One picture took my attention- the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and the Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari shaking hands (picture available at http://www.life.com/image/78510258)
To expand my view I will explore the honesty in the old diplomacy and the honesty in the modern diplomacy.
Whilst the French were the first to “invent” the honest diplomacy, with what eyes can we look at this picture? Is this hand shaking honest? What does it mean “honest” today or did our generation transform the honesty through the information communications technology?
I would rather say no and I will give a couple of examples.
Picture available at http://thelibertytree.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/whats-in-a-handshake-or-presidents-meet-with-bad-people/
In this picture US President Nixon and Mao Zedong who are shaking hands despite the existing tensions between them, taking as an instance the so-called “ping-pong diplomacy” in brief coming from the denial by China to Americans of receiving visas, secondly the ideological differences between Communist China and Democratic and Capitalist America.
Picture available at http://thelibertytree.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/whats-in-a-handshake-or-presidents-meet-with-bad-people/
The picture above is showing the US President Gerald Ford with Brezhnev during the Cold War détente policy where they put further life to the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty).
Following, it is the picture of Ronald Reagan with Gorbachev two years before the end of the Cold War, where they signed the INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces).
Picture available at http://thelibertytree.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/whats-in-a-handshake-or-presidents-meet-with-bad-people/
Finally, coming as the cherry on the top of the cake, it is a picture of the US President George W. Bush with the self-proclaimed Pakistani President Musharraf- a dictator (as some countries see him) and republican democratic President Bush (also seen as dictator in the sense of “someone who tells other people what they should do, in a way that seems unreasonable” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English).
Picture available at http://thelibertytree.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/whats-in-a-handshake-or-presidents-meet-with-bad-people/
As a deduction from these pictures and the message from them I could only say that either the meaning of sincere hand shaking is gone or the modern public diplomacy is not so “public”.
I would rather defend the second, because even with the development of mass media the principle of old diplomacy- secrecy- stays outside the scope of the media. I would even state that that development of the technologies benefits the secrecy of the diplomatic relations using them to make diplomacy untraceable or encoded.
Summarising, if I have to defend the “honesty” of the hand shake, I have to cut out only the shaking hands from the pictures and say that this is the old diplomacy still relevant today and in doing this supporting the French honest diplomacy nowadays.
If choose to defend the modern diplomacy I have again to cut out the shaking hands, but now take this part away and leave only the public figures.
I would argue that the old diplomacy is relevant today and as evidence I will give the intact pictures. That is why I leave them uncut for future references on old diplomacy.
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