Seven Obstacles to a Science Diplomacy Renaissance – Part III

Make no mistake.

Data is of little use in the absence of interpretation, and there exists a desperate need for guides, brokers and translators who can bridge the two solitudes. Overcoming these challenges will not be easy, not least with the ascension of a regressive Trump administration in the USA. Yet, absent radically improved performance, there is a growing likelihood that humanity will arrive, at some indeterminate, but not too distant point in the future, at a global tipping point beyond which recovery may be impossible.

Finding ways to manage the “Malignificent Seven” – a sleeper issue of enormous consequence – should be one of the central political and public policy objectives of our times.  But instead, the lion’s share of resources still flow to the military; the US Government, for example, spends more on defence R&D than all other types of research combined. In the mainstream, consideration of SD is next to invisible, displaced by infotainment spectacles, fake news, “alternative facts” and more proximate concerns such as employment, housing, education and health care.

Still, before readers get too depressed… the situation is not entirely bleak. Science diplomacy has produced a rich legacy of arms control and environmental agreements, including recent pacts to establish an Antarctic marine reserve and to control HFCs, and significant disarmament initiatives affecting Iran  (nuclear non-proliferation) and Syria  (chemical weapons).

The general intensity of SD-related activity has increased significantly in recent months, with meetings in LondonBrussels, Vienna, Berlin and Ottawa.  All seventeen of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals contain major S&T components. Courses are cropping up at US institutions, including Tufts, The Rockefeller University and NYU.

Some specialized agencies (UN, EU) and governments (US, UK, Switzerland, Spain, Japan,  Korea,  and NZ) have demonstrated a number of best practices in SD. New Zealand’s Chief Science Advisor, Peter Gluckman, has worked tirelessly to establish an International Network of Government Science Advice (INGSA), while NGOs such as TWAS have significantly deepened their engagement. Vaughan Turekian, the Science and Technology Advisor at the US State Department and former head of the AAAS’ Science and Diplomacy program, has launched a raft of innovative initiatives. The SESAME Synchrotron project in Jordan is co-managed by a group of countries not known for their habits of cooperation – Palestine, Israel, Turkey and Cyprus, among others.

That said, these examples represent the exceptions rather than the rule; even taken together they are not nearly enough to change the big picture. Indeed, there have lately been some especially unwelcome setbacks (e.g. Russia ) and much remains to be done. 

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Rebuilding Canada’s international capacity: Diplomatic reform in the age of globalization – Part II

Editor`s note: This article is the second part of a feature  co-authored with my CDFAI colleague and friend Colin Robertson. We served together in the Canadian foreign service for 30 years.

 

The new diplomatic dialectic

The days of designated envoys speaking only with each other about the business of government have gone forever. Diplomats now have to engage with whole societies, creating partnerships and exchanging meaningfully not just with the usual suspects, but with strange bedfellows as well.

In short, public diplomacy has in important respects become the new diplomacy. In consequence, the epicentre of diplomatic practice must move out of the shadows and into the light.
That said, no amount of Twiplomacy, virtuality, digital dexterity or technological savvy will ever be able to substitute for face to face contact, cross-cultural communications, and the ability to cultivate relationships based on confidence, trust and respect.

At its core, diplomacy will remain a contact sport.

A cultural, but also a substantive revolution

Even by comparative bureaucratic measure, foreign ministries are conservative, rganizationally silohed institutions. With their faces to the world but backs to their own citizens, they are friendless and isolated. Social relations are hierarchic, communications are vertical, authority is unquestioned and risk is averted.

In the 21st century that combination represents a dead end, a fast track to irrelevance.

Risk must be managed, innovation relentlessly pursued, and failure treated as a learning experience, all within an institution that values and provides continuous learning – again, something the modern military does very well.

In terms of content, political and multilateral relations will remain central features of diplomacy, but the articulation of sound trade, commercial and investment policies are equally important as keys to a prosperous and peaceful future.

There is also a need to reach international agreement on rules governing cyber and space – both enable globalization, but they also offer terrible possibilities for chaos and destruction.

Finding effective ways to pursue the just and joint management of the global commons has become job one.

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Rebuilding Canada’s international capacity: Diplomatic reform in the age of globalization – Part I

Editor`s note: This article was co-authored with my CDFAI colleague and friend Colin Robertson. We served together in the Canadian foreign service for 30 years.

 

The world is an ever more complicated place and diplomacy, the world’s second oldest profession, matters more than ever before. But it is a different form of diplomacy – embracing the tools of technology and recognizing that globalization has both flattened the old hierarchies and added new complexities.

For Canada, diplomacy is more than a tool of statecraft. As a country that still puts a premium on attracting immigrants from abroad, a part of our identity is dependent on how we behave and how we are seen internationally.

For those reasons and more, Canadian diplomacy is and must be a manifestation of our values, policies and interests.

Joining the Foreign Service over three decades ago was to enter what was still mostly a brotherhood. Women were few, and the atmosphere was almost clubby. Indeed, the hallmarks resembled in some respects those of a religious order, if perhaps more Jesuitical than Dominican.

Contemporary foreign service is not a priesthood, nor is the foreign ministry a cathedral.

And diplomacy is not liturgy.

In Chapters and Indigo bookstores across the country, shoppers are encouraged to believe that: “The world needs more Canada.” To deliver on that promise, a thoroughgoing process of secular diplomatic reform will be essential.

The approaching election is a good time to consider our international policies, diplomatic practice and the foreign service itself.

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