TC 102 Part 4 Reading

• The Present and Future of Diplomacy and Diplomatic Studies is a collection of essays by Stuart Murray, Paul Sharp, Geoffrey Wiseman, David Criekemans, and Jan Melissen.
• The essays in this collection discuss the origins of diplomatic studies, showcase contemporary scholarship, and suggest future research tasks and agendas.
• The authors of the essays in this collection agree on the need for a strong and active Diplomatic Studies Section in ISA that serves as a two-way conduit between practitioners and scholars, alerting the former to the best in IR scholarship while reminding the latter that explanations and understandings of international relations from which diplomacy and diplomats are absent can never be complete.
• The idea of a Diplomatic Studies Section in ISA was proposed at the San Diego 1996 meeting.
• Raymond Cohen was the primary force behind the creation of the Diplomatic Studies Section in ISA.
• Most people intuitively support the importance of diplomacy, the institutions and processes by which states and others manage their relations.
• The end of the Cold War and the creation of new states with new diplomatic services following the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, plus the hope generated by the "New World Order" and "Global Peace" led to a renewed interest in diplomacy and diplomatic studies.
• The San Diego meeting of ISA in 1996 focused on a campaign for a new ISA Section focused on diplomacy.
• The Government said "aye" at the Toronto meeting of ISA the next year, although Susan Strange raised concerns about the proposal.
• The Diplomatic Studies Section in ISA was established at the Toronto meeting of ISA in 1997.
• Scholte (2000) argued that the end of territorialism as a consequence of globalisation does not mean the end of territoriality.
• The international relations system is evolving from a uni-multipolar world to a possible duo-multipolar world (the United States and China) or even a multipolar world.
• The first occurrence concerns changing spheres of political influence, both at a regional and global level.
• These tectonic shifts in the international order will affect diplomacy, with some countries lagging behind and others adapting more flexibly to the changing geopolitical and geo-economical currents.
• The increasing role which geographically located, scarce resources have on international relations and diplomacy will affect diplomatic studies, forcing it to lessen its traditional Western focus and contemplate an emerging world beyond the doorsteps of Washington and London.
• The problematic of deterritorialization also involves the problematic of re-territorialization, which is not the absence or presence of state territory changing status, power, and meaning in relation to postmodern technological constellations and global webs of capitalism.
• The BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India, and China - are of particular relevance here, combining steady economic growth with a more prominent geopolitical role.
• Four recent occurrences of re-territorialization highlight these processes and suggest a promising area of scholarship for both diplomatic and IR scholars.
• Geopolitics has not vanished, as different types of re-territorialization are altering the fabric of international relations and influencing the practices and conduct of modern diplomacy.
• Ruggie (1993) spoke of a process of territoriality: "in the modern international polity an institutional negation of exclusive territories means of situating and dealing with those dimensions of collective existence that are irreducibly transterritorial in character.
• Today, the role of business and culture in diplomacy is being explored, and novel theories are being broadened.
• Abraham De Wicquefort, a seventeenth-century Dutch diplomat, wrote The Ambassador and His Functions (1716), one of the seminal works in diplomatic studies.
• New bricks in diplomatic studies include complementing the diplomatic studies canon, overcoming stereotypes and marginalization, and harnessing diplomatic studies to the early rumblings of a practical diplomatic renaissance.
• Traditional diplomatic theory, as exemplified by De Wicquefort, is well-established and familiar, encouraging familiarity over innovation.
• Many diplomatic scholars would agree with the point that a lively theoretical debate exists in diplomatic studies, with a growing number of explicit, not cross-fertilizations or practice-based, theoretical works.
• Innovative work in diplomatic studies began to slowly escape the confines of inquiry than traditional holes in the canon appear.
• Scholars are often construed as "technicians to the state" (Hill in Nye 2008:954); consultants and accoutrements to a visible, stately profession; or as glorified diplomatic historians, microscopically combing the minutiae of state-qua-state relations.
• A practical renaissance in diplomacy is occurring, but the same cannot be said of a matching, theoretical renaissance, at least in absolute terms.
• Over 300 years of study of the state fossil have marginalized diplomatic studies in IR and stereotyped its scholars as theoretically reluctant to bite the empirical hand that supposedly feeds them.
• Theoretical resistance lingers in diplomatic studies, with the conceptual framework continuing to lag behind the breadth of the canon and the volume of theory.
• A Diplomatic Theory of International Relations, the first exclusive book on diplomatic theory, appeared last year.
• Diplomatic studies is often accused of "perfecting and embellishing familiar bricks in a long-established wall whose foundations may be crumbling" (Sharp 1999:50-51).
• Diplomacy will continue to operate at the forefront of international relations for the foreseeable future.
• The collection of essays provides a clear roadmap from which to start filling in the many outstanding knowledge gaps.
• The future of diplomacy is bright, with the torch passed from the original Diplomatic Studies Section Officers to a new panel of 3.0 scholars in New Orleans, 2010.
• Diplomacy can be the difference in an election win or loss, not the type of "bleeding ulcer" Iraq and Afghanistan commitments.
• Diplomacy, the business of sentation, negotiation, and foreign policy institution is diplomacy.
• The challenges in the modern diplomat's inbox, such as climate change, overpopulation, resource deficiencies, nuclear proliferation, suggest that only madmen bent on suicidal political tenure would choose the sword over the pen.
• War is out, as evidenced by the voter backlash to the Blair/Bush Jr years.
• The revolution in information and communications technology continues to surprise and profoundly impact the conduct of diplomacy.