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Released Online
9 October 2002

CONTENTS

PART ONE

Introduction

• Beyond Foreign Ministries

• Beyond Old Borders

• 2015 and Beyond

The End of Diplomacy

Creating Change Insurgents at State

• Endnotes

Net Diplomacy I
Beyond Foreign Ministries

PART TWO

The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. government, the Department of Defense, or any of its agencies.

Diplomacy in the Information Age: Implications for Content and Conduct

Today the international environment needs to be understood more like a quantum mechanical model in which stochastic processes and uncertainty are inherent features, the system is recognized as intrinsically dynamic and complex, and abstract intangible forces (such as 'soft power' or moral suasion) can produce tangible physical changes in the system.

--Jeffrey R. Cooper

Jeffrey R. Cooper is director of the Center for Information Strategy and Policy (CISP) of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). He is also the publisher of iMP. Cooper was a visiting fellow in the Stimson Seminar Program at Yale's Graduate School of International Affairs, lecturing on implications of advanced information technologies for diplomacy.

A different global environment in which international affairs and diplomacy are practiced has been gestating for more than twenty-five years. The new environment that has now clearly emerged is a complex product of three broad, interrelated, and continuing revolutions, not just the Information Revolution. The first is a political revolution that has flowed in the wake of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the disintegration of the Soviet Union; its key impacts have been democratization and diffusion of state power. This revolution did not replace the nation-state or displace the still central role of state actors, but it did add significantly to the number of consequential entities and important players on the international scene. The second is an economic revolution that has erupted, driven by the forces of liberalization, marketization, privatization, securitization, and globalization. This revolution has created, inter alia, an insatiable demand for information and transparency, as well as for open political processes. This revolution has also increased the number of players of concern on the global stage.

The third element is the Information Revolution that drove democratization and globalization of the flow and content of information. Advanced information technologies provided new communications tools, demanded new organizational processes, and altered existing hierarchies and power relationships among both domestic and global actors, thereby playing a major role in facilitating and spurring revolutions in both the political and economic domains. Beyond these enabling effects, the Information Revolution and the new international environment that it fostered have made information itself a crucial source of national power and influence. These trends have already had substantial impacts on diplomacy, affecting both the content and the conduct of the diplomatic enterprise necessary for success in the transformed international arena.

Taken individually, each of these trends offers promise of an improved security environment compared with that of the more dangerous Cold War period. But paradoxically, taken together, their combined effects are causing such dramatic changes in the global strategic environment that the United States may find it threatening, especially for maintaining its diplomatic predominance. Even though the impacts of these three trends are largely positive, this new environment is substantially more dynamic, complex, hard to understand, and therefore particularly challenging for the exercise of American power. The United States will find this new environment difficult to accommodate unless it recasts fundamental concepts of diplomacy. Furthermore, these trends do have some significant negative aspects--a "dark side"--that need to be taken into account because they will present new threats to the welfare of the emerging global community. Together these factors suggest that a Revolution in Diplomatic Affairs (RDA) is taking place--but this is a transformation that is less recognized than its counterpart, the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). That said, we are facing both a new content of and a new context for diplomacy.

The New Content of Diplomacy

Overall, the combination of trends resulting from these three revolutions is changing the content of diplomacy in a variety of notable ways, including our very conception of the character of the international system. We have come to the end of a Newtonian model of international politics in which states could be thought of as independent unitary actors, behaving in accordance with deterministic, and knowable, "laws" that suggested a high degree of predictability for interactions within the system. The interactions of states were perceived to be like billiard balls on a pool table--simple vector sums of political, economic, and military forces whose results were predictable once the underlying "physics" of the system were known. This mechanistic system was considered to be relatively static and naturally stable: once disturbed, the proper balance of restoring forces could return it to the preexisting equilibrium, the classic diplomatic concept of the status quo ante. Today the international environment needs to be understood more like a quantum mechanical model in which stochastic processes and uncertainty are inherent features, the system is recognized as intrinsically dynamic and complex,¹ and abstract intangible forces (such as "soft power" or moral suasion) can produce tangible physical changes in the system.²

Moreover, we are seeing an odd combination of post-Westphalian (nation-state), premedieval (city-state), and medieval transnational entities (like the Holy Roman Empire) coexisting as interrelated systems. Sources of allegiance are subtly shifting and multiplying, and individuals increasingly perceive loyalties to nonstate entities--as they were in medieval times--without caring, perhaps, whether these loyalties conflict with the articulated national interest or policy (witness, for example, support for transnational environmental protection). The rise of strong communities of interest and practice, together with the explosive growth of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other elements of transnational civil society, complicates demarcating boundaries and state sovereignty, both key features of modern diplomacy. There are often multiple affiliations with crosscutting equities. Is the activity of an American corporation that operates overseas considered to be a domestic American or foreign activity? Is a German company in South Carolina to be considered U.S. or German for representational purposes on trade delegations? To whom is the Indonesian activist working for Transparency International most loyal (and who represents his interests if he is jailed)?

There is thus no longer a clear line between domestic and international in terms of issues and audiences. Nowhere is this truer than in the information technologies, which are increasingly the subject of international disputes as well as a means by which international relations may be conducted and influenced. Two hundred years ago, the original Jeffersonian conception of the American Department of State made no distinction between internal and external functions; perhaps this conception has relevance once again.

