WikiLeaks’s exposure of behind-the-scenes shenanigans of some professional diplomats have put the spotlight sharply on the contemporary role and efficacy of this age-old profession (which is the second oldest after prostitution).
A proverbial Pandora’s box of secret diplomacy has been opened, bringing to light ugly skeletons, embarrassing ignorance, frivolous obsessions and banalities and posing important questions about professional diplomacy as it is being practised today.
These exposures may be only the tip of the iceberg, not a rare aberration soon to be forgotten. The price for indiscretion in public affairs can be high and exacting.
The unauthorised release of the Pentagon Papers (secret documents that concealed the truth from the American public about the manner in which the Vietnam War was fought) by Daniel Ellsburg, a former Vietnam War activist, precipitated sweeping changes in government accountability and transparency.
Not long after the Pentagon Papers’ catharsis, the Watergate disclosures about the Nixon administration’s moral decrepitude stung the public conscience and led to Richard Nixon’s resignation as United States president.
Now, about 40 years later, WikiLeaks could be to crudely executed secret diplomacy what Ellsburg’s Pentagon Papers and Watergate were to secretive military and political deception and indiscretion. It could also open a much-needed debate on reforming the anachronistic, dysfunctional ways of the contemporary diplomatic profession and its misuse by the ruling elite.
Expectations
Diplomats are sent abroad (at excessive cost to the taxpayer) to represent their respective countries and to promote their national interests. They are expected to discharge their functions in a professional and dignified way.
This is what the purists and the seriously minded expect from the profession. For them, therefore, WikiLeaks’s revelations must have come across as an insult to the profession. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said in a recent interview that such “so-called diplomats should be replaced by normal people”.
One has to agree. As far back as 1925 Jules Cambon, a former French diplomat, wrote: “Diplomacy will always have ambassadors and ministers; the question is whether it will have diplomats?”
The truth is that the diplomatic profession has lost much of its erstwhile importance and gravitas, although the pomp and circumstance, the perceived glamour, endures.
Diplomats are no longer the prime movers on the world’s political chessboard as in the times when personalities like Richelieu, Talleyrand, Castlereagh, Bismarck, George Kennan and Henry Kissinger represented the profession.
Moreover, the trivialisation of the diplomatic profession by the appointment of mostly redundant politicians, political cronies or party benefactors and loyalists as ambassadors clearly confirm the low esteem in which the profession is held, even by their own governments.
In many cases well-trained, experienced professional diplomats have been relegated to the back rooms where they serve as props for these “political” ambassadors, protecting them from the glare of reality checks. But, as they say, the more things change — Roman emperor Caligula [37-41AD] wanted to make his favourite horse a consul of Rome.
Functional relevance
Does an elaborate, costly, old-style diplomatic service still make sense? The advancement of modern technology leaves one wondering about the functional relevance of some embedded diplomatic traditions, rites and practices.
The larger question that needs to be answered concerns the continuing need for these in today’s world where news organisations are so much faster in taking the news, literally as it breaks, to all parts of the globe. Their commercial advantages will always ensure that they are several steps ahead of the bureaucrat with his/her Âcumbersome scripted style.
Modern communications have revolutionised international relations and, with it, the way effective diplomacy is practised. Resident diplomatic missions were established when long-distance communications were primitive, unreliable and expensive. Diplomats at the time could make on-the-spot decisions of great importance.
The opposite is true today. Communications are instant, reliable and cheap. Air travel and electronic communication by phone, Skype and the internet have become instruments of choice.
No doubt, foreign representation is still necessary. But the question is in what form? In most cases today embassies function essentially as elaborate and expensive facilitators, in charge of the execution of a mishmash of supportive political, protocol and administrative functions, which have little to do with the essential meaning and objectives of diplomacy.
Ambassadors are supposed to advise their governments, hoping to influence decisions, but they cannot act solo in any important matter of national interest. In practice their functions are reduced largely to advice on policy, strategy and tactics, conveyers of their governments’ requests or decisions, collecting and reporting strategic intelligence information, protocol duties, protecting citizens and representation.
Foreign policy
These activities are necessary but not vital. Professional diplomats are no longer the only or principal advisers and movers in the foreign policy arena. Foreign policy formulation and execution these days are a collective effort — the foreign ministry acts in concert with a host of other government departments that engage in external relations related to their respective portfolios.
Increasingly we find that inter-government relations have become so specialised that they are compartmentalised with the specialist department being primus inter pares (the first among equals). Professional diplomats, being generalists, cannot play this role.
This is not to suggest there’s no need for talented, seasoned diplomats. But in most cases today such individuals are deployed independently from the foreign affairs hierarchy. Many governments appoint such “special envoys” to deal with critical international issues or appoint special advisers — usually with the rank of ambassador — for roles such as peace-making, international trade, human rights and scientific affairs.
Because of the contemporary importance of particularly international trade, agriculture, science and technology, transport and finance, it is common practice for the relevant departments to interact with their counterparts independently, with professional diplomats at best acting in a supportive “representational” capacity.
Therefore, what we see in practice is the emergence of a “new diplomacy”, parallel to the old bureaucratic form, rendering the latter increasingly superfluous, if not obsolete.
Today professional, line-function foreign diplomatic representatives — privileged, ensconced and well paid as they are — serve as no more than a link in a decision-making command chain that ends in the president’s or prime minister’s office.
Rarely do we find an ambassador who can pick up the phone and speak directly to the president or prime minister without having to work through a complex bureaucratic hierarchy.
Mostly they act on instructions without latitude or discretion. Much of their time is taken up by mundane, “non-diplomatic” activities, such as mission administration, consular work, national image building, official functions and coordinating official and other VIP visits.
So it is very much a case these days of diplomacy without diplomats. Diplomats, contrary to popular thinking, do not make foreign policy as in the golden age of the profession. This is now the province of the president or prime minister who, for better or for worse, is the undisputed foreign policy boss.
The irony is that, with few exceptions, a leader enters high office as a total novice in foreign policy and diplomacy. Invariably, most of them regard foreign policy as the crown jewels of high office.
High diplomacy mostly agrees with the mindset and king-size ego of the Homo politicus — it is a glamorous way to promote the incumbent’s leadership, importance, prestige and public image. No wonder they become quickly addicted to the instant and abundant publicity and glamour.
Former president Thabo Mbeki was a rare exception — he was a particularly talented foreign policy strategist. But he practically ignored the department of foreign affairs, creating a parallel, substitute structure in the presidency, a further confirmation of the decline — and creeping decline — of the profession.
President Jacob Zuma’s frenetic foreign travel schedule and his appointment of a relatively inexperienced, low-profile foreign minister seems to confirm a continuation of the Mbeki precedent.
So, given today’s realities, the effectiveness, even relevance, of the “diplomatic” corps to serve and promote the national interest deserves critical scrutiny. The incongruity of Cambon’s “world without diplomats” with the façade of indispensability and “business as usual” projected by an ensconced, bureaucratically institutionalised “diplomatic” service sticks out like a sore thumb.
Gerrit Olivier and Herbert Beukes have both served as professional diplomats. Olivier was South African ambassador in the Soviet Union and Russia and Beukes served as South African ambassador in Washington DC