[To see the full discussions please click on the titles of the snippets that follow.]
August 23, 2026
The Military Background to Modern Diplomacy?
Few books live up to their push and puff, but this does so to a considerable degree…. In short, war takes on much of its character from its context, notably the participants, from their purposes and from the contingencies that arise. These are not weapon-driven however much those who seek two-dimensional technological accounts might suggest otherwise. So, do not think ‘drones explain it all.’…
August 14, 2026
What Really Happened? Theory and Practice in the Westphalian Age
This piece focuses on a significant theme, namely the relation between the ideals embodied in the concept ‘the Enlightenment’ and the realities of international relations and war in the eighteenth century. Furthermore, the relationships between such matters then and today are important and valid. Yet, focused on what are presented as texts and discourse, the discussion of the Enlightenment, however delimited, tends to look like an episode of intellectual history….
August 9, 2026
Beyond the Ocean. France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions.
It may be news to some, but France was a major imperial power in the early-modern period…
August 9, 2026
Archival Research for International Relations
While designed for graduate students and early careers academics in IR (International Relations), this is of great interest to me not least as a former editor for a decade and a half of Archives as well as a diplomatic historian who has made much use of archival material. Indeed, I find much IR work mistaken because it lacks the contexts and contingencies made possible by such material. In particular, the archives usually challenge the black-white/either-or clarity that is necessary for much quantitative analysis….
July 26, 2026
Thoughtful books on war are central to diplomatic history, for diplomacy deals with wartime as much as peacetime, while the latter entails preparations for war as well as its deterrence. The likely nature of conflict influences the apparent potential capabilities and impact involved in the turn to war, and all of these require attention from diplomatic historians as they help frame consideration of options as well as the very context of policy….
July 26, 2026
Drawing on an astonishing range of newspapers, magazines, diaries, memoirs, printed correspondence, treatises, novels, contemporary histories, and official documents, this work seeks to capture German opinion. Hewitson carries forward his argument that the Napoleonic Wars romanticised military conflicts and turned them into pivotal political events, but the wars of unification saw the disclosure of the horrors and human costs of war….
July 26, 2026
Foreign Policy Analysis: Classic and Contemporary Theory
It would be readily possible to go through and show how Foreign Policy Analysis is presentist, American-centric (the first three editions were published by Rowman and Littlefield, and written by an American scholar), and offer a case of what is referred to in the book as ‘groupthink’….
June 12, 2026
The Return of the Great Powers
Puffed widely on its covers, this is a book that is problematic from its first paragraph where Simms claims that ‘traditional “geopolitics” has returned with a vengeance,’ one the footnote explains by saying that whereas ‘strictly speaking “geopolitics” refers to the intersection of geography and international affairs, this book uses the term in its wider, perhaps inflationary sense, to describe interstate rivalry more generally’….
March 5, 2026
The concept of strategic culture focuses on individual states rather than other possible contexts and expressions for example sub-national including regional, or supra-national, including ‘regional’ at a different level. This emphasis on individual states makes the decision in this series to produce a number of such works, first on Japan and, forthcoming, on Sweden, Germany and South Korea, most welcome….
February 14, 2026
The War that Made the Middle East
This vigorous book is an engaged account of the end of the Ottoman Empire, one that attributes it squarely to participation in World War One…. a snappy and well-written book, one that is commendably short compared to so many other works of scholarship…
February 1, 2026
High marks for ambition, but lower for accuracy might be an apt verdict for so many works on international relations, but then the relevant expertise to mass and analyse detail is possibly beyond human comprehension….
December 17, 2025
Blurbed on the back by Allison, Hanson, Ferguson, Mead, Westad, Luttwak and Bew, this is an account of the significance of diplomacy as a force for good, and, in particular, of its value as a tool of strategy….
Geopolitics? Social Movement? Political Breakdown: The American Revolution
The appearance of this crisp volume (42 page foreword, 100 page text, plus index, all in a modest page size) provides an opportunity not only for a quick read of a good book in a field overly dominated by large ones, but also to consider the American Revolution, revolutions as a whole, American history and the nature of historiography….
The vexed nature of empire is best handled by an understanding of its complexity, although that is not the way that the subject is generally approached. From this perspective among others, the appearance of Thomas Barfield’s new book is particularly important….
