My view of diplomacy today

Some time last October we had our first lesson about diplomacy and we were asked to write down our first impressions about what “the new diplomacy” might mean. Today our answers were handed back. I can still remember how difficult that tiny task was and to be honest I sat at least half of the allocated time staring at an empty paper, but to my great surprise I had actually managed to write down something (I had completely forgotten this and thought I had handed in an empty paper) and here is what I thought back then;

“…the concept of diplomacy is changing or has changed from what it traditionally used to be. The new part being the emergence of new actors including international organisations and trans-national corporations, which have such a huge importance in the modern world that they cannot be ignored…”

It was far from a complete or perfect answer (!) and after twelve weeks of intensive lectures about the subject, plus the seminars and numerous chapters from various books accompanied by a pile of articles I would not be so sure about the changed nature of diplomacy. It seems that in both, in my first impression –note and also in my original ideas for the first blog post (about the most important change in the nature of diplomacy) I was hoping to find some massive and radical changes if not a complete revolution. However, today I am willing to conclude that even though diplomacy has evolved a lot (and as a result of this the term new diplomacy might be beneficiary in describing the point where it is today) it has also kept many traditional aspects. Thus I am not even sure that there is such a thing as the new diplomacy, instead we are at the phase of diplomacy that is suitable for today’s world order and as long as the world keeps changing, diplomacy keeps evolving in response. Even the “new” actors, namely non-state actors including international non-governmental organisations (not just any organisations!) are simply a part of this process and maybe one of the catalysts for the changes in the very nature of diplomacy. In the beginning of the course I was expecting the “old” and “new” diplomacy to be radically different but instead they seem to co-exist peacefully and means of both are used when needed.

During the twelve weeks I have managed to learn a great deal about diplomacy and broaden my perspectives about it. I must admit that conference and summit diplomacy had rarely passed my mind, with their advantages of openness and inclusiveness of most (if not all) of the states as equals in negotiations. But next to this openness still remains the need for back channels and a great deal of secrecy, a traditional parts of the “old diplomacy” that seems to be as necessary as before, especially in times of crisis. However, what I found most interesting topic of the course was the area of public diplomacy, which some argue is simply a fancy new name for propaganda. I do not completely agree with this view and believe that there is much more to it, from promoting once country to actually aiming to achieve long lasting friendly relationships. It is thus important to remember, that selling a bad product (as would be the case with propaganda) will not work in the long run!

Funnily enough, when I was about 7 I once told my aunt that when I grow up I wanted to become a diplomat and I would love to know what the 7 year old me thought was the concept of diplomacy! While diplomacy might no longer remain my dream career it has definitely been a fascinating area to study, not least because of its complexity and at times I still find it hard to define what is actually within the discipline and what is not. I cannot but wonder for example whether Bono is a diplomat (of some sort) when travelling around the world and meeting with some heads of states or simply a star on a fascinating journey. There obviously is no clear answer.

McVictory for NGO's

“By 2006, an estimated 17 percent of Brazil's original Amazon rainforest cover had been destroyed, an area larger than France” ⁶

Due to sudden increase in the practice of agriculture in Brazil, the Amazon rainforest has been decreasing drastically in the past 40 years. In the website of the Earth Observatory of NASA it is possible to examine the increase of deforestation in Amazon since 2000 and 2009¹. This issue has been highlighted for many years but since Brazil is a large-scale exporter of agricultural products it has been ignored. However, in the past decade the interest in climate change grew among Brazilian NGO’s and they established a plan to fight this environmental issue².

NGOs had to establish a strategy to end multinational corporations’ activities in Amazon which were negative for environment and raise awareness of the situation and consequently obtain a governmental response. In the beginning of the millennium many Brazilian NGOs established a network to influence climate change policies. The creation of the Climate Observatory alerted the national and international community for the dreadful future of Amazon. Consequently, the government increased its efforts in decreasing deforestation. In addition, the international community established a fund to aid the Amazon rainforest, more specifically in 2008 Norway pledged $1 billion to a Amazon’s protection fund³.

Plus, in orders to fight the problem is necessary to find its root. Therefore, it was necessary to indicate the people responsible for the deforestation and also the multinational corporations that are financing them. For instance, in 2006 Greenpeace linked McDonalds to illegal deforestation⁴. Thus, the bad marketing caused by these allegations raised many protests by activists who dressed as chickens. Consequently, McDonalds stopped selling chicken fed on soy grown in newly deforested areas of the Amazon rainforest, and the big food retailer started to cooperate with Greenpeace to protect Amazon⁵.