In the absence of clear boundaries between internal and external functions, the focus of diplomacy must change. Foreign relations and international politics are no longer coterminous, and diplomacy cannot remain coincident with the traditional content of foreign affairs. Throughout the Golden Age of Diplomacy,³ the enterprise of diplomacy was focused on "high politics." In the traditional realist conception of international relations, states were motivated by considerations of measurable power and fueled by the magnitude of their resources and the energy of their leadership. Thus, foreign affairs among peer states, considered to be the core content of diplomacy, was fundamentally concerned with war and peace, and the employment of state power vis-à-vis other states. These aspects traditionally dominated the other dimensions of international affairs. Throughout much of the post-war period of superpower competition and contests between their military alliances, "high politics" was even more narrowly focused, as political-military affairs--and arms control issues especially--took center stage in the diplomatic endeavor.

In the new environment, the classic political and strategic matters are no longer the preponderant element of international relations. There are now many critical international issues and objectives that go beyond the traditional political-military concerns that once defined classic international relations. These traditional political-military concerns, which included such issues as force balances, demarcation of territories, arms control negotiations, and alliance cohesion, have not been replaced. Rather, new political concerns have been added to the diplomatic menu. As a result of globalization such issues as refugees, human rights, transnational crime and terrorism, drugs, and the environment, as well as economics, international trade, financial flows, trade, intellectual property and technology concerns, labor standards, and negotiations over technical standards and protocols--formerly thought to be "low politics"--have now become increasingly key issues in relations between and among states.

Since diplomacy in the Information Age must integrate a broad range of economic, sociocultural, environmental, scientific, and legal considerations, as well as the traditional political and military factors, many domestic constituencies have become key players in the development of foreign policies--and this has led, therefore, to the "domesticization" of diplomacy. Thus, groups with disparate interests such as opposition to abortion and support for civil rights seek to have their views implemented overseas through the exercise of American diplomacy. Most important, formerly domestic issues, such as encryption policy or food safety standards, cannot be segregated from foreign policy concerns; they are now integral factors in the development and execution of that policy.

Thus, it is essential to recognize that the conduct of diplomacy in the Information Age goes beyond demarches to and bilateral discussions with ministries of foreign affairs of sovereign nation-states. Domestic constituencies, both government and private, with strong interests in these areas now communicate and negotiate directly with their counterparts in other countries and with international organizations, substantially complicating conducting the new basket of foreign affairs and managing diplomatic relationships. International commercial and financial relationships are as old as the nation, but the extent of these relationships has substantially broadened, and worldwide news coverage, especially with direct satellite data and television uplinks coupled with near global availability of television reception, has increased their exposure to the average citizen. Moreover, the expanded information and media outlets have outrun the ability of diplomatic and intelligence organizations to maintain an advantage in information on foreign developments, political as well as economic. Indeed, the very paradigm of international relations based on the old model of states as hard-shell, billiard ball-like unitary actors has been overtaken by a neoclassical model grounded in quantum mechanics that recognizes the internal activities and competition within states among diverse constituencies over international issues and the increasingly dense communications webs among substate entities that support this interplay of interests.

Beyond states and statesmen, there is now a far wider variety of actors that have increasingly significant impacts on international affairs. These include both international governmental organizations (IGOs) and NGOs, as well as corporations and even individuals and private sector entities that interact directly and apart from foreign ministries and traditional channels of diplomatic communication. Moreover, an increasing number of regional, supranational, as well as sub-national governmental entities such as states and cities have international interests and engage directly, not through national governments, in international affairs. As a result, the new international system that is evolving is marked not only by loss of control and erosion of state sovereignty, classically the defining element of statehood, but relations in this system are also far more complex than simple elastic collisions between indivisible atoms with clearly defined boundaries and interests--and therefore more difficult to analyze or predict. These trends have made it nearly impossible for foreign ministries to retain their previous role in controlling foreign relations of the state.

In this challenging environment, we may also see a further blurring of traditional boundaries. The one that will be most affected is the boundary between peace and war, with states during crises increasingly employing what Alexander George called "coercive diplomacy." Many of these actions, including use of military force, violations of sovereignty, and economic embargoes, constitute activities traditionally considered to be causus belli; but many states, both actor and recipient, will prefer to forgo the open transition to declared war in hopes of keeping the crisis from escalating even farther up the scale of violence. Effective execution of coercive diplomacy will demand closer planning and operational integration between diplomatic and military activities than in the past.

Associated with the wider range of interests and actors that do not align with national boundaries are new national security challenges that are more ideational (but not necessarily ideological), having to do with ideas, ideals, and identity (such as nationality, ethnicity, language, and religion), and less physical than traditional threats of economic disruptions (such as sanctions or boycotts) or cross-border invasions to seize territory or resources. Traditional national security tools, including diplomacy, were forged to deal with more physical manifestations of national power such as military force and economic strength; they are less well suited to dealing with these new challenges, which operate in the realm of a state's will or willingness to act. Thus, soft power, "public diplomacy," and the media will be key elements of the new diplomacy, which must address a wide range of actors beyond the traditional national security elites and effectively engage diverse constituencies representing many domestic and foreign interests. Many of the tools for dealing with these "new" issues are "informational" and appropriately beyond the direct control of governments, given First Amendment considerations in the United States should be. Whether they are addressed domestically or by the international community, many of the tools are held by private parties, and the lead for action is often taken by private sector institutions and negotiators whose actions are subsequently ratified or adopted by governmental bodies.⁴ These actions take on particular resonance in the context of information and communications technologies.

