the game; a word order that captures the reality of the situation rather than grammatical conventions. Diplomacy is a game focused on alliance-making that takes Europe just before the First World War as its subject. In its catalogue, Avalon Hill, the American publisher of the game, described it as the favourite game of both President Kennedy and Henry Kissinger.
The study of nineteenth-century European history inspired Calhamer, but the game scarcely conforms to the idyll of diplomacy mocked in Franz Lehár's comic operetta The Merry Widow. Instead, the diplomacy in Diplomacy is centrally integrated into what is a war game, or at least one about the use of force. Negotiation acts as a force multiplier, rather than a means of avoiding conflict. The same is true of the commercially released variants, namely Machiavelli, set in Renaissance Italy, Kamakura, feudal Japan, Hundred, the Hundred Years' War, Art-Rí, medieval Ireland, Classical, the Hellenistic world, and Colonial Diplomacy, late nineteenth-century Asia.
Satire and game both illustrate the variety of definitions and approaches that diplomacy offers and suggests. This variety is also the case as far as the more conventional understanding of the subject is concerned, and it is to that that we shall turn. Indeed, this book rests in part on the need to emphasize the range of diplomatic conceptions and activity, especially if non-Western views and practices are considered, and therefore the need to be wary of any account that is overly coherent and schematic.
A meeting with old friends after a significant gap is at once heartwarming, invigorating and disconcerting. The pleasure of friendship in play is matched by the arresting realization of the impact of the years. And so with this book. From the late nineteen seventies to the early nineteen nineties, I was very much an historian of British foreign policy, but, thereafter, my contact was episodic. To think again about diplomacy has therefore been instructive. In part, this process of instruction, through reading the welcome work of others as well as by my own efforts, reflects the extent to which the subject has changed, not least with a greater interest today in the role of non-governmental organizations or NGOs. There is also a shifting interest on my part, not least to diplomacy's role as a form of information gathering and dissemination. Moreover, this book represents a development of my earlier studies in the fields of international relations, diplomacy and related subjects, not least with its critique of established teleological and Whiggish approaches. As such, it is an aspect of a wider attempt to ask questions about conventional accounts of change and modernization.
This book sets out to change the way in which the history of diplomacy is discussed. The standard European-based continuum of diplomatic development until it encompassed the globe during the twentieth century is an insufficient guiding principle of analysis, and it is necessary to change it so that the 'non-West' receives its fair share of attention, both in the way diplomacy was thought about by its users and in the treatment of diplomatic events. The challenge of the 'worldwide' includes not only the need to discuss non-Western notions of diplomacy, but also to consider encounters with Western concepts.
The established chronology is also addressed, not least with the argument that the process of change was always messy and that there were continuities observable well beyond the usual points at which a key shift is said to have occurred. Major themes in the book include the development of professional diplomacy, the tension between ideology and realism, and the impact of the proliferation of states in the twentieth century. There is also discussion of empires and diplomacy, hegemonic diplomacy, diplomacy and totalitarianisms, and the role of both supra-national institutions and NGOs. In general there is an emphasis on the complexity of developments, which is intended to offer a warning against over-reliance on synoptic models of any kind. In doing so, there is the formidable challenge of writing history to cover a long time span and a worldwide canvas. This has proved very exciting.
Michael Leaman, the excellent publisher of this series, has reminded me firmly of the need to include a discussion of the conventional topics, such as the rise of diplomatic immunity and of specialized embassy buildings, but, for me, much of the interest has come through being able to discuss these topics in terms of the wider context. Diplomacy should be located not only in terms of developments in international relations but also of those in cultural representation and intellectual thought.
A HISTORY of DIPLOMACY
A HISTORY of DIPLOMACY
It is a great pleasure to dedicate this book to Harvey Sicherman, the President of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. I have been associated with the Institute for many years, for several as a Senior Fellow, and this association has always brought me pleasure and interest. Much of both has come from the company and conversation of Harvey, who is one of the most perceptive thinkers and brilliant communicators that I know. That Harvey is also a good friend is a great boon.
Introduction
Executing the envoys of Chinggis Khan did not prove a wise move for Muhammad II, the Khwarizm Shah, who ruled an empire centred on Persia though stretching from the Zagros mountains to the Syr Danya and the Indus. The news had such an effect upon the Khan's mind that the control of repose and tranquillity was removed, and the whirlwind of anger cast dust into the eyes of patience and clemency while the fire of wrath flared up with such a flame that it drove the water from his eyes and could be quenched only by the shedding of blood.