Despite of the struggle to alert people for the environmental problem occurring in the Amazon, now NGOs are finally noticing the improvements made in the last decade. It was revealed “6,450 sq km of (2,490 sq miles) of rainforest were cleared between August 2009 and July 2010, a drop of 14% compared with the previous 12 months”⁷.Consequently, Brazilian NGOs recently announced prospects of completely abolishing deforestation of the Amazon.

Concluding, NGOs have a significant role in environmental diplomacy. Their influence is of greater importance to alert government which are usually lobbied by corporations. In this way, they are the main agents who can initiate action by the governments.

Sources:

1

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/deforestation.php

2

http://www.cicero.uio.no/fulltext/index_e.aspx?id=1953

3 http://www.norway.org/ARCHIVE/policy/environment/regnskogen_i_brasil_en/

4

http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0406-greenpeace.html

5

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/news/mcvictory/

6

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007413.html

7

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11888875

Three Different Responses to Public Diplomacy

Hugo Chavez, President of Venezeula, gained a public diplomacy coup in reaction to the recent flooding in Venezuela. He moved himself and his entourage out of their home in the Miraflorres Palace to make room for homeless flood victims, while he moved into a tent given him by the Libyan leader Gaddafi. He ordered that the military make room for more homeless in the military nerve centre of Tiuna Fort and forcibly leased many tourist hotels to cope with the problem. (1)

"Nicolas's Yellow House is pretty big," said Chavez referring to the building where Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro has his offices. "A lot of people can live in there." (2)

Compare this reaction with that of Pakistan’s President Zardari, who left Pakistan to visit the West while his country was inundated with similar floods.

“Osama Sadoon Memon, from Lahore, told the BBC: "This visit should have taken place weeks ago. He needed to be here rather then enjoying cocktails in luxury hotels abroad at the government’s expense.”

Again, President G. W. Bush managed to engage in negative public diplomacy in his reaction to the flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:

“Mr Bush disclosed in extracts of his new book, due for release next week, that it was "the worst moment of my presidency" when the rapper said "George Bush doesn't care about black people", during a televised concert to raise money for victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.” (4)

It is astonishing that Bush, in particular, with all the sophisticated public relations apparatus surrounding him, could make such a basic diplomatic error.

(1) - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/02/venezuela-flood-victims-hugo-chavez 2/12/10

(2) - http://www.france24.com/en/20101211-chavez-trades-office-tent-aid-flood-victims 11/12/10

(3) - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10960094 13/8/10

(4) - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8112149/Kanye-West-regrets-George-W-Bush-Hurricane-Katrina-outburst.html 5/11/10

NGO`s and Environment.....

The interest about environment and its issues as climate change and global warming is significantly growing not just between scientists, however, environment is becoming one of the central issues of politics between states,

nevertheless, there is a significant dominance of specific interest about presentation of environment, that environment

needs and has to be taken seriously.

According to the view of climate scientists, world has to stop the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and start to make them fall from aroun

d 2015 to 2020, nevertheless, states tend to refuse or go around the facts about future of environment. The Chinese officials’ claim that China has moral right to develop, what also means that the carbon emissions will increase. Also China, India and developing countries very often and mainly for economic reasons claim that industrialised and wealthy states (Europe and USA) are responsible to set up ‘a clear example’ to cut carbon emissions.

When take place environmental negotiations, the nation-states are not the only components, however, the a

ctivist and NGO`s,as important component of civil society, which represents people from around the world, are involved as well. Mainly are apolitical, nevertheless, their impact on diplomatic issues increased significantly in last decades, but their possibilities are more – less limited. During the environmental negotiations are not component of crucial decision making process, because the major player are still s states, but they are present as source of independent analysis, advisers and conscience of politicians.

In the first half of December 2009, Copenhagen (Denmark) became a place were representatives from 120 countries met for the United Nation climate conference to replace the Kyoto Protocol, aimed fighting global warming, expires in 2012. The official name of Copenhagen Summit was COP15 (15^th con

ference of parties) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). NGO`s and activist got just bounded access to the Conference. For the COP15 was registered

around 45,000 of civilians, 7,000 were allowed to entrance but just 90 were allowed in conference during the final day of crucial decision making.....Result of Copenhagen Summit was failure and ended without significant agreement for cutting of carbon emissions.

Argument that NGO`s are crucially influential in environmental issues is highly polemic. Are source of information about climate change caused by carbon emissions and are important as advisers for environmental issues; unfortunately economy is likely to dominate. Cutting of carbon emissions has major influence on development and economy of all states around the world. Significant cut of numbers of emissions for all states means, that they have to find alternative sources of energy – green energy. Alternative energy is in process of development and is not effective enough to change `traditional` source of energy. And what is crucial, mainly for developing countries and weak economies alternative source of energy is not affordable.