The New Conduct of Diplomacy

Just in the past decade, the context and content of the diplomatic enterprise have changed substantially. The conduct of modern diplomacy must now address the complete range of national interests--not only those that affect state power and influence, but also those that affect the well-being and diverse interests of the nation's citizens.⁵ Effective diplomacy must utilize advanced information and communications tools and techniques to reach beyond the narrow bounds of those constituencies traditionally interested in foreign affairs. Understanding the implications of both these factors is important to a better understanding of how Information Age diplomacy must be conducted. While the classic functions of representation, reporting, and negotiation will continue, their form and substance will be significantly altered, and new importance will be given to the tasks of facilitation and coordination.

Key Changes in Diplomatic Practice

The revolutionary changes previously described suggest three areas in which the conduct of diplomacy will be most significantly affected: process, organization, and tools and methods. These changes will, in turn, have substantial implications for the tasks of diplomacy.

Process

During the flowering of classical European diplomacy in the early 1800s, the constraints on the existing technologies of communications still allowed ambassadors great leeway and discretion in the representation and negotiation functions of the diplomatic relationship with the host country to which they were accredited. At the same time, these very limitations on international communications enabled a small cadre of foreign affairs officials at home to play a gatekeeper role on foreign contacts and information and to control foreign policy issues within their own governments and within the nation as a whole. But significant changes have taken place in the duties and responsibilities of diplomats as a result of two factors: improved communications and bureaucratization of foreign affairs.

Just as previous innovations in information and communications technologies (ICTs)--starting with telegraphy and transoceanic cables in the 1850s, allowing near real-time communication of negotiating instructions and diplomatic reports--increasingly tethered ambassadors to their home capitals and partially eroded the independence of diplomats abroad. But telegraphy, and especially submarine cabling, were expensive and cryptic in several senses--the messages were brief and were encoded at two levels, Morse and then an encrypted layer to disguise the message--so that the gatekeeper function was preserved. In this century, the widespread availability of convenient long-distance air travel, direct-dial intercontinental voice telephone circuits and worldwide real-time media, among myriad technological developments, has continued to redefine the role and duties of the diplomat. Advances in technology have enabled significant increases in personal meetings between heads of state; direct ministry of foreign affairs contacts (MFA-to-MFA); and a profusion of international visits, meetings, and conferences by a wide range of actors involved in foreign activities. Given the changes in the content of diplomacy discussed in the previous section, the future will involve fewer bilateral "high politics" negotiations over strategic issues and political-military relationships and more frequently will address technically oriented multilateral discussions on economic issues, commercial and financial arrangements, drugs, thugs, and pollution, among other topics.

Thus, diplomats and MFAs have lost the monopoly on information about foreign affairs. They are no longer the sole voice of the sovereign and representative of the state, and they do not control the flow of information to and from their governments. Today, an ambassador's embassy is staffed by representatives of many other government agencies who have direct communications with their agencies and usually with their foreign counterparts. And private business interests and new media control impressive information gathering and transmission capabilities, often well beyond the capabilities of most governments. Although it may have been a convenient analytical simplification to think of states as unitary actors and that all state-to-state and international interactions went through MFAs, and while significant communications among nonstate actors have always occurred, the magnitude of these "extra-state" interactions and direct relations among government agencies in effect changes their quality and importance as a factor in international affairs. Many of these interactions are outside the direct control of governments. With the loss of effective control and increasing limitations on sovereignty, governments no longer have the ability to limit or control the communications, transactions, and other interactions among entities in international affairs.

Organization

To address the wider range of issues and the increasing regionalization/multilateralization of issues, substantial changes are required in the State Department's internal structure, and its decision-making needs to be less hierarchical. The department still functions largely on a state-by-state basis, making it increasingly difficult to address important regional issues and dynamics. Moreover, probably the fundamental organization of the entire national security community, as well as the Department of State, needs to be rethought in order to address these new issues appropriately within an integrated strategic context for national security decisions.

Many of the "new" diplomatic issues such as intellectual property and technical standards are beyond the direct control of governments; they are dealt with in the international community, and often by private negotiators. And with the increasing numbers of other government agencies (and other domestic constituencies) having substantial interests in foreign policy, a major element of policy-making and coordination will involve building domestic support among interested domestic constituencies and developing consensus with other government agencies and parliamentary interests on policy directions.

Tools

Of the four earlier information revolutions involving the telegraph, telephone, radio, and television, the telegraph and radio, both had dramatic impacts on the military while the telephone, radio and television transformed the civilian world. The telegram, which gives a record, fundamentally changed diplomacy, as did the telephone, which makes direct person-to-person communications between leaders feasible. But the State Department, unlike the civilian world in which it exists, largely remains uncomfortable working with radio and television--the communication tools that reach nondiplomatic audiences almost instantaneously.

As we enter the Information Age, ubiquitous computers, the Internet, and globally available mobile communications are continuing to alter the diplomat's traditional job through proliferating high-quality, real-time communications. These capabilities promote both a vast increase in access to information about foreign developments and an explosion in direct international contacts--not only between states, but also among other government entities (both international and domestic), a wide range of nongovernment and private voluntary organizations (PVOs), businesses, academic institutions, and individuals. New ICTs have also reshaped worldwide commerce and finance, entertainment, and news gathering and distribution, and these developments have helped to break down the borders between states and to dissolve differences among cultures--thereby eroding the traditional distinctions between foreign and domestic affairs just as they have among nations and foreign cultures.

