In the previous post, I tried to show that during the 1980s and ‘90s the paradigm for the delivery of Canadian international policy shifted fundamentally. Over the course of those years, there was a deliberate move away from an emphasis on traditional, state-to-state interaction in the direction of public diplomacy (PD). This form of international political exchange features diplomats communicating directly with foreign populations and cultivating partnerships with civil society actors – NGOs, businesspeople, journalists and academics.  I also made the case that the PD formula, in conjunction with the right combination of political will and bureaucratic skill, can produce impressive results, especially if directed towards projects with broad popular and media appeal, such as a land mine ban or efforts to improve the lot of children in conflict zones.

Looking back, it can be seen that Canadian PD reached its apogee under Foreign Minister Axworthy (1996-2000). At a time of severe government-wide cost-cutting, Canada fundamentally down-sized its international ambitions, but that exercise was not translated into a retreat from the field. To be sure, the large scale, long range, potentially world changing projects of the post-war decades  – poverty eradication, conflict resolution, global environmental conservation – were gone. In their place, Canadian officials proposed a series of special projects – for example, curbs on the trading of “blood” diamonds and small arms – designed for implementation within media-friendly diplomatic niches. They did not always succeed, but each initiative featured a defined start and finish. Upon completion, the Minister could simply call a press conference, declare victory and move on.

Minister Axworthy learned, and very quickly, how the use of soft power could make a virtue of necessity. Conventional diplomacy was still necessary, but it was no longer sufficient when it came to influencing foreign governments. That influence was best brought to bear through their publics, and through international public opinion, especially when compulsion was not an option and democratization had expanded the scope for exercising influence indirectly.

The requirements associated with this burst of activism imposed significant costs upon DFAIT’s staff, already struggling under the burden of increased demands and reduced resources.  Moreover, some strategic opportunities were missed. In 1996-97, for instance, the department’s Communications Bureau proposed the launch of an ambitious project which would have vaulted Canada into the digital age by establishing an integrated global presence based upon satellite broadcasting, the internet, public diplomacy, international education and branding.  In the end, however, at a time of diminishing capacity across government, the Canadian International Information Strategy (CIIS) lost out in Cabinet to the campaign to ban land mines (later christened the “Ottawa Process”). Canada might today be more effective and influential in the world had circumstances – particularly timing and the economic environment – been more propitious during that critical period.

In bureaucracy, there is often a lag between action and reflection. The Axworthy years were so frenetic that there was little time to think through the full implications of his program in terms of the design, structure and operations of the foreign ministry. As a result, generic interest in PD within the DFAIT apparatus actually peaked following Axworthy’s departure. For the first five years of the new century, significant efforts were made weave PD into the department’s modus operandi. A new PD Secretariat was established in Washington to coordinate advocacy activities in the USA. The idea of  “mainstreaming public diplomacy” was central to a comprehensive reform package launched by DFAIT’s  Deputy Ministers in 2004 and entitled Building a 21^st Century Foreign Ministry, or FAC21. When Prime Minister Chretien stepped down the same year, the new leader, Paul Martin, commissioned a comprehensive international policy review. In the final, five volume report, A Place of Pride and Influence in the World, PD was highlighted as “the new diplomacy”.

Although it has been scarcely more than a decade since Axworthy left office, the years of Canadian public diplomatic activism now seem long ago and far away. Ironically, despite the many practical successes and, later, some focused internal interest, PD never received the extent of budgetary support which might have been anticipated. This is doubly curious because although Axworthy’s Liberal successors, John Manley, Bill Graham and Pierre Pettigrew, did not share his enthusiasm for human security, they did seem to buy into PD. Manley mandated a public diplomacy working group within the secretariat conducting his – albeit short-lived -  Foreign Policy Update in 2001, and beginning in 2003 Graham used the interactive potential of the internet to reach out to Canadians with his Foreign Policy Dialogue. But political interest in undertaking concrete diplomatic initiatives had waned well before the January, 2006 election of a Conservative minority government. Almost immediately, the previous administration’s policy review was shelved, government communications were centralized and placed under strict control, and DFAIT officials were gagged.

Canadian public diplomacy, already in decline and tainted lethally by its association with the outgoing Liberal government, effectively disappeared.

Memories of independent Canadian leadership on global issues are receding, the drift towards continental integration continues.

In May 2011 the Conservative party was returned with a majority, and John Baird, a prominent and influential Tory insider, was named Foreign Minister. The new minister speaks of the need for a “tough”  foreign policy, and the overall emphasis favours the military over diplomacy and development assistance. Yet there are stirrings within DFAIT of a possible PD renewal. A modest experiment has been launched allowing several of Canada’s European ambassadors to engage foreign audiences using social media platforms Twitter and Facebook, and this enterprise may eventually be expanded to include the participation of all Canadian missions.

That said, even under a best case scenario Canada will still be trailing most of its diplomatic competition, both within the OECD and beyond. Unless and until DFAIT regains the full confidence, trust and respect of its political masters, and is once again called upon to perform, any return to the halcyon days of Canadian PD activism seems unlikely.