RESOURCES

http://climatechange.thinkaboutit.eu/think4/post/ngo_activists_at_odds_in_copenhagen

http://envirothink.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/copenhagen-summit-severly-limits-ngo-participation/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/01/q-and-a-copenhagen-summit

The Dynamics of Diplomacy, Jean-Robert Leguey-Feilleux

Global Warming or Global Manipulation?

This blog started life as a response to Demdem’s posting, Adressing Global Warming, and his (her?) great praise for the diplomatic skills of Al Gore, a politician I have little trust in. There are, of course, arguments against climate change and Al Gore in particular. The following article apeared in the Daily Telegraph on 25^th October 2009, by Christopher Booker, from which I have extracted the following passages:

“The IPCC, through its series of weighty reports, was now to become the central player in the whole story. But rarely has the true nature of any international body been more widely misrepresented. It is commonly believed that the IPCC consists of “1,500 of the world’s top climate scientists”, charged with weighing all the scientific evidence for and against “human-induced climate change” in order to arrive at a “consensus”.

In fact, the IPCC was never intended to be anything of the kind. The vast majority of its contributors have never been climate scientists. Many are not scientists at all. And from the start, the purpose of the IPCC was not to test the theory, but to provide the most plausible case for promoting it.”

Later in the article Booker proclaims of the, now famous, hockey stick graph:

“One of the hockey stick’s biggest fans was Al Gore, who in 2006 made it the centrepiece of his Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth. But it then turned out that almost every single scientific claim in Gore’s film was either wildly exaggerated or wrong. The statistical methods used to create the hockey-stick graph were so devastatingly exposed by two Canadian statisticians, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (as was confirmed in 2006 by two expert panels commissioned by the US Congress) that the graph has become one of the most comprehensively discredited artefacts in the history of science.” (1)

The following quote, taken from a 1993 report by the influential Club of Rome, must inevitably lead one to question the agenda of the social engineers and propagandists:

"In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill ... All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." (2)

It’s not that I completely reject the concept of global warming, its more that the influential governing bodies of this globalised world, (not necessarily to be confused with national governments) now employ public diplomacy, propaganda, public relations and media manipulation on such a collossal scale that it is no longer possible for the individual to easily determine truth from fiction. While governments are eagerly engaged in nation branding and public diplomacy, they forget that populations will instinctively understand that they are being sold a construct rather than a truth. This must eventually lead to an undermining of trust and authority. I don’t possess the technical knowledge to make an informed decision on the veracity of climate science, (I know, I have tried) I wish I could trust in my government, my leaders and an un-biased media to make the aguments clear to me, but you know, I don’t trust them an inch!

(1) - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6425269/The-real-climate-change- catastrophe.html

(2)— in The First Global Revolution, pp.104-105 by Alexander King, founder of the Club of Rome and Bertrand Schneider, secretary of the Club of Rome, Orient Longman Ltd., Hyderbad, (1993)

A Case Study of Ivory Trade Ban

Non-state actors are significant in both spheres, trade and environmental diplomacy. In case of trade, two types of non-state actors are of utter importance, namely trans-national corporations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The first ones today often conduct their own diplomacy in order to advance their economic goals and no longer rely on diplomatic services provided by governments. The latter, NGOs usually have a somewhat contrary role and their diplomacy aims to ban trade in areas that harm local livelihoods, fauna or environment in general. Often state diplomacy and states themselves can be seen as “obstacles to change, not proponents of change” (Princen and Finger, 1994: 31) aiming to maintain order and stability. Thus, even if trade often leads to increasing environmental and other severe threats, governments as “defenders of the status quo” are not the likely actors involved in reducing those threats. (Ibid.)

A further problem of the traditional diplomatic ways of handling matters is “the nature of the actors themselves”. Diplomacy has been conducted for a long time “by an elite corps of diplomats”, which today have been complemented by political leaders and other bureaucrats. (Ibid.) Their work still remains vital, but diplomacy has become much more complex and new issues have risen to the agenda and even trade negotiations, a part of traditional diplomacy have become complex with the increasing powers of the companies themselves and the growing participation of other non-state actors aiming to interrupt for reasons of their own. Today professional diplomatic actors “trained in international law, diplomatic protocol, the art of negotiations…interstate relations, and…maintaining the status quo” find it increasingly difficult to handle all the new issues alone. (Ibid.)