December 6, 2025
The Politics of Strategic Choice; the Strategies of Political Choice
In discussing strategy there can be a misleading tendency to focus on prominent strategic thinkers but without offering due contextualisation. For the latter, in assessing strategy, there is a growing agreement that it is necessary to engage directly with political contexts, choices, and contingencies. At the same time, this was not a one-way process for these themselves are inherently affected by strategic pressures and considerations. This essay will consider this relationship, both in theoretical terms and with reference to the country and period on which I have done most research, eighteenth-century Britain, in order to test the general thesis, and for when Britain was of world historical significance….
November 24, 2025
History is not just a dataset for the present….
November 21, 2025
Copeland essentially presents America as a realist power motivated by self-interest, and notably so in terms of the protection of American foreign trade. He is very wary of approaches to this policy in terms of ideologies of international betterment. At the same time, Copeland discusses alternative explanations with some care and does not badly (and boldly) dismiss them as do so many of his disciplinary colleagues. All to the good….
November 3, 2025
A great way to approach geopolitics and strategy is through communications, and so also with this fascinating book….
October 27, 2025
War and its consequences range widely, helping ensure that a variety of books are of interest to the historian of war…. Goebbels’ positioning of himself and ‘Total War’ as linked goals and means is handled very ably, and the book serves as a skilful discussion of the public consideration of strategic choices, at least in rhetorical terms….
September 19, 2025
The Nuclear Age. An Epic Race for Arms, Power and Survival
A major work that richly deserves attention and begins not in 1945 but rather earlier in the century, both with the background to invention and with a political competition to gain and develop ideas and technology. From 1945, however, example ensured that overhanging all else was the threat posed by nuclear weapons….
September 12, 2025
Republic and Empire: Crisis, Revolution, and America’s Early Independence
Books like this are always difficult to review because, by their nature, they are not written for the academic reviewer. The latter, if well-informed, as they should be, will know that the imperial context, causes, course and consequences of the American Revolution/Rebellion/War of Independence/First Civil War are very well-established in the scholarly literature…
August 1, 2025
The World Needs New Forms of Intelligence: New Diplomatics and the Power of DQ
We need a new compass for human and planetary flourishing. A new Diplomatics that empowers us to re-connect to ourself, each other, and the rich diversity of social, political, and educational institutions that variously mediate people’s life in different regions of the world. And we need a new form of intelligence: Diplomatic Intelligence (DQ)….
July 8, 2025
How do diplomats think in place? Does it differ from the way that other people do? If so, how?…
July 7, 2025
Pacific Sea Power and the Rise of America
Drawing on extensive and impressive archival work and a good grasp of relevant literature, Thomas Jamison, Assistant Professor of Strategic Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School, puts the Pacific far more central in the development of American naval power than existing analyses that focus on Atlantic and Caribbean dimensions….
June 23, 2025
The Geopolitics of the Present – A Second Cold War?
The pace of change of the present is scarcely unprecedented, with 1945 and 1989 both seeing changes (and continuities) that were more transformative than those so far this year. Yet, the pace of the present is certainly unprecedented for today’s policymakers as is the apparent imminence of a very troubled future. The prime approach to geopolitics is that of a states system with states being the units that play the major roles and register success and/or failure. There is also a tendency to see states as playing off each other in action-reaction cycles. Furthermore, states are seen as the principal beneficiaries or losers. This approach as value and we will return to it, but it is also an approach that risks conflating countries, societies, and states – the language varies and conveys contrasting implications – with particular governments/regimes/leaders – again language conveying contrasting implications. The last is a fault of much standard geopolitical analysis, with its tendency to adopt a schematic approach and a systemic analysis, and one that regards states/societies/countries as in some fashion destined to a particular outcome by a ‘strategic geography’ or set of clear suppositions. This is an analysis, however, that downplays the role of circumstances, contingencies, individuals, and leadership, and the extent to which these interact and in a dynamic fashion….
