bout de papier, Vol. 24, No. 4 (2009) — Winter 2009 // Hiver 2009, pp. 22–23
Editor’s Note: Daryl Copeland, a colleague and committed critic of Canadian diplomacy currently with the Munk Centre at the University of Toronto, paid the Pearson Building a visit on September 20, 2009. At the invitation of PAFSO’s Professional Committee, he addressed a full house on his first book: Guerrilla Diplomacy. Daryl is neither nostalgic for diplomatic glories of the past nor an apologist for today’s diplomacy where process and “products” seem to have overtaken ideas and policy as the hallmarks of the craft. He has another vision: that of a BlackBerry-toting, conflict management specialist who is prepared to get his or her boots dirty locking-in greater global security through meaningful development where inequities are worst. That’s a mouthful; Daryl expresses it best in his own synopsis of the talk.
A a time of glaring capacity gaps and acute resource shortages, there is an urgent need to rethink key elements of international relations — security and development — from the perspective of diplomacy in the age of globalization.
We could begin by asking: does diplomacy still matter? Yes, but the entire diplomatic edifice is in crisis and radical reconstruction is required. Viewed through the lens of those who favour talking over fighting, dialogue over diktat, and negotiation and compromise over compulsion, too many governments are still relying on armed force as the international policy instrument of choice, with calamitous consequences. Diplomacy can help make the planet a better place, but it has failed to adapt to the imperatives of world order management in the 2{st century. It has been sidelined. If this is to change, grand strategy will have to be de-militarized, and the foreign ministry, foreign service and, most crucially, the diplomatic method re-imagined and transformed from the ground up. This will involve addressing both the immediate and underlying drivers of insecurity and underdevelopment by generating better intelligence, working smarter, engaging strategically, and … by building a better diplomat.
Diplomacy’s front lines are now far removed from quiet clubs or closed meeting rooms, grand hotels or formal chancelleries. Today’s diplomatic encounters tend to take place publicly and cross-culturally: in a barrio or a souk, in an Internet chat room or a blog, on Main Street or in a Quonset hut set astride the wire in a conflict zone. Unlike all too many serving envoys, the guerrilla diplomat will know how to swim with comfort and ease in the sea of the people rather than flop around like a fish out of water, and prefer to mix with the population rather than mingle with colleagues inside
the embassy walls. The guerrilla diplomat is a renaissance polymath — part activist,
part advocate, part policy entrepreneur with the sensibilities and inclination of a back-, packing world traveller.
The time is long overdue to puncture the myth of pearl and pin-stripe festooned cartoon cut-outs lost in a haze of irrelevance somewhere between protocol and alcohol. Brian Tobin did it in 1994 by hoisting undersized Spanish fishing nets before the world press on the East River across from UN headquarters; Ken Taylor did it in Tehran after the US Embassy was overrun by revolutionary guards in 1979; Marc Dolgin did it by offering sanctuary to Chilean cabinet ministers after the 1973 coup. Today’s effective emissary might more closely resemble a street-smart, BlackBerry-toting problem solver in sandals and denim. But examples and case studies are all too few.
The Guerrilla Diplomat is at home in the erstwhile global village, navigating with purpose between the patchwork of gated communities surrounded by a roiling sprawl of shantytowns. He or she knows the conventional causes of conflict, such as ideological rivalry and territorial conflict, have been displaced by a raft of transnational issues, many rooted in science and driven by technology — climate change and bio-engineering, resource scarcity and environmental collapse, pandemic disease and genomics. Above all, the guerrilla diplomat appreciates not only the importance of granular local knowledge and the distinction between policy and intelligence, but also the imperative to get beyond the psychological hangover of the Cold War and into the dynamic flux of the globalization age. This means transforming traditional, Westphalian-style, state to state relations, with all of their associated conventions and rigidities, into a postmodern mix which includes new partners and actors from civil society, supra-national bodies, other departments and levels of government, and the private sector.
As a subject of popular and scholarly interest, diplomacy has been ignored, if not scorned by journalists, think tanks, universities and, most surprisingly, governments. That neglect has proven costly. The stage is set for change, and the case for advancing diplomatic alternatives — and alternative diplomacy — overwhelming.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 24, No. 4 (2009) — Winter 2009 // Hiver 2009, pp. 22–23. Read the rest of this issue →
