bout de papier, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1998) — Spring 1998 // Printemps 1998, pp. 12–13
The powerful involvement of non-governmental organizations in the lead-up to the Ottawa Landmines Treaty carries an important lesson for our department. As the more people-centred issues of the “new diplomacy” cupy the international agenda, many nongovernmental interest groups are entering the fray. National governments will increasingly have to modify their policy positions to take into account a plurality of conflicting but legitimate viewpoints within their own countries, and diplomats will have to work constructively with non-traditional partners.
For instance, when Canada sends its official delegation to an international conference on the environment like Kyoto, the Canadian position on the agenda items is a compromise. The strongly expressed views of individual provinces, and of affected industries, and of NGOs with broad support in Canada like Greenpeace, must all be factored into the Canadian position. In this situation, what is the role of the foreign ministry, the traditional agent of the national government in international relations? As our colleagues who worked on these files demonstrated, we must be as adept at building consensus domestically as we are at interpreting the ebb and flow of issues internationally.
There is much that we need to learn about the new issues; but there are also some specialized skills and knowledge that we have that the special interest groups need. This essay argues that foreign ministries should be taking urgent steps to enhance the ability of their diplomats to deal with the new international agenda, and should at the same time be freely offering their diplomatic expertise to the new participants in international decision-making.
Terminology
It is difficult to discuss this subject without making assumptions that may well turn out to be inaccurate. For instance we still use the term “international” relations even though in ten years’ time the national actors on the world stage, while still very influential, may be greatly outnumbered by the non-national
12 bout de papier Vol. huge corporations, financial power centres, ethnic or religious alliances, and other invisible interest networks.
We also use the term “diplomats”. That word connotes foreign affairs professionals who work for governments and whose expertise is in the management of international relations. Obviously, if governments are playing a relatively smaller role a decade from now, so will diplomats. Who then will be the “diplomats” for the non-national players?
Most diplomats will need some degree of training in the same technical fields.
Quite likely they will be the people whom we think of today as the delegates or representatives or spokespersons for non-national organizations. They are already dealing with issues in international (there’s that word again) or multilateral fora, often with little regard for what we and our colleagues in other foreign ministries think. But they are acting on the global stage without the benefit of the diplomatic traditions and techniques, or the immense fund of pertinent information, that we in government have.
This is not to say that these other, non-national, actors are all poorly equipped. On the contrary. Some of them — large corporations for example – have the information, the access to decision-makers and the negotiating skills to attain their objectives. The point is that as the international conversation grows and begins to include many new voices, there may not be a shared diplomatic “language” that all can understand.
This would not bode well for the ability of the world community to define issues of conflict and develop mechanisms to contain or resolve them. At its worst, this scenario diplomatic medium and unable to draw from the wealth of shared diplomatic convention the necessary instruments to resolve their differences.
A New Vocabulary for Diplomats
At a seminar I attended not long after the Rio Conference on the Environment, a senior Brazilian diplomat spoke of the difficulty of communication between government representatives and scientists on environmental issues. He noted that the specialists who demand attention at environmental conferences are often narrowly dogmatic and wedded to unproven theories. Diplomats need to be able to challenge them (gracefully, he suggested), but in order to do so most diplomats will need some degree of training in the same technical fields. They will also need enhanced public relations skills, better understanding of international legal concepts, and an ability to translate complex issues into simpler terms for policy-makers.
In another presentation at the same seminar, the Dean of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service described how his school has already begun to blaze this trail. At the time of the Rio Conference, they restructured their first year training program so that it now begins with an examination of earth sciences and their relation to political and economic affairs.
In our foreign service, we are going in the other direction. Our training is essentially generalist, on the ground that in future our missions will have fewer and fewer Canada-based officers and so those officers will need to have a basic command of political, economic, trade, consular, administrative and public affairs program objectives and techniques in order to supervise the locals. We do countenance, it is true, and even encourage, the maintenance of cadres of specialists in trade policy, international law and public affairs, but up till now have not seen the need for further specialization. Amazingly, many of our colleagues argue that if we need specialists we can bring them in temporarily (What will we be doing, chairing the meeting?), or alternatively that Canadian diplomats are made of such brilliant stuff that they can easily pick up the basics of any of these new-fangled subjects in a fortnight.