June 17, 2025
Josephine Baker, Diplomat-Activist
This study of the wartime role of the entertainer Josephine Baker is a much better book than the subtitle might suggest. ‘The African American Star Who Fought for France and Freedom’ implies a degree of hagiography rather than scholarly scepticism. This is not the case. Hanna Diamond, Professor of French History at Cardiff University, clearly has the usual biographers’ commonplace characteristics of liking her subject and exaggerating her significance, but this is a very well-researched and impressive biography, drawing effectively on a range of archival sources in France, America and Britain, including personnel files in Vincennes, relevant material in French archives outside as well as in Paris, and at Stanford and Yale as well as the National Archives at College Park. There is also a very effective trawling of an enormous range of periodicals as well as of the memoir literature…
May 26, 2025
Bold in its thesis, self-confidence, and punctuation (War throughout is preferred to war), Andrew Lambert’s arresting book comes richly supplied with encomia, and will doubtless win favourable reviews, which encourages me to offer some caveats. Lambert finds a management of Europe by Britain in the shape of a system devised by Wellington and the use of an ‘Offshore Balance’ that was capable of preventing the risk of French invasion, notably by securing the Scheldt, as well as preserving a stable balanced European system. The restraint of France is seen as a key element, with sustaining naval superiority in the face of technological change a vital means. Lambert takes the story on to consider concern about Antwerp’s defensiveness prior to 1914 and the lack of a national strategy in 1914. The German capture of the Belgian coast that year is presented as ‘a geo-strategic disaster of the first magnitude’ that apparently reflected the army’s failure to understand Wellington’s ‘strategic concept for the Low Countries, and the critical role of the Flemish ports in British policy’. Failure is seen anew in policy from 1919 with a focus then ‘on the negotiations of Castlereagh rather than the strategic insight of Liverpool, Wellington and the admirals…
March 5, 2025
The Seven Years’ War and 21st Century Great Power Competition
There was once a kingdom that became a dominant land power and eventually a great power. It set international norms and shaped the world order through diplomacy and sometimes war. One day, a localized war escalated, drawing neighboring states into a worldwide conflict that unexpectedly raged for years. When the exhausted belligerents finally compromised at the peace table, this leading power had lost not only prestige and territory, but also its place as the ruling hegemon; a rising state from the West had suddenly usurped it. This angered the older great power, who vowed revenge, initiating a modernization strategy as it continually sought opportunities to reshape the international order. This is not a fairy tale or hypothetical, and the great power in question is not Russia or China….
March 27, 2024
Remembering Leo Cherne, Citizen-Diplomat
The policy entrepreneur is a curious historical figure. The entrepreneur sells, and the goods need not be tangible. There are norm entrepreneurs, fashion entrepreneurs, and so on. The policy entrepreneur sells something different from an idea or a piece of physical merchandise, however. If politics is the art of the possible, then policy is the operational plan for getting from here to there, and the policy entrepreneur is a Sherpa who sells plans but also optimism….
May 5, 2023
Bloc Diplomacy: How Might It Work?
French president Emmanuel Macron threw down a gauntlet last month: “We don’t want to get into a bloc versus bloc logic,” he said, and added that Europe “should not be caught up in a disordering of the world and crises that aren’t ours.” His declaration was echoed a few days later by Christine Lagarde: “We are witnessing a fragmentation of the global economy into competing blocs, with each bloc trying to pull as much of the rest of the world closer to its respective strategic interests and shared values. And this fragmentation may well coalesce around two blocs led respectively by the two largest economies in the world.”
Both statements apply an outdated understanding of what a bloc is….
March 22, 2023
The other day Foreign Affairs featured an essay about post-conflict preparation for Ukraine. Its author is a retired American diplomat, Thomas Pickering. He is a former ambassador to Russia and to several other countries, as well as an Under Secretary of State; but he is perhaps best known for having been the American permanent representative to the United Nations during the 1990–91 Gulf War.
It was in that position that Pickering was said to have so “over-performed” in building an international coalition for the effort to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait that Pickering’s bosses – namely Secretary of State James Baker – were (ironically) displeased by his performance.
The foregoing is all hearsay, of course, but it needn’t be true to make a relevant point: The first principle for diplomats is to serve their superiors, and the public, by not drawing too much attention, or credit, to themselves. It is a sin for any diplomat to upstage the boss, no matter how successful the diplomacy may be….
September 16, 2022
The next three essays may be found in a single document here.
August 31, 2022
It is frequently pointed out today that nations are dividing into competitive geopolitical blocs. However, this observation requires some clarification. It is not enough to say that this is taking place or even that the blocs—which are identifiable by geography, function, or a combination of both—intersect rather than strictly oppose other blocs. It must be understood how and therefore why they do those things.
