diplomacy 5

 It has been said that diplomacy is useless without the latent (or sometimes blatant) threat of force. That underscores the above claim that neither diplomacy nor politics are ever isolated or separate. To borrow the famous line of Carl von Clausewitz, if war is politics (or policy) by other means, then diplomacy is war by other means, as well as its occasional ally or its antidote. All really are inseparable from power, a point associated not only with Clausewitz, but more commonly with a founder of modern politics, Niccolò Machiavelli. This may be ironic, for, as Sofer has noted, Diplomats are particularly vulnerable in their clash with sovereigns, where the aura of privilege and proximity to power often prove to be a double-edged sword. In the extreme case of a struggle between a virtuous prince and an ideal diplomat, the latter is merely a hunter with feeble arrows, or in Machiavellian terms, a fox of the second order. The diplomat is almost inevitably the civil servant chosen, by his manners, image, and practices, to serve as a scapegoat (Sofer, 2013, 58–59). Not all diplomats are ‘scapegoats,’ and those who are so cast may not be as weak as they appear, for scapegoats, among other things, serve a necessary political function in preserving the appearance of public virtue. Put another way, although the ends of diplomacy may be public, the means are, by necessity, private, even if that means on occasion sacrificing a public reputation.

Transformations The relationship between diplomacy and politics is essential, but it has also evolved unevenly. Its evolution, Harold Nicolson has written, is not uniform or necessarily progressive: “international intercourse has always been subject to strange retrogressions” (Nicolson, 1954, 1–2). Today, this is a minority view. The adjective ‘transformational’ is now popular in many fields, including diplomacy. What does it mean? There are actually two meanings, one directed outward, the other inward. The first refers to statecraft: the ways by which diplomacy transforms particular places, problems, and relationships from one condition to another. The second refers to diplomacy itself and its methods. The best-known example of the latter is the aforementioned ‘New Diplomacy.’ As a term of art it refers to the diplomacy made popular by Woodrow Wilson a century ago, but it has been used at other times as well, including today (for example, by Shaun Riordan) to describe the role of social networks, digital media, and their effects on the diplomatic profession. Wilson’s New