The case of ivory trade is an eminent example of a case where trade that is beneficiary to many also produce irreversible harm to others, which makes it hard to reach any agreements by state negotiations alone. Trade in ivory has a long history, but this has meant that where as 500 years ago there might have been up to 10 million elephants in Africa but in 1979 only about 1.3 million, with 625 000 left in 1989 according to estimates. (Ibid. 121) Obviously, ivory trade was not the only reason also droughts, hunting, loss of habitat to humans and natural deaths were partly responsible for the decline. However, the most significant immediate cause of death has been poaching encouraged by the increasing demand and price for ivory after the World Wars. In Hong Kong, Europe and Japan the price of raw ivory rose from approximately $3-10 a pound in the 1960s to $200 a pound in the 1980s. Around the same time the ability to mass produce ivory carvings improved leading to ever increasing elephant killing and according to some estimates 200-300 elephants were killed by poachers daily. (Ibid. 122)

The response began with Ghana listing African elephants on appendix III of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1976. Elephants were uplisted to appendix II in 1978 and in 1985 the parties to CITES established the first export quotas and trade control systems.(Ibid.125) CITES, the intergovernmental institution could do but little to handle the wider elephant problem, there was need for non-state actors to get involved. Until this NGOs had mainly documented the decline and lobbied for a ban, but had mainly been ignored by CITES and its member states. However, in the 1980s NGOs managed to get a voice hard to ignore. After impressive lobbying and negotiation the United States African Elephant Conservation Act of 1988 was passed, forms of public diplomacy were used to heighten the public concerns for the elephants.

In 1989 the appendix I was finally agreed on with an international ban. (Ibid.127) In achieving the ban it was necessary to influence consumer behaviour in order to stop the trade, this could not have been done by states and their organizations because after all "states pursue economic growth through the promotion of production, consumption, and trade” and thus, international NGOs have stepped in to fill the “diplomatic niche”. (Ibid.134) These NGOs have the knowledge and can operate over state boundaries and have had huge impact in pushing the one hundred plus CITES member countries towards the ban agreement, which might not have been possible through traditional diplomatic routes. (Ibid.135-6)

In relation to CITES itself, CITES secretariat seems to turn to international NGOs in numerous cases as they “hold a peculiar advantage” as they are not bound by state boundaries and can conduct diplomacy that does not need to be nice or fawn anyone and governments can only retain good diplomatic relations through compromises. (Ibid. 142)

In general the importance of NGOs in both environmental and trade negotiations is the “influence achieved by building expertise in areas diplomats tend to ignore and by revealing information economic interests tend to withhold”. (Ibid. 41) Thus, it is important to remember that “[b]ad policies do not remain in effect simply because an absence of good ideas but also because powerful forces block the adaptation of those ideas” and non-state actors often are the most powerful counterforce of these enhancing the possibility to adapt some new ideas. (Ibid. 37)

Sources:

Princen, T. and Finger, M. (1994) Environmental NGOs in World Politics: linking the local and the global. London: Routledge

Addressing Global Warming

With the rise of the economic globalisation of powerful states, many find the significant process of ecological globalisation pushed to the limits from environmentalists in contemporary time. Both economy and environment is important for every state and individual, thus it is difficult to negotiate sufficient results in regards to reduce environmental issues because of the negative economic effects it would have had as a consequence.
Leaders of states are well aware of the dimension of environmental issues, thus, they pretend to be blind.



Al Gore, former vice president in the Clinton Administration, is a supporter of environment awareness, author, multiple award winner, business man and a member of a nongovernmental organisation. He is present in talks and negotiation. Al Gore's former position in the White House enabled him to build a good network with powerful people; his concerns are being heard and considered in Climate Change talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, Kyoto Global Warming conference, in the Congress and many more other meetings.
In his lifetime, he was very active in chairing and negotiating agreements; he accomplished many things in regards to climate change. He, for instance, chaired the congressional delegations on Global Warming in the US whereby 40 nations agreed to cut Greenhouse gas emission, he was a member of many who drafted the limitation of Greenhouse and Carbon dioxide release in the Kyoto Global Warming Conference for 150 nations and many more other things.
He once said

“For a long time, the scientists have been telling us global warming increases the temperature of the top layer in the ocean, and that causes the average hurricane to become a lot stronger. So, the fact that the ocean temperatures did go up because of global warming, because of man-made global warming, starting around in the seventies and then we had a string of unusually strong hurricanes outside the boundaries of this multi-decadal cycle that is a real factor; there are scientists who point that out, and they're right, but we're exceeding those boundaries now.”

It is very important, for every individual and for every state, to participate and take action against the damage of the environment. I think Al Gore is doing a good job in using his power to reach out to people and make them aware,educate them with public talks, documentaries, books and many other ways.


http://algoresupportcenter.com/accomplishments4.html
http://www.algore.com/
http://www.polisci.colostate.edu/fac/mb/NGO%20Influence.pdf