There is another concept that may help further this understanding: regime. The French term refers not only to the structure and exercise of power—as in the ancien régime—but also, as it is more commonly understood today, to a system of norms, influences, obligations, and expectations. Nuclear nonproliferation, trade and investment, migration, and maritime affairs regimes were an important component of the international order during the last century when empires gave way to nations and, by the second half of the twentieth century, became the most important component of peaceful relations….
August 9, 2022
Diplomacy for a World of Blocs
The calamity in Ukraine has thrown into sharp relief a trend that has been taking shape for some time: the division of the world into rival blocs. Clashes – of political and economic interests, and of cultural values – have for the most part taken place within societies and nations. But those clashes have brought about harder alignments between and among states. What were once called the “forces of movement” and the “forces of order” are at loggerheads in nearly every major country. Liberalism and anti-liberalism may continue to be used to justify these divisions, but they are not – nor probably will be – the main causes of them. The source has more to do with tribal and other types of identity, which under strain blur easily with geopolitical chauvinism….
May 24, 2022
Strategic Clarity Carries a Mixed Bag
Today, with President Joe Biden pledging that the United States will defend Taiwan, and with some of the last remaining European neutral powers in Europe – Finland and Sweden – announcing their wish to join NATO, it is easy to believe that strategic clarity has reached an apex. Or at least it is doing so in the way that former President George W. Bush made infamous: you’re either with us or against us….
February 12, 2022
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is not the loudest player in the standoff between NATO and Russia over Ukraine, but it is quietly moving out of the shadows of NATO and the EU, and finally receiving the respect and backing it deserves….
August 28, 2021
The Second Diplomatic Life of William Burns
One of the less noticed but more notable aspects of the dramatic NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan was the secret journey by the U.S. Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns, to Kabul to negotiate the details of the withdrawal with a leader of the Taliban, Abdul Ghani Baradar….
July 12, 2021
Jeremy Black reviews Jonathan Haslam’s new book about the origins of the Second World War.
May 28, 2021
Fifty Years since Ping-Pong Diplomacy
An excellent discussion of US-China relations may be seen at this link.
January 2, 2021
Gifts and tribute are a hot topic in studies of early modern diplomacy, resulting in much stimulating new work on diplomatic exchanges particularly in a global context. The special issue “Gift and Tribute in Early Modern Diplomacy: Afro-Eurasian Perspectives” expands on this ongoing shift towards a global, multicentric perspective by using gift-giving as the lens through which to analyse a diverse set of inter-polity relations spanning the continents of Africa, Europe and Asia. It illuminates the role of gifts and tribute as key agents in imperial expansion, conflict management, and the negotiation of protection and patronage in different parts of the world. It also emphasises that to achieve a truly global perspective on the development of diplomatic norms and practices, concerted collaborative analysis from scholars with different linguistic, disciplinary, and subject expertise is needed…
December 30, 2020
The world of diplomacy and international relations recently lost two of its intellectual leaders: Guido Goldman and Paul Schroeder. Both men led generous, celebrated, transatlantic lives…
November 1, 2020
When Diplomacy’s Reputation Needs Tending: Some Advice from the Past
Secretary of State Michael Pompeo raised a few eyebrows in August when he spoke, on foreign soil, to the Republican National Convention. Cabinet members, especially the Secretary of State, are held to a high standard in politics because they are meant to be custodians of the nation’s image. Many people regard party politics as tarnish on that image.
Yet, Americans have long championed a gift for image-making. Related to that has been a less cynical belief, even faith, in the appeal of the American way of life, the American dream, a “decent respect for the opinions of mankind,” and similar truths taught to every American schoolchild.
Today’s national mood and reputation challenge those norms in ways that do not bear repeating. The lamentations are omnipresent in print, on radio, on television, and online. What has been missing until only very recently has been the moral call to arms that usually accompanies such moments in American history.
Two such calls to arms – one from the 1920s and another from the 1950s – are worth revisiting, for they show that diplomacy plays an important role in repairing the country’s reputation, and that diplomacy’s own reputation needs constant, professional tending….
April 27, 2020
Diplomatic History and the Concentricity of Politics
It is not often nowadays that one reads an unabashed defense of ‘traditional’ diplomatic history centered on high politics among states. Thomas Otte’s short tour d’horizon of the field therefore deserves a careful reading….