We are not developing sufficient in-house expertise in environmental impact, arctic affairs, election
The fact is we are not developing sufficient in-house expertise in areas such as environmental impact, peacekeeping, arctic affairs, population movements, democratic development, women’s rights, election management, et al. Certainly we have people working in these areas, and working very capably, but how long did it take for them, starting cold, to learn the subtleties of their issues, and what are we doing to ensure that their skills and experience will be transmitted to others?
I think it would be possible to move the corpus of the department some distance along the line between pure generalists and pure specialists without sacrificing operational and assignment flexibility (i.e. round pegs in round holes) and with a significant gain in the mastery of complex issues. The key is to group skills; that is, to develop in each officer, through training and work experience, a bundle of related knowledge and skill areas, for instance, economic reporting and business promotion in an Asian context, with advanced level ability in Chinese; or political reporting and democratic development in a Middle Eastern context with advanced level ability in Arabic. We will still need some more specialized specialists, such as lawyers, but the majority of our officers would be semi-specialists, with a major/minor profile a la university curricula.
Beyond Sign Language
With our own diplomats prepared for the twenty-first century, we should also be considering the needs of the non-national “diplomats” we will have to confront across the conference table.
Diplomats are the facilitators of the international system. Just as the legal system could not function efficiently without a trained body of specialists to guide and counsel individuals confronting the intricacies of procedure, so the international system requires a professional corps to manage and facilitate its interaction. To work harmoniously and effectively within the international system, the new non-national “diplomats” will need to acquire competence in the traditional areas of diplomatic expertise: reporting and analysis, policy formulation, negotiation and advocacy.
The question will certainly be asked, “Why should we provide training to those whose interests may be in conflict with our own? Surely we are only giving ammunition to the enemy.” I think the answer has several parts.
First, many of those to whom we ought to be providing training are the representatives of sub-national governments in Canada (provinces, municipalities, regions) or Canadian NGOs. While some of them may be promoting policies with which federal policy-makers are in disagreement, it is also true that they represent important segments of public opinion. Working with them would foster better understanding and better communication.
In fact, we should not stop at training. In some European governments, domestic departments have a diplomatic advisor, provided by the Foreign Ministry, who advises on the foreign relations impact of planned policy changes and acts as a liaison with the MFA and missions abroad. This would stop with OGDs? Why not provide diplomatic advisors (interpreters, to carry on the language metaphor) to provincial governments and non-governmental organisations?
The international professional corps to manage and facilitate
Providing training to the new diplomats from other countries, a second major target group, would likewise foster dialogue. Developing a common vocabulary and a common philosophy of dispute resolution would benefit all parties the next time agreement or consensus is being sought. Just prior to the opening of the Uruguay Round of trade talks, a team of Canadian trade policy specialists conducted a series of briefings/ seminars in ASEAN countries on Canadian objectives for the Round. In some of these countries diplomats had little expertise in trade policy and were extremely grateful for this orientation. It goes without saying that in the negotiations during the Round, they had a basic understanding of the principles underlying Canadian positions and a positive attitude toward our proposals.
Providing diplomatic training even to potentially antagonistic groups, such as liberation movements or the (legal) political wings of groups with armed and violent components, could be fruitful if it shows them the limits of armed insurrection and teaches them a vocabulary through which we can communicate with them in moments of crisis.
In 1994, the US State Department’s Foreign Service Institute moved into new, modern quarters, now officially known as The National Foreign Affairs Training Center. It offers training to NGOs, the private sector and the media. The first Director of the Centre, Lawrence Taylor, described his task as “developing literacy”,, literacy in specialized fields like the environment for foreign service officers and literacy in the traditional diplomatic techniques for NGO representatives. (Or, as one of his assistants put it, “humanizing the scientists and simonizing the humanists”. Taylor says younger officers are enthusiastic about this broader conception of diplomatic work, believing that the influence of government representatives at the negotiating table in the future will be enhanced if they bring with them a degree of knowledge of the technical issues.
Conclusion
National governments have no monopoly on weapons or information, nor complete control of the economic levers. The role of NGOs and other non-national interests is bound to grow. We should work to ensure that the diplomatic function evolves in ways that guarantee open and effective discourse between state and non-state actors. By reaching out to the new diplomats, we would be acting from enlightened self-interest; we would be ensuring that the skills of the peacemaker, developed over thousands of years, are transmitted intact to those who will confront with us the very different world of the next millennium.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1998) — Spring 1998 // Printemps 1998, pp. 12–13. Read the rest of this issue →