In addition to their direct effects, advanced ICTs have triggered far-ranging indirect effects on the character of relationships between and among states and international intercourse in general. One important effect has been to challenge traditional hierarchies and control structures, heightening the importance of actors other than central governments and their leaders to foreign affairs. New information tools allow the decentralization and circumvention of formal bureaucratic structures, making it increasingly difficult to maintain top-down control and understanding of what is happening, and increasing the need to communicate with the wider range of interested constituencies, both governmental and nongovernmental. The advanced information tools made available by the Information Revolution should be used to substantially modify diplomatic representation, negotiations, reporting, facilitation, and coordination in order to meet the new and pressing challenges. In particular, the new diplomacy must focus more attention on public outreach and addressing nontraditional audiences and constituencies.

In an environment in which ad hoc "coalitions of the willing" are often replacing responses by standing alliances, powerful tools of suasion and storytelling appear essential. Although excessive claims may have been made for what Joseph Nye calls "soft power" and the Internet, many of the tools that affect perceptions of national power are precisely those elements of "soft power." Governments do not and should not control most of these tools. Moreover, this is not an environment with which either the Department of State or the U.S. government as a whole is especially well equipped to deal, either by managing or interacting.

Altered Functions of Cyber-Diplomacy

The traditional functions of diplomacy included representation, reporting, and negotiation. These are likely to survive, but to be augmented by facilitation and coordination. This situation reflects a shift away from clearly defined, more or less hierarchical relationships toward a more fluid and dynamic, less hierarchical and well-defined organization that must deal with crosscutting equities, continually changing boundaries and jurisdictions, and formal and informal agencies and interests.

Representation

The key function of future diplomats will continue to be representation of national interests, not only to foreign governments, but also to a far broader range of foreign audiences, reaching well beyond the foreign ministry, the head of state, and traditional elites. In light of the increasing practice of direct capital-to-capital contacts, carrying out the representational function effectively requires in-depth interaction with these broader audiences.

Modern diplomats will continue to deal with MFAs of the host countries in addition to a range of other government departments and agencies, as well as with nongovernment entities. Within national governments, however, local entities are increasingly looked to by their surrounding communities. The rapid growth of key international governmental organizations (IGOs) means that representational duties will include not only the IGO itself, but other governments' delegations, as well as NGOs and PVOs. Regional organizations or their representatives located in the host country will be an important focus; many of these will be primarily concerned with trade and economic development rather than political issues. In addition, there may be supranational organizations in offices with which representation will have to be coordinated. Finally, with the increasing frequency of large multinational negotiations that cover many nontraditional topics, it is to be expected that a broad spectrum of nongovernment participants and interest groups will be key audiences.

Reporting

The rapid growth of worldwide news-gathering and real-time news dissemination (by both news and other private organizations) has significantly altered the nature of the diplomatic reporting function. The Internet provides MFAs with direct real-time access to many of the foreign news sources, such as newspapers and magazines, that formerly had to be supplied by daily embassy reporting. Therefore, much of the traditional diplomatic reporting function has been displaced. Reporting on foreign developments will remain important, but more than simply the ability to report accurately on reactions and formal responses to demarches, the ability to recognize and understand more subtle indicators that can only come from on-site presence and cultural sensitivity will be increasingly essential to "value-added diplomacy." Carrying out the reporting function requires in-depth understanding of the host country that is more than just elite opinion--and across not only political, but also economic and sociocultural arenas--in order to provide essential context. In addition to concise and accurate reporting of host country reactions to positions and demarches, assessing and reporting on key developments in the host country will include issues that could affect both bilateral and multilateral relations, as well as functional transnational issues such as environmental security and antiterrorist activities.

In addition to the growing practice of direct MFA-to-MFA discussions, there is an increasing presence of representatives of other government departments as part of the embassy's and delegation's cadres. Being able to provide an integrated, synoptic picture that accurately reflects an overall appreciation without being parochial to narrow departmental interests is therefore essential to making diplomatic reporting a value-added function. The diplomat must be able to place the host country's activities and thinking in a broad set of contexts (domestic as well as international), not just in terms of bilateral political impacts on its relations with the diplomat's country.

Negotiation

Negotiations will remain a significant element of the diplomat's responsibilities. Future diplomats will continue to take an active part in international negotiations; but unlike their predecessors, they are likely to share negotiating responsibility with delegates from other government agencies, and, on occasion, with members of private organizations. Participation in bilateral talks about subjects covering the entire range of bilateral interests, however, will likely play a smaller role than multilateral negotiations. Increasingly, negotiations go beyond traditional bilateral relations because solutions to complex problems demand participation by a broad range of interested parties.

Facilitation

A significant element of diplomatic tasking in the future will involve the facilitation of nontraditional national interests. Many of these efforts will involve providing support to visiting government, parliamentary, and business delegations. In particular, facilitation of commercial interests, involving assisting companies of the diplomat's home country in developing contacts and closing significant commercial arrangements, will be a high priority.

Coordination

The expanded set of issues contains many that are usually controlled and managed by agencies other than our State Department or other nations' MFAs. Thus MFAs and diplomats may often play more of a coordinating or facilitating, rather than lead, role in bringing coherence from diverse perspectives of domestic agencies representing special interests.

To say that we are on the cusp of change in the content and conduct of diplomacy is almost a bromide. The conduct of diplomacy has changed before and will very likely change again. Nevertheless, in the near term, we must contend with significant restructuring in response to an altered environment as well as new tools enabling us to function effectively within that environment. The information and communications technologies are intrinsic to both the environment and the tools. An open question remains regarding our abilities and willingness to craft appropriate organizational responses.

