Tuesday 9 March 2010

OLD DIPLOMACY STILL RELEVANT


‘It is not surprising that the death of the resident ambassador has been indefinitely postponed’ (Berridge, 2010,123).
This strong argument from Berridge shows that ‘old diplomacy’ has survived the communications and transport revolution.
Therefore ‘old diplomacy’ is still alive and has some contemporary relevance and the most illustrative example is how’ traditional diplomacy’ is being used by the United States with the support of Western allies for Iran to comply with the international non proliferation regime for producing nuclear weapons.
Beijing believed that diplomacy should therefore be given a lot more time and has opposed any punitive measures against Iran.
The fact of sending the Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister as a low level official compare to the US, Britain, France, and Germany who send their Foreign Ministers to discuss new effort to pressure Teheran, where decisions could not be reach, showed the important role of traditional diplomacy.
This very contemporary event shows that modern technology, cannot always replace direct communication, direct contact or personal presence of the higher members of states or governments.
For instance, Chinese believed that diplomacy should be given more time because they can use their veto in the Security Council to vote against any sanctions against Iran and normally the US and European Countries can’t act without UN approval.
Therefore the final option is for some European and American diplomats to hold out hope that they will be able to bring China around the table but only with old diplomatic manner by the use of secrecy and high politics.
So what options does Obama have left?
http://www.time.com/world/article/0,8599,1956075,00.html?iid=sphere
‘To Obama’s Pile of Woes, add a failing Iran Policy’ (Jan, 25, 2010)

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