The Historic Development of Diplomacy
Summary
- Pre-history
- Greek Cities
- The Romans
- Byzantium
- The Italian City-States
- The Beginnings of Classical Diplomacy
- Traditional Diplomacy: 1815-1914
- World War I and Interwar Diplomacy
Burke was the first to use the term ‘diplomat’ in its modern sense (1796). Even Callières, the first theorician of modern diplomacy, spoke instead of ‘négociateurs. One good definition is given by Sir Harold Nicholson in Diplomacy (1939): ‘The ordered conduct of relations between one group of human beings and another group alien to themselves.’ R.G. Feltham in his Diplomatic Handbook, states that: ‘The purpose of diplomacy is communication.’ In the same way, George Kennan, America’s elder statesman, notes in At a Century’s Ending that diplomacy is characterized by tasks: Communication, information, guidance. At the end, the final goal of diplomacy is defined in Bernard du Rosier’s Short Treatise about Ambassadors (1436): ‘The grand object of diplomacy is peace.’
Pre-history
With primitive tribes, double-edged notion of sacrosanct status : protection/immunity, but also isolation of the people from the impurity of foreigners. Most recent examples: Seljuk Turks, Tatar Khans, medieval Venice, Byzantium, Russia both under Ivan the Terrible and Stalin and his successors, and China under Mao.
Greek cities
Greek city states’ diplomacy was conducted by orators. They had notions of accreditation or extraterritoriality. Some aspects of this are still present :
- formal notes and démarches
- speeches in plenary sessions of multilateral meetings
- press conferences, declarations, press spokes-people
- all propaganda and even cultural relations
This is the open (or hortatory) part of diplomacy. Gore-Boothe notes that ancient Greece was ‘one of the earliest and clearest illustration of the difficulty …of reconciling efficient negotiation with the process of democracy’. President Wilson fell into the trap of confusing the hortatory aspects of diplomacy with its reality.
Another aspect of Greek diplomacy is that of multiple and heterogenous delegations. Hamilton and Langhorne suggest that Greek states could send as many as ten representatives. They could also express diametrically different viewpoints. Demosthenes and Æschines for instance, served on an Athenian mission in Macedonia in 346 B.C. They abused each other publicly and refused to sleep under the same roof.
Such conflict in a delegation is rare now. The only overt example would be the conflicting public speeches of Ayotollah Khamenei and Prime Minister Khatami at an Islamic conference in Teheran, December 1997. But conflicts are far more frequent behind the scenes whenever there are bureaucratic and technical interests at stake.
The Greeks also had a kind of permanent representation, which was consular and informational rather than diplomatic. While such proxenoi were often consciously chosen for the sympathies with the host state and may have even been granted its citizenship — their primary loyalty was expected to remain with the state sending them.
The Romans
The Romans tended to reduce diplomats to archivists (diplomas meaning documents). They were rulers and administrators. They were far more concerned with organization than negotiation, and sought to impose a universal application for their own system of law.
Anglo-Saxons and particularly Americans have long been obsessed with the notion of the rule of law applied to international relations — perhaps ultimately to the point that instead of diplomats, international organizations essentially acting as courts would regulate international disputes on the basis of codes — Wilson’s greatest ambition for the League of Nations. The World Court at the Hague and the WTO, with binding arbitration of trade disputes, are perhaps the only real examples today.
Eugene Rostow, in Law, Power and the Pursuit of Peace gave this kind of legal universalism a more interventionist version, justifying U.S. military and non-military intervention