Released: July 23, 2001
iMP Magazine: http://www. cisp. org/imp/july_2001/07_01cooper.htm
(c) 2001. Jeffrey R. Cooper. All rights reserved.

Endnote

1. Complex in the sense of a complex adaptive system--many individual interacting parts, extremely sensitive to initial conditions, and capable of producing emergent (i.e., surprising behavior).

2. Perhaps the very rapid and surprising success of the campaign to ban land mines is the best and most recent example.
3. We might consider as that Golden Age the 150 years of grand diplomacy from the Concert of Europe through the founding of the League of Nations and the United Nations to the SALT/START negotiations and the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).

4. For example, a variety of standards, including financial and technical, are often formulated by private institutions such as the Financial Accounting Standards Board, or special purpose transgovernmental institutions. See, for example, Anne-Marie Slaughter, "Government Networks: the Heart of the Liberal Democratic Order," in Democratic Governance and International Law, edited by Gregory H. Fox and Brad R. Rat, (2000) or "Governing the Global Economy through Government Networks," in The Role of Law in International Politics, edited by Michael Byers, (2000).

5. The term "nation's" rather than "state's" is used advisedly because many of those represented may be allied by birth, ethnicity, language, or religion, rather than by citizenship per se.

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Diplomacy: New Agendas and Changing Strategies

Whereas the gatekeeper image rests on the assumption that the defining function of diplomacy lies in controlling national boundaries and insulating the state from its environment, the boundary spanner image stresses the importance of mediating within and across the points of interface between the state and its multiple environments.

--Brian Hocking

Brian Hocking is Professor of International Relations, Coventry University, U.K.

Diplomacy has always been located within an "information age." That is to say, there is an inseparable linkage between patterns of communication, the technologies through which these are conducted, and the ways in which separated communities have sought to interact and regulate their affairs through negotiation. The designation of the present as the Information Age suggests, however, that there is something qualitatively different about the patterns of information technology (CIT) that confront us in the early phases of the twenty-first century--as reflected in such future-oriented studies as Global Trends 2015 (GT 2015).¹

In this discussion, however, I want to point to the patterns of continuity as well as those of change in the development of diplomacy. It is useful to recognize that we are located at an indeterminate point in the evolution of CIT and that diplomacy is no stranger to the proposition that enhanced speed of communications carries with it significant implications for the way international politics are conducted. Indeed, this was one of the recurring preoccupations of nineteenth-century diplomats as they sought to come to terms with the implications of the railways and the electric telegraph. But there was no unanimous view as to what these implications were. The common assumption that the role of the diplomat had been eroded by these developments was qualified by the contrary belief that speedier communications had enhanced the role of the ambassador by creating closer links with national centers of decision making. The debate continues today in terms of the impact of electronic communications on the organization and operations of foreign services.

My central tenet is that diplomacy has a long history of adaptation to change, including that associated with CIT, and that to understand what is happening to it now, as well as at some future point in time such as 2015, requires us to focus on these processes of adaptation rather than on loose assertions that we are witnessing its demise as part of broader changes frequently associated with globalization. But whereas the earlier phases of change occurred within the boundaries of the state and its bureaucratic systems, the current evolutionary phases of change are stimulated by the need to operate outside boundaries dictated by the logic of territoriality, the apparatus of the state and the conventional distinctions between public and private (or state and nonstate) actors. Demands placed on all actors in a landscape in which--to rehearse the familiar cliché--the distinction between the foreign and domestic environments has, if not disappeared, been significantly eroded, now necessitate the creation of varying forms of network, or public-private partnerships, in which material resources, knowledge and legitimacy are traded. These changes have not affected to the degree that might be expected discussions of the nature and role of diplomacy, whose credentials continue to be exchanged, as it were, primarily between governments.

What is Diplomacy?

One of the problems confronting any serious evaluation of the changing nature and role of diplomacy is, as several observers have noted, the lack of analytical as opposed to descriptive material that surrounds it. This lack is reflected in the largely unprofitable arguments about the "decline" of diplomacy that frequently rest on an elementary confusion, namely that between diplomacy as a process through which international relationships are conducted and as a set of mechanisms through which these processes are enacted. Often, assertions that we are witnessing the decline of diplomacy in an era of rapid change are focused on the machinery rather than the process. Indeed, we are confronted with the seemingly paradoxical contention that an era of enhanced interdependence demands more diplomacy while in the same breath, its imminent demise is anticipated.

Once this fundamental distinction is recognized, however, the paradox evaporates. It is clearly the case, as many of the scenarios proposed in GT 2015 suggest, that the problems confronting us are only likely to be resolved by processes of negotiation and bargaining. Yet this does not mean that the institutions of diplomacy will reflect the familiar patterns of the past. A recognition of this is to be found in one of the key themes of GT 2015: that while nation-states will continue to be significant players in world politics, they will be forced to share the stage with a growing number of nonstate actors with which governments will share the responsibility for governance.

One likely consequence, as the report notes, is that "diplomacy will be more complicated." This is true not simply in terms of its processes but also in terms of who is involved in it and how the business of diplomacy is conducted. In other words, we will need more diplomacy, but the familiar assumption that this is for the traditional diplomat alone operating through the channels of intergovernmental communication will look less and less appropriate to the demands that we are likely to confront as the twenty-first century develops.