I have recently been reviewing a new book entitled Diplomacy in the Digital Age, which is a collection of essays prepared in honour of Allan Gotlieb, a former Undersecretary of State  for External Affairs and Canada’s ambassador in Washington from 1981-89. It is an absorbing anthology, and contains valuable entries penned in some instances by those who worked with Mr. Gotlieb during his time in the USA. Quite apart from eliciting specific reactions to the content of the volume, reading it has also spurred me to reflect on the larger issue of what became of Canada’s once considerable contribution to the study and practice of public diplomacy (PD).

The Government of Canada was until fairly recently regarded as a somewhat of PD pioneer. That reputation would now be difficult to sustain. Indeed, I have come to the rather stark realization that whatever this country may at one time have achieved by way of advancing its interests through PD, those days are now long gone.

In official and political circles in Ottawa today, little or nothing is heard of PD. Diplomatic representatives can no longer connect directly with foreign populations unless their scripts have been pre-cleared, and even the use of the term has been discouraged. Within the foreign ministry (DFAIT), the function has been almost completely de-resourced.

Hence the questions must be put: what, exactly, did Canada manage to achieve in terms of public diplomacy outcomes over the past several decades?  Why has PD fallen from grace? Can any lessons of broader relevance be adduced?

Canadian academics, and several several serving and former diplomats have over time been active in the conceptualization and analysis of PD. Publications such as Allan Gotlieb’s I’ll Be With You in a Minute, Mr. Ambassador, Gordon Smith’s Virtual Diplomacy, Rob McRae and Don Hubert’s Human Security and the New Diplomacy, Andy Cooper’s Celebrity Diplomacy, Evan Potter’s Branding Canada, and perhaps even my own Guerrilla Diplomacy have been seen by some to break new ground in the field.

In addition to these intellectual contributions, the Canadian foreign ministry has been deeply involved in the practical application of PD. Beginning in the 1980s, most of Canada’s major diplomatic undertakings – the 1981 Cancun Summit on North-South relations; Prime Minister Trudeau’s 1984 peace crusade; the acid rain and free trade pacts with the USA;  the 1987 Montreal Protocol on ozone layer depletion, and; the Commonwealth campaign to end apartheid in southern Africa – included a significant PD component. Even if not labeled as public diplomacy at the time, a willingness to connect directly with foreign populations, the strategic use of the media, and tactics such as forging partnerships with business and civil society were integral to each of these initiatives.

In early in the 1990s, and quite explicitly so by the second half of the decade, PD moved even closer to the centre of Canadian international policy.  In the organization and delivery of the 1992 Rio Summit on Environment and Development,  throughout the so-called “fish war” with Spain in 1994, and particularly during the four year tenure of Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy (1996-2000), PD, and the related notion of soft power, were the order of the day.

Charged with implementing the severe expenditure reductions  associated with the government-wide Program Review exercise of the mid-1990s, Axworthy must have concluded that the page had to be turned on old ways, and that global order projects would accordingly have to be set aside. But he was clearly not prepared to accept that this meant inaction. To the contrary, he demanded that DFAIT officials identify innovative ways for Canada to “make a difference”. He was determined to find opportunity in adversity, even if faced with opposition on the part of the US and other major powers, and indeed of many Canadians.

DFAIT staff rose to the challenge, and came forth with a series of proposals. In the campaigns leading to the signature of the Treaty Banning Land Mines in 1997 and to the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 1998,  Axworthy attained his objectives by nurturing  partnerships with international civil society and similarly-inclined countries. He also reached out in an unprecedented fashion to the journalists, the academic community and NGOs at home, mainly through creation of the Canadian Centre for Foreign Policy Development and the Public Diplomacy Fund at DFAIT.

The same approach, in varying degrees, was seen in initiatives intended to limit the spread of small arms, to underscore the plight of children in war zones and curb the use of child soldiers, and to restrict the sale of “conflict diamonds” through the launch of the Kimberly Process. Canada also sponsored the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, whose final report, The Responsibility to Protect, though initially overtaken by the events of 9/11, resurfaced and was adopted in principle at the UN Millennium Summit in September 2005.

Taken together, Axworthy’s achievements were artfully – and, in part, retrospectively – packaged by officials into a remarkably coherent program which came to be known as the Human Security Agenda. Although that policy direction did not survive for long following the Minister’s departure from office, the record of activity in the second half of the 1990s stands nonetheless as enduring testament to the power and potential of Canadian PD. It was a high point which has not since been revisited. To a significant extent, I would suggest that whatever remains Canada’s positive international reputation – its brand –  still relies on these, and earlier accomplishments.

I will return to an assessment of PD’s decline in the next post.

A few weeks ago in Oslo, Norway, in the company of about 40 other invitees from around the world, I attended an OECD “experts” meeting, sponsored by the Norwegian and German Ministries of Education and Research, on the subject of Science, Technology, Innovation and Global Challenges.