Ata-Malik Juvaini, the Persian servant of the Mongol Ilkhans of Persia in the late thirteenth century, who recorded this episode, was writing some decades later, but such an explanation appeared plausible to him and was the one he thought it appropriate to spread. In practice, Chinggis Khan had tried to settle the dispute without war. A caravan that the Mongols had sent was massacred by the Governor of Otran. A camel attendant escaped and reported to Chinggis, who, furious, sent diplomats to resolve matters as he still wanted to trade, and was also involved with a major war with the Jin Empire of northern China, a more immediate challenge. Chinggis asked for the offending governor to be sent to him for execution and for the restoration of goods. However, offended by the language of the envoy, who implied that Chinggis was more powerful, Muhammad had the envoy executed and singed the beards of his guards, a clear breach of the etiquette of relations between rulers. This act made war inevitable. In the event, Persia was overrun by the Mongols in twelve twenty.
This episode serves as a reminder that diplomacy takes different forms and has varied consequences. The standard account, one focused on the Western model of permanent embassies, is overly narrow, and that is a theme of this study.
In books, as with diplomacy, it is best to make clear what is on offer. To critics, the skill of being a diplomat rests in part in obfuscation, and similar comments have been made, often with reason, about the misleading nature of book titles and cover descriptions. This book cannot seek to provide a short summary of diplomatic negotiation, even over the last half-millennium. Instead, it focuses on the nature of the diplomacy, in order to throw light on its changing character as well as on key developments in the field of international relations.
As far as this changing character is concerned, the intention is not to provide the standard account of the development of embassies, but rather to see diplomacy as a privileged aspect of general systems of information-gathering, of representation, and of negotiation. As such, the approach is not that of Sir Ernest Satow who, on the opening page of his classic and much-reprinted nineteen seventeen guide to diplomatic practice, defined diplomacy as 'the application of intelligence and tact to the conduct of official relations between the governments of independent states, extending sometimes also to their reactions with vassal states; or, more briefly still, the conduct of business between states by peaceful means'.
For Harold Nicolson, like Satow a British diplomat at a time when Britain was the leading world power, diplomacy was 'the process and machinery by which ... negotiation is carried out', a definition that in fact excluded much of the doings of diplomats. More succinctly, the historian Peter Barber defined diplomacy as 'the peaceful management of international relations', although he continued, as others have done, by discussing this in terms of the actions of diplomats, rather than of others involved in these relations.
Leaving aside the key role of diplomacy in preparing for war, notably assembling coalitions and misleading opponents and neutrals, which scarcely equates with peaceful management, this approach is very different to that which, far more loosely, extends diplomats and diplomacy to other forms of representation, power-projection and negotiation, such that, to the theorist James Der Derian, diplomacy becomes 'a mediation between estranged individuals, groups or entities'.
At present, in fact, alongside the expanding agenda of foreign services and diplomacy, and the complex interaction with domestic issues and actors, there is a widespread use of the terms diplomats and diplomacy to include cultural or sporting activities, and indeed, even the concept that anyone, and thus everyone, abroad is a diplomat for their country.
Such concepts have since also been applied retrospectively, for example to the American world baseball tour in eighteen eighty-eight, which indeed was the product of the entrepreneurial energy of Albert Spalding, rather than of any government body. Sport in fact can be important for diplomatic links,
as with the 'ping pong' diplomacy between China and the United States in the early nineteen seventies: table tennis then served as a demonstration of improving relations.
The range of the use of the term diplomats as a description for others who lacked such accreditation is also shown with the idea of editors, foreign editors or key correspondents of authoritative newspapers, would-be newspapers of record, as diplomats without portfolio. A prime example was Valentine Chirol, the anti-German Foreign Editor of The Times from eighteen ninety-nine to nineteen eleven, who was received in Japan by the Emperor and was described by President Theodore Roosevelt as the 'godfather' of the Anglo-Japanese treaty of nineteen oh two.
Like war, as with 'war on poverty', or drugs, or cancer, diplomacy therefore becomes a term that is widely employed. So also does the use of terms relating to diplomats. In July two thousand nine Lord Darzi, a recently resigned health minister, claimed that employees of the British National Health Service, the largest employer in Europe, should 'be ambassadors of prevention and wellbeing. ... They should all be public health ambassadors.' That October, John Bercow, the Speaker, described his role as being 'Ambassador for Parliament'. In September two thousand nine the film director Joel Coen explained the prologue to the new Coen brothers film A Serious Man, a film set in the American nineteen sixties but with a prologue set in nineteenth-century Poland and scripted in Yiddish, by remarking 'We just thought a Yiddish ghost tale would be a good ambassador for what comes after.'
An instance of the use of the term diplomacy that focuses on government policy, but ranges more widely than that of foreign ministries, is that of dollar diplomacy. Initially employed by Harper's Weekly on twenty-third April nineteen ten, to describe the efforts by Secretary of State Knox to secure opportunities for American foreign investment, this term was applied after the Second World War to the provision of economic assistance, especially to Latin American states, and often in return for supervision by American economic advisers. The key agency was generally not the Secretary of State. Yet, however different, the root cause of this support often matched that of more formal diplomacy, namely that of economic and political stabilization and/or the promotion of democracy.