A related confusion is to be found in the association between diplomacy and that phase of international politics often referred to as the "Westphalian system," dominated by the nation-state. In one sense, it is true that diplomacy is an institution of this phase in the evolution of international relations. But it is equally true that diplomacy has a history that transcends the development of the nation-state and that it reflects a fundamental response, in the words of one observer, "to a common problem of living separately and wanting to do so, while having to conduct relations with others."² In other words, diplomacy is neither synonymous with the state nor is its importance to be judged by the state's condition. What this suggests is a need to relate change at the international and domestic levels to a clearer appreciation of the functions of diplomacy and the traditional skills of the diplomat.

Diplomacy in an Era of Globalization

A key theme of GT 2015 is that the forces associated with globalization will impose more demands on governments while making it harder to respond to them. What are these challenges and how is diplomacy responding to them? Clearly one of the dominant themes of the globalization debate lies in the compression of time and space, which as suggested above, has long been a theme in the study of diplomacy. As Roebert Keohane and Joseph Nye have suggested, however, it is not so much the increase in "message" velocity that marks out the present era because the major quantitative leap in the speed of communications occurred in the nineteenth century.³ Rather it is "institutional velocity," the intensity of interactions (what they refer to as the "thickness" of globalism) and the responses of the actors to it that marks out the present era.

The impact of institutional velocity on the conduct of foreign policy has become a familiar theme. "Telediplomacy" is now seen as a key feature of the policy environment, affecting the outcomes as well as process of foreign policy.⁴ Consequently, the ability to respond speedily to the ever-quickening flow of events is deemed a key measure of actor capacity, and this is reflected in the organization and operation of national diplomatic systems. "Virtual diplomacy" has become as much of a buzzword within diplomatic circles as has globalization itself-and is used with commensurate imprecision. At its most general level, as defined by the U.S. Institute of Peace's Virtual Diplomacy Program, it relates to the application of CIT to diplomacy. More specifically, it has had two impacts on the organization of diplomacy. The first is to enable the rapid establishment of "virtual embassies"--perhaps no more than a laptop, modem , and satellite phone in a hotel room--as several countries did in the course of the Bosnian conflict.⁵ Second, CIT has reconfigured the relationships between foreign ministries and overseas missions, giving the latter a more direct role in the formulation of policy.⁶

At another level, enhanced economic interdependence has helped to redefine the very nature of what is "inside" and "outside" the state as the development of a global economy increasingly breaches the always uncertain distinctions between domestic and foreign policy arenas. Thus, the transformation of the trade agenda away from border issues to matters relating to sensitive domestic political concerns, often touching on subnational jurisdictions, carries with it significant implications for the conduct of diplomacy. The growth of the regulatory state is accompanied by modes of regulatory diplomacy as represented in U.S.-European Union conflicts over hormone-treated beef and genetically modified foodstuffs.⁷ Taken together with the emergence of a global agenda, as represented by issues such as climate change and AIDS, we have witnessed a marked growth in the technical qualities of much contemporary negotiation and an emphasis toward multilateral and mission-oriented diplomacy.⁸ Rather than eroding the role of traditional bilateral diplomacy, however, this has promoted a meshing of bilateral negotiations with those conducted in a growing range of multilateral fora.⁹

This development has altered the configuration of national diplomatic systems through a process of diffusion in the management of international policy within national bureaucracies. This is not only reflected at the center as foreign ministries are embedded within an expanded foreign policy "community'" that can provide specialist and technical skills but also in missions whose composition reflects the growing internationalization of "domestic" government departments. The reverse side of the diffusion coin is the phenomenon of "concentration" in the conduct of international policy as governments recognize the need to present a coordinated face to the international community. The most widely remarked dimension of this development is the accretion of sensitive international policy functions to presidential and prime ministerial offices, a development particularly notable in the context of regional organizations such as the European Union.

But the interpenetration of domestic and international policy arenas has also had the effect of politicizing the diplomatic environment. Nowadays, the process of ratifying agreements often involves a continuing dialogue with interested domestic constituencies alongside international negotiation. This has meant that the demands for coordination have expanded from the horizontal plane represented by intra-bureaucratic linkages to the vertical plane of intra-societal relations--a point to which I shall return shortly. Part of this process is reflected in a renewed concern with what has conventionally been regarded as public diplomacy. Engagement with both foreign and domestic publics has long been one subtheme of the "new" diplomacy debate, but it has been given added significance by the need and ability to influence key policy constituencies through the exercise of "soft" power reflecting changed policy agendas.¹⁰ One manifestation of this is the growing significance of image management in world politics as governments, business and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) seek to use it as both a power resource and a mode of managing globalization.¹¹ Rather than a form of public diplomacy in which manipulation of foreign publics through the dissemination of what might be deemed as propaganda, what is now required--as a recent report on the reform of U.S. diplomacy argues--is active engagement with both domestic and foreign publics and their representatives in civil society, based on transparency and information sharing.¹²

The central emphasis of the changes in diplomatic process and organization outlined above is on developments within the diplomatic services and their bureaucratic settings. Overlaying these, however, is another transformative layer related to core arguments of the globalization discourse--that relating to the implications of deterritorialization and transnationalism for governmental actors.

A growing symbiosis between state and nonstate actors--one of the key themes of GT 2015--creates the background for what I have termed "catalytic diplomacy."¹³ This rests on the recognition of growing interdependencies between actors flowing from interlinked autonomy and resource dilemmas as they seek to maximize their freedom of action in the pursuit of policy goals on the one hand, while, on the other, devising strategies to compensate for resource deficiencies. This results in the creation of bargaining relationships in which key resources--wealth, knowledge and legitimacy--are traded between actors possessing differing resource bases.¹⁴ It differs from other designations such as "track two" or "unofficial" diplomacy inasmuch as these terms are usually employed to indicate supplementary negotiations primarily engaged in by governmental elites. As such, they may be associated with catalytic diplomacy but they are qualitatively different in terms both of actors and objectives.