April 6, 2020
What the “Primacy” Debate in Foreign Policy Gets Wrong
Americans and people around the world wondering about the diminution of American leadership should be paying more attention to a vivid debate that has been taking place among academics and pundits. It sounds arcane but it has big implications for the reshaping of elite opinion about foreign policy….
January 22, 2020
Paradiplomacy or Parrot Diplomacy?
The World Economic Forum celebrates its 50th anniversary this week at Davos. The annual meeting and its profile have grown so large over the years that “Davos” now substitutes in the public mind for globalization and all the negative and positive elements associated with globalization…
June 19, 2019
Diplomacy and the Academy: A Renewed Case for Court Historians
An odd but familiar complaint was heard recently: political history contra mundum. It appears so regularly that it has become trite. Someone – usually a prominent journalist – asks why students are not being taught anything “relevant”….
August 29, 2018
International Bureaucracy Links
Our colleagues at the International Bureaucracy history project have three new blog entries well worth a read. The links are as follows:
April 2, 2018
The Office of the Historian of the US State Department has added a useful new resource to its website: an administrative timeline of the US State Department since 1789. The history of the Department and its personnel are also featured in two new books, the latter already a bestseller:
America’s Other Army, by Nicholas Kralev
War on Peace, by Ronan Farrow
Also, a recent essay about America’s ‘Russia Hands’ in the New York Times provides a miniature model of the kind of institutional and biographical study we promote as New Diplomatic History.
February 27, 2018
A newly translated book of interviews by the French philosopher and writer Olivier Roy contains this gem of a summary of the diplomatic mind and method.
November 1, 2017
How to get a job in the League Secretariat
‘He used to give me Turkish lessons in Constantinople’. This was how the young Ottoman Greek Thanassis Aghnides landed a job in the League Secretariat in 1919. In the latest blog post, I have explored the peculiarities of the early recruitments to the Secretariat and what it meant for the organisation more generally. You will find ‘He used to give me Turkish lessons in Constantinople’: How to get a job in the League Secretariat, here.
October 19, 2017
‘Diplomats and designers are key to solving climate change. Here’s how they think we can do it. […]’
October 14, 2017
James Lowenstein, an American diplomat, is one of the few surviving Americans who worked for the Economic Recovery Program, or the Marshall Plan. […]
October 12, 2017
Emil Eiby Seidenfaden (PhD Student, Aarhus University) has written about publicity from beyond the grave! Or perhaps more accurately, how people within and beyond the League Secretariat sought to use President Woodrow Wilson’s death to champion his and the League’s cause. You will find ‘Wilsonianism from beyond the Grave – Report from the President’s Deathbed’ here.
August 29, 2017
New journal issue: The Global Embassy
We are happy to direct your attention to the latest issue of New Global Studies, which features some of the papers from our second conference held last fall in Copenhagen.
The issue was guest edited by Giles Scott-Smith.
As always, we welcome your thoughts and comments.
August 9, 2017
Le Corbusier and the Idea of a Palace
What’s in a name? Marco Ninno (MA Student, Aarhus University) has written an intriguing piece on how the word ‘palace’ fundamentally influenced the search for an architect for the new League headquarters in Geneva, in this month’s blog post: A modernist in Geneva – Le Corbusier and the competition for the Palais des Nations.
August 6, 2017
History of the Limited Test Ban Treaty: The Role of ACDA
An interesting first-hand account by retired U.S. ambassador James E. Goodby of the origins and role of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in shepherding the Limited Test Ban Treaty may be found on the Hoover Institution’s website, here. […]
June 23, 2017
Søren Friis (PhD Student, Aarhus University) has written a fascinating piece on Denmark and the Early Years of International Studies under the League of Nations, exploring some of the formative networks of so-called ‘intellectual cooperation’ in the interwar years.
May 16, 2017
Emil Eiby Seidenfaden (PhD Student, Aarhus University) has written a timely and intriguing piece on The League and the Combating of ‘False Information’, digging into the interwar discussions on what to do with Fake News.
April 6, 2017
The latest blogpost of the “The Invention of International Bureaucracy” project concerns the Translation and Interpretation Service of the League Secretariat, and how they contributed, quite literally, to the common understanding of those showing up in Geneva. Interestingly, they hold a prominent place in the early memoirs and academic works of former League staff, as the truest internationalists of the Secretariat.