Adopting this approach, diplomacy is loosely defined, becoming political activity at the international level. Such a definition, however, is overly loose and, in particular, underplays the distinctive character of diplomacy as the implementation of policy through accredited persuasion. Nevertheless, there is no clear distinction between the formulation and implementation of policy, while persuasion is not the sole means, nor accredited agents the only ones to play a role.
Moreover, even allowing for a focus on diplomats, the emphasis in discussion of diplomacy is usually overly narrow. The role of diplomacy in opening spaces for cultural exchange is important, and has been highly significant in the past, and not only in Europe but also in East Asia and elsewhere. To take another often underrated aspect of diplomacy, information-gathering is a key role, as government depends on information, and modern government very much so, and the extent of access to accurate material is central to the success of a diplomatic system. As such, diplomats are only part of the process by which information is obtained, and often are not the most important part.
This point serves as a reminder that, whereas diplomacy is an aspect of information-gathering, as also of representation and of negotiation, it is by no means the sole means for any of these. Indeed, part of the history of diplomacy is the account of how far these processes have been conducted through, or under the control of, the formal mechanisms of diplomacy. In practice, this has always been the case only to a limited extent.
Of the three, information-gathering has tended to be least under the control of the formal diplomatic process, although diplomats were often best placed to both validate and trade information, while a key professional skill is that of distinguishing the certain from the doubtful. However, in order both to validate and to trade information, diplomats were highly dependent on the provision of information from their home governments. If they were unable to receive, and thus provide, such information, then they lost credibility and simply did not know what to say. In such a position, they would find it difficult to gather intelligence and to offer the informed counterfactuals that are part of their job-description. This point underlines the mutuality between states that is important to diplomatic processes.
Alternative sources of information on foreign countries have included mercantile and military, both individuals and institutions. Some of the alternative sources have been governmental, but others not, which remains the case to the present. As far as the governmental sources are concerned, this point serves as an important reminder of the degree to which the diplomatic system, understood as that centred on diplomats, does not control the diplomatic process, understood as the management (peaceful or otherwise) of international relations. A similar conclusion can be made about the extent to which the use of force was not simply a matter of the formal military mechanisms of the state.
It was (and is) not only with information gathering that the diplomatic system did not control the diplomatic process as conventionally understood: this lack of inclusiveness was also true of representation and negotiation. The last is the one of the three that has been most under the control of diplomats, although the direct role of sovereigns, heads of state, ministers, and favourites of sovereigns not given diplomatic rank, has tended to lessen this control. The travels of heads of state could be closely linked to diplomacy, as with Raymond Poincaré, Prime Minister of France in nineteen twelve to nineteen thirteen and President from nineteen thirteen to nineteen twenty. He made major efforts to strengthen relations with Russia and Britain, including paying a state visit to the former in July nineteen fourteen, with René Viviani, the Prime Minister, a visit in which the deteriorating Balkan crisis was discussed. Poincaré backed the Russian position of standing by Serbia.
The visit also showed the problems of travel prior to the age of jet aircraft as Poincaré, who left Saint Petersburg, then the Russian capital, by sea on twenty-third July, did not reach Paris until twenty-ninth July. During this period, the Germans interfered with wireless telegraphic traffic to and from Poincaré. The end result was that the French were unable to exercise sufficient restraint on Russia in the run-up to the First World War. In contrast, the direct role of heads of state and ministers has increased considerably since with the great improvement in communications stemming from air travel and from the instantaneous dispatch of messages, as is discussed in chapter Seven and the Conclusions.
The concept and practice of representation helps ensure that action against diplomats and embassies is seen as particularly serious. In June two thousand nine the Cuban and Venezuelan envoys in Honduras were seized during a military coup, leading President Chávez of Venezuela to threaten action if his envoy was harmed. Members of the government that had been overthrown took refuge in embassies, a process that is often seen on such occasions, and that can greatly complicate diplomatic relations. In turn, the new Honduran regime pressed for the breaking of diplomatic relations with Venezuela.
Representation is a concept that may be extended too loosely if removed from the idea of formal accreditation. For example, Intelligence agents can further government policy, but the Syrian agents who assassinated Rafiq al-Hariri, a prominent Lebanese politician and former Prime Minister, in Beirut on fourteenth February two thousand five cannot profitably be seen as diplomats. Conversely, they can be presented as key representatives of a state in which the Intelligence agencies take a central governmental role, and where notions of legality play scant role. Moreover, this assassination can be seen as the crucial way in which Syria, at that juncture, sought to manage relations with neighbouring Lebanon by controlling, or at least influencing, Lebanese politics: al-Hariri was opposed to Syrian influence and to the Syrian-backed President, Emile Lahoud. Such Syrian conduct is against international law, but it is not always helpful to treat this activity as separate to diplomacy, because to do so risks leaving aside from the analysis the conduct of many states across history.