Rethinking Diplomacy, Security and Commerce in the Age of Heteropolarity

A few weeks ago I attended  an International Symposium on the the subject themes organized by the University of East Anglia’s London Academy of Diplomacy.  I was especially keen to participate because I had helped with the conceptualization and design of the conference.  Lately I have also been trying to develop the idea of heteropolarity as a tool for making better sense of world order in the 21st century.

Attendees were invited first to consider a fundamental question: “Does diplomacy still matter?”  The consensus was yes, increasingly so.  But most also agreed that diplomacy’s practices, practitioners and institutions have not adapted well contemporary circumstances, and in particular to the exigencies of the  globalization age.

It was observed that in the public mind diplomacy has suffered from its association with weakness and appeasement, and that diplomats have been caricatured as ditherers, drinking and dining off the public purse, lost in a haze of obsolescence. Western diplomacy especially is seen as having failed to deliver the expected peace dividend at the end of the Cold War, a problem compounded by the militarization of foreign policy after 9/11 and the prosecution of an undifferentiated and  ill-defined “war on terror”. The Cold War, it seems, simply morphed into the Long War, featuring “overseas contingency operations”, stabilization programmes and counter-insurgency campaigns world-wide.

In short, the conferees agreed that diplomacy – a non-violent approach to the management of international relations through dialogue, negotiation and compromise – has not delivered the goods. Most diplomats work for states, and these days states are of diminishing importance, only one actor among many on a world stage now crowded with multinational corporations, NGOs, think tanks and celebrities.  In recent years foreign ministries have lost much of their turf, with leadership passing increasingly upwards, into the hands of presidents and prime ministers, outwards, to other government departments and a host of new players, and downwards, to other levels of government. Tradition-bound and inherently change-resistant, diplomacy has been sidelined and become marginalized, displaced in government by a preference for the use of armed force.

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A Diminished Canada

The Mark

CBC’s announcement that it is withdrawing from foreign-language broadcasting in two of the four BRIC countries is just another nail in the coffin for Canadian internationalism.

Link

The Incredible Shrinking Canada… Just Keeps Getting Smaller

Over the past few days  there has been some commentary in the mainstream and electronic media about the hard reality of this country`s ever diminishing place in the world.

Still, such observations have not produced the  groundswell resistance that they warrant among Canadians.

For reasons which I have tried to assess earlier, this is not entirely surprising.

Moreover, a considerable part of this inattention might be attributed to the sideswiping of any detailed analysis of the last week`s budget storey by the release on April 03 of the Auditor General`s bombshell report detailing the epic mismanagement of F-35 fighter procurement file.  To put the content  of that document into perspective, the Auditor General exposes vastly more wastage of public funds on that misbegotten project than the total amount which will be saved as a result of the all of the new cuts being imposed upon DFAIT and CIDA.

The reverberations associated with the widening F-35 scandal also effectively scuttled all but a trickle of  meaningful coverage of the release government`s final report on Canada`s (disasterous) engagement in Afghanistan.

No amount of bureaucratic whitewashing will ever be sufficient clean the bloodstains from that tragic experience.

It is perhaps worth pausing to reflect on these disturbing realities for a few moments…  Among other things, that is what happens when international policy and priorities become militarized, and when defense dominates over diplomacy and development. Meanwhile, as  lions share of international policy resources continue to be poured into DND, not a word is said about the desperate need for national debate on defense policy.

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The Incredible Shrinking Canada


I am now approaching the end of my sojourn in London, some comments about which were referenced here.  While away I have even managed to get a bit of Canadian press.

After almost a month away, I must say that in relation to the relative absence of similar possibilities in Ottawa, there is lots of interesting stuff to be done here in the world city. The energy, dynamism and cosmopolitan buzz attributable to this place are absolutely invigorating.

But what is on my mind this Sunday morning is last week`s federal budget, and especially the latest round slashing and burning of Canada`s once robust and engaged global presence.

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