March 22, 2017
Gender and the League of Nations
Myriam Piguet (MA student, Aarhus University) has written a great piece on gender distribution in the League of Nations, and the differences between ambitions and reality in the early years of the Secretariat.
February 18, 2017
An Untold Story from the League of Nations
A new post from the “Invention of International Bureaucracy” project, written by Mads Drange, a student at the University of Oslo, tells the story of the director of the Minority Section of the League of Nations, Erik Colban, and his role in the forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923.
February 15, 2017
What Diplomats Can Learn from Urbanists, and Vice Versa
No matter where you sat — in a negotiating chair, as a representative of civil society, as a member of the media — the process that led up to the recent Habitat III conference on sustainable cities presented a trilemma….
December 20, 2016
The Department of History and Classical Studies at Aarhus University has begun a new project called The Invention of International Bureaucracy. This is a summary of the project:
“Over the last 100 years, the international political scene has become increasingly organized. More than 5000 international organisations now regulate global and regional political, economic and technical affairs. As a consequence international bureaucracy, i.e. international executive bodies that function autonomously from nation states and deal with international affairs, has become an important and increasingly contested feature of world politics.
Even so, the history of these non-elected executive bodies is underresearched. This project aims to shine a light on the roots of international bureaucracy and its particular institutional and socio-cultural characteristics by exploring the principles, practices and formative effects of the League of Nations Secretariat. With theoretical inspiration from political sociology and based on extensive multiarchival research, the project will explore the institutional norms and practices of the League Secretariat and investigate its exchanges and connections with national diplomatic and bureaucratic structures, internationalist networks and institutions and subsequent international bureaucracies of the 20th century.”
June 18, 2016
Art Diplomacy and Museum Diplomacy: Could Islamic Art Inspire Middle East Peace?
US Ambassador Samantha Power Takes Diplomats on a Tour of the Met
Visitors from around the world flock to the Met to view art history’s great masterpieces and attend fashionable galas, but to negotiate international relations is surely a first. New York’s premier museum recently became the unlikely venue for a high-security, invite-only meeting organized by Samantha Power, President Barack Obama’s envoy to the United Nations. Mixing business with pleasure, the U.S. ambassador invited key international diplomats to tour the museum’s newest exhibition of Islamic art. […]
June 11, 2016
An interesting recent article about the UN’s Habitat III global summit and the confluence of old and new diplomacy Habitat III impasse resolved with Mexico, Philippines to lead talks Still, observers increasingly worried about time lost for New Urban Agenda negotiations.
March 5, 2016
Review of R. Kolb, Commentaire sur le Pacte de la Société des Nations
This book belongs to that rare and virtuous type of scholarship which delivers more than it promises. It represents the only comprehensive study of the League of Nations Covenant since 1939 and one of the most critical guides to the foundations, activities and lessons of the League of Nations in general.[1] Although the commentary is chiefly directed at scholars and practitioners engaged in international law and international organizations, first and foremost in the orbit of U.N. agencies, historians will not regret receiving this tome of 1,410 pages as a gift to their profession, for nothing less it is. To most historians, it will be a gift from strangers. The majority of the contributors hold positions in law across universities and institutes in France, Britain, Italy, Belgium, Turkey and Germany. Of special note is Francophone Switzerland which stands out as a research hub and where the mastermind of this project, Robert Kolb, serves as Professor of International Public Law at the University of Geneva. Much to its credit, the collection eschews Eurocentric analyses, despite the contributors’ distinctly European affiliations. Given that the Asia Pacific region is currently facing challenges eerily similar to those confronted by the League of Nations, the frequent and fitting appearances of Japan and China are as welcome as they are essential. […]
November 30, 2015
Review of Todd H. Hall, Emotional Diplomacy: Official Emotion on the International Stage
With a study that is rife with political lessons and rich with analytic achievements, Todd H. Hall has done more than one profession a great service. Combining rationalist and constructivist political science with contemporary history, he defines “emotional diplomacy” as “coordinated state-level behavior that explicitly and officially projects the image of a particular emotional response toward other states.” (2) Hall’s concept expands the study of state-level encounters, specifically among heads of state, by focusing on the premises, expressions and consequences of emotional practice as an element of political competence. The analysis can be summarized as follows. Before an official consensus or a shared perception between two or more officials has necessarily emerged, the initial act of emotional diplomacy communicates “that a normatively significant boundary has been crossed.” (4) This signal prepares the ground for the practice of emotional diplomacy, on the premise that the recipient does not discount it “as strictly instrumental” (8). At its most basic, then, the book points to the trust that can bind the signaler and the recipient (or “target”) into communicative engagement, with the hope of reaching a normative rapprochement. That trust does not prevent but rather enables the further, political use of emotional diplomacy. Targets can choose to “discredit it or elicit further substantive action, or alternatively […] to entrap its authors.” (6) In other words, emotional diplomacy can be both the quid and the quo of a quid pro quo; its deployment is interactive rather than unilateral. […]
September 26, 2015
An interesting look at the diplomatic role played by some scientists.
