Search results

Soviet Union/Russia : US diplomacy with the Russian "adversary" / Robert D. English -- China : American public diplomacy and US-China relations : 1949 to 2012 / Robert S. Ross -- North Korea : engaging a hermit adversarial state / Scott Snyder -- Vietnam : American and Vietnamese public diplomacy, 1945/2010 / Mark P. Bradley and Viet Nguyen -- Libya : the United States and the Libyan Jamahiriyya : from isolation to regional ally, 1969/2011 / Dirk J. Vandewalle -- Iran : public diplomacy in a vacuum / Suzanne Maloney -- Syria : public diplomacy in Syria : overcoming obstacles / William Rugh -- Cuba : public diplomacy as a "battle of ideas" / William LeoGrande -- Venezuela : the United States and Venezuela : managing a schizophrenic relationship / Michael Shifter

Klappentext: The past decade has witnessed an upsurge in interest in alternative ideas about defence and security. Included among these are the notions of non-provocative or non-offensive defence and common security. This book describes these concepts and how they evolved. It then discusses whether and how they may be used to solve the security dilemmas of the 1980s and 1990s.

Whilst the diplomatic studies field has grown impressively in the past decade, paradoxically there is much still to be learnt about 'state foreign services', a term covering the two sides of the diplomacy coin: diplomats serving at home - in the Foreign Ministry - and abroad - at embassies and consulates. Diplomats have a Janus-faced view of their profession: as envoys abroad and bureaucrats at home. This analysis first assesses the American approach to diplomacy's two sides, focusing on the impact of the Donald Trump presidency as a benchmark. Flowing from this are several key challenges that bedevil virtually all democratic foreign ministries: How to frame the 'national interest'? How to represent blemished or populist leaders? How to deal with dissent? How to balance the field-headquarters nexus? And how to manage relations with non-state actors. So long as the Westphalian state system survives, so, too, will the two-sided foreign-service model. Only when moving away from diplomacy as 'state practice' to diplomacy as 'social practice' can the foreign-service model recede, with diplomacy becoming disintermediated, omnilateral, and post-Westphalian, potentially manifesting radically different practices.

Summary
This article considers public diplomacy's future through the prism of public diplomacy between hostile nations. It first sketches democracies' past and present use of public diplomacy in hostile relations with non-democracies. It then discusses five particular challenges for democracies in their future thinking about the public diplomacy–hostile nations' nexus. These challenges are: accounting for public diplomacy's theoretical significance in hostile relations; deciding between isolating or engaging adversaries; avoiding the stigma of propaganda; managing democratic expectations; and settling on an appropriate role for governments. Democratic countries' responses to these challenges will impact public diplomacy's future, notably regarding its effectiveness in relation to hostile nations. The article concludes that public diplomacy is not a panacea for easing hostile bilateral relations. However, it is one of many elements that a judicious government can use — drawing on four ideal-type variants of public diplomacy — in order to improve relations with an adversarial state.

This article considers the importance of informal, practice-based change as opposed to formal change at the UN. I first evaluate UN reform, showing that diplomacy and institutional change within the UN system are better understood as having evolved less from major, formal reform of the UN Charter ('the Charter') than from minor changes in routine practices. I then examine what practice theory and diplomatic studies can learn from each other in terms of how each views the role of leading individuals, illustrating specific practice-based change in relation to the Secretary-General's role. Next, I show how the appointment process for a new Secretary-General has evolved through informal practice, after which I advance an argument that UN diplomatic practices should be considered not only within the narrow context of a formal diplomatic corps of member state diplomats but also as part of an informal, wider diplomatic community of diplomats and non-state actors. Practice theory helps students of diplomacy think more abstractly and systematically about mundane diplomatic practices. Students of diplomacy can help guide practice theory toward empirical diplomatic activities that are often internalized and taken for granted. I conclude that a dialog between the two fields will promote a better understanding of diplomacy as undervalued practices.

My central claim is that the United States has conducted a distinctive form of 'anti-diplomacy', accepting in practice many diplomatic norms and practices while remaining reluctant to acknowledge the fact. To support this claim, this article argues that since its rise as a world power, the United States has participated in international society's diplomatic culture in a distinctive way and that this distinctiveness stems from seven interconnected characteristics of American diplomacy: (1) America's long-held distrust and negative view of diplomats and diplomacy, which has contributed to the historical neglect and sidelining of the US Department of State in the United States' policy-making process; (2) a high degree of domestic influence over foreign policy and diplomacy; (3) a tendency to privilege hard power over soft power in foreign policy; (4) a preference for bilateral over multilateral diplomacy; (5) an ideological tradition of diplomatically isolating states that are considered adversarial and of refusing to engage them until they meet preconditions; (6) a tradition of appointing a relatively high proportion of political rather than career ambassadors; and (7) a demonstrably strong cultural disposition towards a direct, low-context negotiating style. A consequence of these distinguishing characteristics is that American diplomacy tends to be less effective than it might otherwise be, not only in advancing the United States' own interests, but also in advancing wider international cooperation. A goal here is to provide a working framework with which to evaluate any US administration's relationship to diplomacy as the country's interests and identity evolve.