Almost five years ago, Eline van Ommen, then a PhD candidate in the final stages of writing her dissertation, co-organized a conference at the LSE to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Nicaraguan Revolution. The one-day workshop drew together seventeen papers, all of which sought to respond to the organizers’ declaration that “we still know…
Tag: diplomacy
H-Diplo|RJISSF Commentary II-4: “Henry Kissinger and the Angel of Applied History”
The news alerts declaring the death of former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger flashed across my iPhone in a feverish pitch matching my flu-induced fever. I felt utterly speechless—it did not seem real. Kissinger had most recently celebrated his centenary in May. The obituaries and the post-mortems similarly appeared in a feverish pace shortly…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay 70 on Lindsey, Delegated Diplomacy
“By God, this is the end of diplomacy!” Lord Palmerston exclaimed upon receiving his first diplomatic telegram in the 1860s.[1] He feared that the introduction of instantaneous international communication between heads of state would render ambassadors obsolete. Though this prediction never entirely came to pass, the fear of Palmerston’s prognostication remains alive among oft-marginalized diplomats.
H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay 68: Hedling on Crocker, et al, Diplomacy and the Future of World Order
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum Review Essay 68 Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall, eds. Diplomacy and the Future of World Order. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021. IBSN: 9781647120931 (hardcover $110.95), 9781647120948 (paperback $36.95). Reviewed by Elsa Hedling, Lund University 4 May 2023 | PDF: http://issforum.org/to/RE68 | Website:…
Roundtable 13-6 on Scorecard Diplomacy: Grading States to Influence their Reputation and Behavior
What convinces a country to adopt policies it might have previously eschewed as unimportant or against its interests? In practice, the global governance toolbox is notoriously limited. States, international organizations, and Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that want other actors to change their behavior are typically reduced to selecting between the unsatisfying options of economic sanctions, military…
Roundtable 11-16 on Diplomacy: Communication and the Origins of the International Order
Robert Trager’s Diplomacy: Communication and the Origins of the International Order focuses on the role of communication in diplomacy with emphasis on the role of costless exchanges such as private discussions between two foreign policy ministers versus costly signaling such as moving troops to the frontier of an adversary or a drone strike on a…
Roundtable 11-8 on The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal
In The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal, William Joseph Burns writes about his life and times in the hope that his reflections—and regrets—will be helpful to the next generation of diplomats. Diplomacy “is by nature an unheroic, quiet endeavor,” as the author puts it, “less swaggering than…
Roundtable 10-7 on Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy
With the Trump administration debating whether to certify that Iran is complying with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), colloquially known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, this Roundtable on the tortuous path to its conclusion is timely. Our reviewers bring special expertise to the task. Robert Gallucci was the lead negotiator for the…
Policy Series: Going Rogue in the Age of Trump
With a nihilistic wild man in the White House, it is time for America’s diplomats to embrace their historic rebelliousness. Donald Trump has only been president for a few months, but he has already done more to debase United States foreign policy than any chief executive in memory. He has gutted the State Department, purging…
Policy Series: Neoliberalism, the Decline of Diplomacy, and the Rise of the Global Right
In 1993, the Czechoslovakian poet-and-playwright-turned-president Václav Havel declared that “the fate of the so-called West is today being decided in the so-called East.” Havel warned that “if the West does not find the key to us…or to those somewhere far away who have extricated themselves from communist domination, it will ultimately lose the key to…