Videoconference diplomacy could be an inconvenient, awkward, difficult moment on the way to a more digitally enabled future for diplomacy. Airships were a stepping-stone to the airplane. Yet, within three decades people were squeezed into economy class with peanuts and a Chardonnay, crossing the Atlantic in airplanes. Airships allowed travel over the Atlantic but specific drawbacks meant they never replaced the ocean liner. Videoconference diplomacy could be what the airship was to innovation in transport technology. Stuck with an inadequate platform, diplomacy needs to innovate. The “second life” diplomats once led for three-year stints at post could in the future be replaced by three-hour stints in a simulated virtual environment. Patience, precision and deliberation gives way to opportunity in the electoral cycle. The result is policy implementation that becomes increasingly narrow in scope, more politicised, and sometimes erratic and emotional.
Most importantly, the wisdom of utilising intermediaries in interaction with partners is forgotten.
The executive no longer receives advice borne of institutional memory and professional knowledge embedded in foreign ministries but rather advice borne of ideology and/or political acumen. When the executive implements policy, personal and party supporters take roles previously assigned to diplomats. The most significant of these is the growing tendency of the executive to not just formulate and plan, but also implement policy. Videoconferences also reinforce long-term trends that weaken the essence of diplomacy. The Seminar for Diplomats 2021 at the International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna, Austria, 7 September (Fiorda Llukmani/ IAEA) How can young diplomats build such relationships in videoconference? They age together, develop professionally together, and throughout their career recognise each other as reliable or unreliable colleagues seeking to solve the same problems together – and that relationship starts in the quiet moments of idle conversation they share on their first posting, during breaks from serving senior diplomats. This means much of the essence of diplomacy is lost.Īs one diplomat put it, a young diplomat starts working with partner country diplomats at the same level. Videoconference diplomacy allows interaction in the administrative and public oratory modes, but severely limits interaction in the symbolic and ceremonial, group and personal liaison, and intermediary liaison modes. In an in-person conference setting, there are distinct modes of interaction in which the essence of diplomacy plays a prominent role: the administrative, the symbolic and ceremonial, public oratory, group and personal liaison, and intermediary liaison. They include the primacy of communication in spoken, written and/or symbolic and ceremonial form a mode of thought emphasising patience, precision and deliberation the development of a professional corps of cosmopolitan mediators with appropriate status, skill, and distinction the development between corps a shared sense of purpose, rapport and behaviour, from which a “ stock market of reputation” could form. Over time, these norms became features of diplomatic systems across culture and time. The essence of diplomacy can be understood as the norms facilitating estranged interaction that have remained by and large continuous since humanity’s earliest ancestors met their neighbours, and decided to remain separate, but at peace. There are no breaks, sideline chats, quiet drinks, or steps outside to calm tensions, build rapport, or explore new opportunities. Videoconference diplomacy lacks nuance, subtlety, and the personal touch. According to most diplomats, it serves as an inadequate platform on which to rest the practice of diplomacy. But the solution was hardly modern, instead based on technologies more than three decades old had anyone bothered to use them. However, videoconference diplomacy was an emergency measure, allowing a propped-up version of the practice to stumble on.