Do you think the ‘old’ diplomacy has any contemporary relevance?

         

     

     The origins of diplomacy are very difficult to define. For some people, diplomacy has existed forever. This view is founded in the belief that the human being has been acting in a diplomatic way since their early existence.  Others date diplomacy to the Ancient Greece city-states, and others to the Italian city-states, when the first embassies were established. 

         Nowadays, after World War One, we divide diplomacy into old and new. Obviously, the new diplomacy is based and has its origins in the old one. But in a world of globalization, technology and rapid development, the existence of new important issues and actors has caused diplomacy to change.  I will try to present some of the old diplomacy’s contemporary relevance.

        First of all, let us examine the structure of the old diplomacy. The Italian city-states were the first ones to have established the permanent, resident mission – embassies abroad (Baylis and Smith, 2005:389). After this new establishment, the other European states started to have their embassies as well. Since that time, embassies become very important institutions, which were taking care of states interests. Later on, embassies were linked with foreign departments, which were established within home states.

        As we can see, the structure of the old diplomacy is very similar to the structure of the new diplomacy. States and governments are still the major actors in the international system, and the embassy abroad is linked with the instate foreign departments. Embassies are very important institutions for the states and the states interests.  Furthermore, the importance of embassies nowadays is even bigger. As institutions, embassies not only take care of the state and it’s interests, but of their citizen as well.

http://www.moveidiot.com/moving_articles.php?article_id=2&category_id=3&language=en

      Secondly the process of traditional diplomacy was bilateral (two-part) and was based on secrecy and confidence.

   Nowadays, diplomacy is multilateral, because there is the existence of new actors (Leguey Feilleux, 2009:101): governmental and non-governmental organizations. Importantly, the multilateral diplomacy is not replacing the traditional diplomacy, but compliments it. Secrecy is still relevant in today diplomacy. The difference is, that in old diplomacy secrecy was a natural thing, and in the new diplomacy, secrecy should not exist anymore, because the new diplomacy is supposed to be the open diplomacy. Apparently in some cases it is not like this. I attached the link in which you can see that the secrecy is still present in new diplomacy: 

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB145/index.htm

      Third and last argument is that the old diplomacy agenda focused mostly on the issues of war and peace.

      Today avoiding war is very important as well, especially after the First and Second World Wars. The states want to cooperate, they do not want to fight anymore. Nowadays we have the existence of the nuclear weapons, one of which’s primary roles is the prevention of wars between countries. Nuclear weapons are new tools for diplomats to keep peace and balance of power in the world. This happened during the Cold War, when the presence of this kind of weapon predicted the war between the USA and USSR.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB145/index.htm

     So as we can the old diplomacy is still relevant in today’s world.