March 17, 2015
Our friends at the DiploFoundation blog have published an interesting thought-piece about education and the New Diplomacy:
‘New diplomacy’ has become somewhat of a buzzword. In its current form it mainly describes new actors becoming more visible in the diplomatic process. We have also seen new terms such as health diplomacy being used more frequently. Here, I am wondering about the potential of so-called education diplomacy….
December 6, 2014
The Qatar Digital Library has published online the remarkable Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia by John Gordon Lorimer, one time Resident in the Persian Gulf. It is a multivolume historical, cultural and political guidebook to these places, worth many hours of study.
The main website contains several other fascinating volumes from the British Library.
August 20, 2014
“Attention Deficit Diplomacy” Revisited
How Diplomacy Fails: Remarks to the Hammer Forum Review of the Diplomatic Lessons of 1914 for 2014. An address by Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.). The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles California, 19 August 2014.
July 23, 2014
These days when columnists announce the beginning of a new thirty years’ war in the Middle East, the redrawing of the Sykes-Picot map, and even the anticipated departure of Scotland from the United Kingdom, it is worth asking about the diplomatic implications….
March 17, 2014
Review of Sasson Sofer, The Courtiers of Civilization: A Study of Diplomacy
Sasson Sofer has written a superb primer on the history and mission of modern diplomacy. It is a short book that can be read in a single sitting, its subject’s vast scope notwithstanding. […]
March 20, 2013
Not to turn this blog into a series of obituaries, but two fascinating diplomatic figures have died recently. One of them is probably known of this blog’s readership: the French Stéphane Hessel, who passed away late February; the other certainly less so: the Finn Max Jakobson, who died on March 9th….
March 7, 2013
The Inventor of Diplomacy is Dead
llan Calhamer, the man who invented the board game called Diplomacy, has died. That his game reached its peak of popularity in the 1960s and ‘70s but appears to have gone out of fashion since may be of interest to historians. The game, according to Calhamer’s obituary,” leaves nothing to chance: there are no dice to roll (as in the comparable board game Risk, which relies on armies to conquer the world), no cards to shuffle (ditto), no pointers to spin. Instead it relies on strategy, cunning and above all verbal prowess.” It is set appropriately in pre-World War I Europe and the players are the then Great Powers. The game was reputedly a favorite of Henry Kissinger and John F. Kennedy….
December 14, 2012
Concerned Citizens and Secret Operatives?
The French scene provided recently two archetypes of informal “diplomats” and other operatives: the concerned citizen, and the dubious cast of private operatives, politicians, diplomats and soldiers one can find around “intelligence” or “secret” issues….
November 30, 2012
A case d’école in informal diplomacy: Carne Ross’ Independent Diplomat
In August 2009, Foreign Policy blogger Michael Wilkerson decided to write a short piece about the intriguing organization run by former British diplomat Carne Ross, Independent Diplomat. Referring to an Associated Press piece and a few other sources, he described Ross’s outfit as diplomats-for-a-fee, professional lobbyists providing unrecognized international entities with the know-how and networks they need to bring up their cases in international arenas. Money would come from either the clients themselves or from foundations and donors eager to help the international representation of micro-nations, autonomous regions, governments in exile and the like. Ross, who says he left the British Foreign Service in disgust after Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war, did not appreciate Wilkerson’s snarly tone. He commented, and Wilkerson shot back. Four years before, The Guardian had also published a long piece on Ross….