The implications for national diplomatic systems therefore lie outside the narrower confines suggested by some earlier phases of adaptation. That is not to say that intra-bureaucratic adaptation is irrelevant--quite the opposite. If anything, the processes of bureaucratic diffusion and consolidation are likely to be enhanced by these developments. But they are supplemented and overlaid by a growing emphasis on establishing channels of communication with civil society organizations, particularly NGOs. This is most clearly developed in many, if not all, multilateral diplomatic environments.¹⁵

Increasingly, however, the development of NGO linkages has become a recurrent theme for diplomatic services around the world. Taking the United Kingdom as an example, the trend toward engaging both business and NGOs has gained increasing momentum. Thus the deputy head of Policy Planning in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is a former OXFAM official, and in late 1999, a staff member of Amnesty International was seconded as third secretary in the British embassy in Manila. The development of an NGO secondee scheme, reflecting the Labour government's commitment to an "ethical" foreign policy, complements a well-established system of secondments from the business community in the pursuit of a more effective commercial diplomacy. Such developments reflect the general observation in GT 2015 to the effect that successful states will need to interact with nonstate actors to manage authority and to share responsibility. One observer has identified this general phenomenon as "polylateral" diplomacy, suggesting that the need to enhance the incorporation of transnational actors into negotiating environments has added a dimension to the traditional bilateral and multilateral categorizations.¹⁶ But what are the implications of this for our image of diplomatic services and their functions?

Diplomats as Gatekeepers and Boundary Spanners

A traditional image of the national diplomatic machinery--one that diplomats themselves have been keen to project--is that of the "gatekeeper" acting as the essential filter between the domestic and international environments. This rests on a number of linked assumptions, the most fundamental of which is the centrality of the territorial state and the primacy of the control of boundaries and the communication flows that cross them. Associated with this are the frequent claims made for the special qualities to be found in foreign policy, inscribed in its "foreignness," reinforced by its equation with high policy and the pursuit of an identifiable national interest. The assertion of exclusivity in the management of international policy may result in several strategies through which foreign ministries seek to establish control, while recognizing the need for coordination in the face of a much more diffuse international policy environment. These strategies are most likely to be rooted in the conceptualization of coordination as a hierarchical, top-down process in which the foreign ministry, aided by the diplomatic network over which it presides, assumes the role of dominant central agency.

A somewhat different image, and one that accords with the developments discussed in GT 2015, is presented by that of the "boundary spanner," whose essence resides in the characterization and significance of boundaries.¹⁷ This image proceeds from the recognition that boundaries, not simply those associated with territory but also those demarcating issues and policy arenas, are increasingly porous. Rather than being fixed and permanent, they continually reconstitute themselves in response to shifting patterns of interactions. Far from being irrelevant, therefore (as some globalization advocates contend), they become sites of intense activity as they are enacted and reenacted. Whereas the gatekeeper image rests on the assumption that the defining function of diplomacy lies in controlling national boundaries and insulating the state from its environment, the boundary spanner image stresses the importance of mediating within and across the points of interface between the state and its multiple environments.

In other words, the logic of boundary control is replaced by a logic determined by an awareness of the limits of control combined with the needs of access to, and presence in, these environments. Bureaucratic bargaining rather than the hierarchical model of coordination, which, as suggested earlier, is no stranger to the management of the international environment--consequently becomes far more prominent. For diplomatic services, coordination becomes a matter of facilitating information flows and sharing "lead" department status on international issues. More than this, however, added significance is attached to the development of networks comprising agents of government and a variety of societal actors that are continuously engaged in negotiating the boundaries between states and their international environments.

Increasingly, then, diplomacy in its "catalytic" manifestation, which I have identified, will be an integral element in the developing global policy networks identified by Reinicke, among others.¹⁸ Starting from the premise that globalization has highlighted the deficiencies of governments, acting alone or in concert, in terms of their scope of activity, speed of response to global issues, and range of contacts, he identifies the significance of emerging networks incorporating both public and private sector actors. It is not, he suggests, that multigovernmental institutions are irrelevant, but that the more diverse membership and non-hierarchical qualities of public policy networks promote collaboration and learning and speed up the acquisition and processing of knowledge. What he terms "vertical" subsidiarity, in which policy-making is delegated within public sector agencies, has to be supplemented by "horizontal" subsidiarity through outsourcing to nonstate actors.

This endows actors--boundary spanners--capable of acting as mediators or brokers in such an environment with a special significance: "They aim at modulating, regulating, and sometimes controlling what kinds of resources, signals, information and ideas pass in and pass out of the semipermeable membranes that are the boundaries of the organization."¹⁹ In doing so, they operate outside and within the organization, assuming a diversity of forms in both governmental and nongovernmental arenas. Lobbyists, management consultants, think tanks, epistemic communities--each may discharge such mediating functions.

