Diplomacy in the Digital Age
- By Brian Hocking and Jan Melissen
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E-mail China.org.cn, October 26, 2015
How will negotiation respond to the rise of digitalization, apart from accelerated policy analysis and decision-making facilitated by, for instance, email, teleconferencing and automated analysis of 'big data'? Will the assumption that online, face-to-face communication is essential prove to be weakening? This question and the issue of the balance between 'online' and 'offline' are more subtle ones than might be assumed at first glance. Aside from such considerations regarding negotiation – traditionally seen as the hard core of diplomacy – it deserves mentioning that many activities by diplomats have little to do with face-to-face communication in the shape of negotiation, as practitioners know and diplomatic memoirs illustrate.
Will digital technologies remain a specialist aspect of diplomacy or will they be mainstreamed into diplomatic processes? As with earlier technologies, digital forms of communication will go through phases of scepticism and hype, gradual acceptance and incorporation into diplomatic life. In the process, some diplomats will find their egos inflated. Social media allow them to step outside the twilight world imposed by norms of diplomatic behaviour and become feted 'twiplomats'. The more prosaic reality is however that diplomats, like other people, are still finding their feet in the social media, and a number of MFAs have therefore started offering social media training courses.
Our observations suggest that there is still a great deal of reluctance regarding the use of social media among practitioners. Many diplomats, for example, appear to use Twitter predominantly for (very useful) purposes of information gathering. All this suggests that the mainstreaming of social media, let alone digital technologies in a more general sense, into diplomatic processes is going to be a long-term project. To be fair, the public diplomacy experience of the past 15 years or so directly addresses the issue of 'mainstreaming'. From being a new niche area of diplomacy, Western governments now commonly see public diplomacy as an integral component of all facets of diplomatic activity, even though upgrading MFA and embassy practices remains an ongoing challenge.
Will some traditional aspects of diplomacy become obsolete because of the digital revolution and will others become more salient? This is a question which underpins the long evolution of what Harold Nicolson called 'diplomatic method'. Experience suggests that technologies rarely create new diplomatic functions but rather influence the ways in which those functions are performed. Different facets of diplomacy have become significant or seemingly dominant as a consequence of international developments, domestic political pressures and, not least, fashion. Take commercial diplomacy as an example. In many European countries in the wake of the 2007-8 global financial crisis commercial diplomacy was resurrected as a dominant goal of national diplomacy.
Does the digital revolution require a fundamental re-evaluation of the rules and practices of a state based diplomatic system? Does this demand a reappraisal of, for example, outdated principles of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations? Here we can see that change is afoot in several directions. In recent years precepts regarding non-interference in the domestic affairs of host countries have repeatedly rubbed up against public diplomacy strategies. In some bilateral relationships it seemed that the principle of non-interference became replaced by the 'duty to interfere'. Equally, there are recent developments pointing to the continued relevance of 'Vienna' principles. Experiences on the cyber diplomacy agenda – especially with China and Russia – point to the likelihood that digitalization, in the form of cyber-security and Internet freedom, will lead to growing disputes between geopolitical rivals – as much as enhancing collaboration between like-minded states.
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