October 11, 2012
“Semi-official diplomacy” case: Martti Ahtisaari and CMI
The first thing one notices when opening the Helsinki-based Crisis Management Initiative‘s website is the big DONATE button. Money, of course, is of the essence for an organization such as this. It was reminded to the Finnish-speaking readership through a long article in Helsingin Sanomat (paywall, in Finnish) a few weeks from now; under the title “A peace mediator with money issues” (“Rauhanvälittäjää riivaa rahapula“) was basically a long advertisement piece for the CMI. The organization’s executive director, Tuija Talvitie, showed journalists around and complained about the scarcity and project-based nature of the Center’s funding….
September 20, 2012
Four years ago I wrote a short note in the quarterly newsletter of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations about the state of our field. I’ve been asked to update and expand upon it here.
The first thing to mention, and to question, is whether that appeal should apply to non-Americans. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t – at least in theory. Yet it is important to acknowledge the initial audience. Some American historians, like some Americans, tend to regard themselves and their country (including its history) as “exceptional.” The note was addressed in part to these people. It was an attempt, on the one hand, to challenge the basis for an obsession with novelty in the promotion of particular subjects and methodologies, an obsession that seemed to me at the time to be especially prevalent among historians based in the United States who neglect the consequences of intellectual spontaneity, bordering on amnesia; and, on the other hand, to suggest that neither Americans nor historians are the first and only people to succumb to fads, however much the plight of the “American diplomatic historian” seems an especially peculiar one….
July 20, 2012
Several interesting themes have been coming up on this site in recent months: the issue of explaining diplomatic behavior, the periodisation of history according to standard perspectives, the actor/activity nexus, the whole relevance question. I trained as an International Relations scholar, not a historian, which can be an advantage in terms of conceptualizing material, but a disadvantage in terms of missing the subtlety of historical characterization. Prosopography is new to me, but it looks like I’ve been taking elements of that approach for quite a while. One of the things I have exactly been struggling with is the way in which certain individuals can be ‘categorized’ as international actors – what is their identity, their motivation, what are their goals? Do these different levels fit together? How and why does someone put themselves in a position where historians might see them as worthy of ‘diplomatic history’? …
June 18, 2012
While discussing amongst participants in this network, one of the things that seem to endlessly fascinate us is the role of individuals in international relations – especially private individuals. Not official diplomats, but private individuals involved for one reason or the other into high international politics. What exactly is their role? To what extent can they act? And why? …
June 6, 2012
A frequent criticism of the prosopographical approach, at least as it is applied to modern history, is that it lacks an argument. Pick a group of individuals, trace their networks, elaborate their points of contact and association, and so on, and what are you left with? A fuller characterization, to be sure, but what else? What does a network analysis really tell us other than that a network exists? This is similar to the charge leveled against much of sociography: that it tells only part of a story and only provides part of a study. What did these people think and do? Why are they and their actions significant? And what does the understanding of their network tell us that we don’t already know about their life and times? …
May 29, 2012
Niche Diplomacy and military envoys
Some pictures tell a lot….
May 29, 2012
The recent triple crown of summits—NATO, G8 and EU—has produced the usual complaints. Are these summits really necessary? What do they accomplish? Don’t they just raise and then disappoint expectations? Summit organizers are becoming defensive, emphasizing silver linings, the longer term and the like. Commentators generally have done the opposite, stressing the negatives. The Financial Times’ Philip Stephens for example has suggested that the summits signify the fall of the West, again (“Summits that Cap the West’s Decline,” 24 May). As historians, we have the luxury of saying it’s too soon to tell whether or how these summits and the discussions that took place there matter. But it is not too early to ask what they represent to the evolution and the exercise of diplomacy, and to compare this form of multilateralism with others as a way of asking how well it reflects, and serves, the current international environment. Do multilateral summits make sense in a global era? …
May 24, 2012
Following in the steps of other sportsmen-philosophers, the Finnish rally driver Ari Vatanen has been throughout his career a reliable source of candid, shot-from-the-hip soundbites. This one comes from a seminar organized by the Finnish authorities in relation with the 1989 Lahti Ski World Championship: …
May 21, 2012
This Sunday’s New York Times contains an interesting portrait of the musician called Diplo. The critical line is this one: “He is less an artist or a producer than a negotiator, a collaborator, a generator of interesting coincidences.” …