But this perspective also provides an alternate--and, in many policy contexts, more relevant--set of criteria for understanding the role of the diplomat in a turbulent policy milieu. Diplomatic systems can provide a channel between domestic and international environments in the processes of regime construction, enhancing the transparency of international institutions and thereby, their legitimacy in the public eye, and assembling and coordinating a range of interests in combating global problems.²⁰ Perhaps most significant, in a world that is marked by considerable levels of cultural conflict, diplomats, through their generic mediative skills, are well placed to generate understanding out of the conflicts over value and institutions that divide communities.²¹ In other words, diplomats will become increasingly involved in the processes of developing and participating in policy networks that tie together the resources of governmental and nongovernmental actors and will turn into increasingly significant nodes in these networks. One current example is to be found in the issue of "conflict diamonds" and their role in financing the continuing conflicts in southern Africa. Diplomats have been central players here, but their role has been that of facilitator-enabler, helping to establish a network embracing governments, NGOs such as Global Witness and Human Rights Watch, and business, particularly De Beers, which enjoys a near monopoly over the diamond market.²²

Conclusion

The world of 2015 will be, as the report suggests, one of uncertainty and confusion, shaped by cross-cutting trends. In such an environment, the role of diplomacy will become more, not less essential. The structures of diplomacy, however, are changing in response to developments occurring within the domestic and international environment. Certainly, changes in information technology make up part of this milieu, but they are accompanied by equally significant processes whereby the state, while remaining a key player in world politics, is joined in the management of complex policy issues by a network of nongovernmental actors. This at once provides the professional diplomat with a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge lies in adapting the traditional modes of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy to a world where intergovernmental patterns of relationships account for only part of the policy-making environment. The opportunity lies in mobilizing the skills of diplomacy in fashioning ever-shifting "coalitions of the willing" to tackle problems that no one actor, governmental or nongovernmental, has the capacity to manage.

Endnotes

1. Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future with Nongovernment Experts (Washington, DC.: National Intelligence Council, December 2000), www.cia.gov/cia/publications/globaltrends2015/.

2. Paul Sharp, "For Diplomacy: Representation and the Study of International Relations," International Studies Review, 1 (1) (1999): 51.

3. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., "Globalization: What's New? What's Not? (And So What?)," Foreign Policy, 118 (Spring 2000): 113-114.

4. R. J. Ammon, "Telediplomacy: Collapsing Time and Space, and a New Diplomatic Paradigm" (paper presented at the 39th International Studies Association Convention, Minneapolis, March 1998). See also Majid Tehranian, Global Communications and World Politics: Domination, Development, and Discourse (Boulder: Rienner, 1999).

5. Gordon S. Smith, "Driving Diplomacy into Cyberspace," The World Today (June 1997): 156; Gordon S Smith, "Reinventing Diplomacy: A Virtual Necessity" Virtual Diplomacy Series no. 6 (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, February 2000).

6. S. Eldon, From Quill Pen to Satellite: Foreign Ministries in the Information Age (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1994): 22.

7. See, for example, David Vogel, Barriers or Benefits: Regulation in Transatlantic Trade (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1997).

8. For a discussion of this in the Canadian context, see A.F. Cooper & G. Hayes, eds. Worthwhile Initiatives? Canadian Mission-Oriented Diplomacy (Toronto: Irwin, 2000).

9. James P. Muldoon, et al., eds. Multilateral Diplomacy and the United Nations Today (Boulder: Westview, 1999).

10. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990): 188. See also Mark Leonard and Vidhya Alakeson, Going Public: Diplomacy for the Information Society (London: Foreign Policy Centre, 2000).

11. I have developed the idea of image manipulation in Brian Hocking, "The Diplomacy of Image and Memory: Swiss Bankers and Nazi Gold," DSP Discussion Papers, no. 64 (Leicester: Centre for the Study of Diplomacy, 2000).

12. Center for Strategic and International Studies, Reinventing Diplomacy in the Information Age (Washington, DC: CSIS, 1998): 94-8.

13. Brian Hocking, "Catalytic Diplomacy: Beyond 'Newness' and 'Decline' " in Jan Melissen, ed., Innovation in Diplomatic Practice (Houndsmills: Macmillan, 1999).

14. Stephen Krasner, "Power Politics, Institutions and Transnational Relations," in Thomas Risse-Kappen, Bringing Transnational Relations Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995): 207-8.

15. See, for example, Robert O'Brien, Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Aart Scholte, and Marc Williams, Contesting Global Governance: Multilateral Economic Institutions and Global Social Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

16. Geoffrey Wiseman, "'Polylateralism' and New Modes of Global Dialogue," DSP Discussion Papers no. 59 (Leicester: Centre for the Study of Diplomacy, 1999).

17. This term is employed by Ansell and Weber in Christopher K. Ansell and Steven Weber, "Organizing International Politics: Sovereignty and Open Systems," International Political Science Review 20 (1) (1999): 77.

18. Wolfgang H. Reinecke, Global Public Policy: Governing Without Government? (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1998). Also, by the same author, "The Other World Wide Web: Global Public Policy Networks," Foreign Policy 117 (1999-2000): 44-57.

19. Ansell and Weber, 82.

20. A. K. Henrikson, "Diplomacy for the 21st Century: 'Re-Crafting the Old Guild'," Wilton Park Occasional Paper no. 1 (1997): 20-30.

21. Ibid., 22-24.

22. For a summary of the issues and actors involved see the series of articles in the Financial Times: Andrew Parker, Mark Huband, and Francesco Guerrera, "The Deadly Scramble for Diamonds in Africa," July 10, 2000; Francesco Guerrera and Andrew Parker, "De Beers: All that Glitters Is Not Sold," July 11, 2000; Andrew Parker, S. Sanghera, and Francesco Guerrera, "Between a Rock and a Hard Place," July 12, 2000.

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