The workshop was predicated upon the shared realization that if  international policy and decision-makers cannot be convinced that a radical course correction is needed, then in the not too distant future the planet may reach a tipping point. Beyond that point, recovery will be difficult, if not impossible.

Think climate change, diminishing biodiversity, food insecurity, resource scarcity, pandemic disease, and so forth.

So… we were talking about the principal threats imperilling life on the planet.

Not your standard bit of bureaucratic process.

Today, I am en route to Otago University in Dunedin, New Zealand, to speak at a conference entitled Science Diplomacy: New Day or False Dawn. Among many other speakers are Murray McCully, the Foreign Minister of New Zealand, Vaughn Turekian, head of  the science diplomacy unit at the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, and Dr. Jeffery Boutwell, from Pugwash USA.

Two global gatherings in two months on science, technology, diplomacy and international policy. Is it possible that something’s happening here, even if what is ain’t exactly clear?

Maybe.  I certainly hope so.

Here’s why – let me try and connect the dots.

Guerrilla Diplomacy’s central argument, in its most highly distilled form, is  that if development has in large part become the new security in the age of globalization, then diplomacy must displace defence at the centre of international policy.

In this formulation, diplomacy, which is all about privileging talking over fighting and using non-violent political communication rather than armed force to resolve international disputes, would be placed front and centre in international relations.

Traditional diplomacy involves the representatives of states transacting the business of government among and between themselves. By way of contrast, public diplomacy (PD) involves the use of dialogue, advocacy and other public relations tools by envoys engaging directly with foreign publics in order to influence their governments. PD has become a critical component of statecraft – not just in industrialized countries – and it looms large in the current literature on diplomatic studies.

Science diplomacy (SD) is a crucial, if under-utilized, component within the PD constellation, and it represents a significant source of soft power, that potent form of influence which is based on attraction and harnesses national influence, reputation, and brand. Science diplomacy is significant not only in its capacity to address many of the earth’s most urgent challenges, but also because it is an effective emissary of  important values such as evidence-based learning, openness and sharing.

The use of science to advance diplomatic ends is distinct from international scientific cooperation by virtue of its connection to government interests and objectives. Cooperation in the enterprise of international science is typically a win-win proposition, for instance by pulling together to find ways to produce clean water, improve hygiene or develop disease resistant crops. Science diplomacy might produce similar outcomes, but the results could just as easily be asymmetrical, particularly if there are negotiations involved. Arms control and non-proliferation talks during the Cold War, and a whole constellation of international scientific programs and exchanges undertaken during the second half of the last century come  immediately to mind.

Not all science diplomacy, it must be stressed, is devoted to the achievement of pacific ends. Covert collaboration involving, variously, Pakistan, Iran, China, North Korea and Libya on nuclear explosive and missile propulsion technologies is an illustrative case in point.

But… back to basics, to the idea of science itself. In a contested and competitive world of voodoo economics, bundled derivatives, radical politics and religious extremism, science proceeds from the assumption that misery is not fated: because all events are caused, all problems – eventually – can be solved.

At its best, science might be seen to represent the closest thing we have to universality, perhaps even truth.  In the roiling realm of international relations, science diplomacy  merits considerably more attention than it has recently been accorded.

It may be that the conference in Dunedin, like the meeting in Oslo, will break new ground.

I hope so.

There is much to be done and the clock is ticking.

Fast.

From Tuesday through Saturday last week I attended the 52^nd annual conference of the International Studies Association (ISA) in Montreal. The theme for this year’s event was Global Governance: Political Authority in Transition.

What does that mean? I still can’t say. But I can attest that this meeting represents one of the very rare occasions during which living legends such as Joseph Nye, Stanley Hoffman and Thomas Schelling can be seen and heard in the same general place and time. Moreover, they represent only the more recognized figures among the thousands of experts and specialists on hand.

Although dominated by participants from the USA, the conference also attracts scholars from Canada, Europe, the UK, Oceania and elsewhere around the globe. International relations is by far the most common of the disciplines represented, but economists, sociologists, anthropologists, and many others – including government officials, consultants and NGO representatives – attend as well. If it’s a subject of academic enquiry, international in scope, and communicated in the English language, then chances are you’ll find it at the ISA.

The event program looks and reads like a telephone book. Four times a day for four days, beginning at 8:15AM and ending at 6:00PM, 100 or so panels run simultaneously. While exhausting, this is a guarantee of  almost limitless choice, and if one promising discussion falls flat, there are endless fall back possibilities.

Each panel is organized under the auspices of one of the  various “sections” of the ISA – International Security, Foreign Policy Analysis, Political Economy, Intelligence, Development, and so forth. For networking, contact development, and most of all as a way to obtain a snapshot of leading edge thinking about just about anything international, nothing compares to dining out at this brain food buffet.

That said, for those whose primary interest is diplomacy, in past years it has been a good idea to eat before coming. If your tastes run towards dialogue, negotiation and compromise, the ISA has often served up some rather thin gruel. The diplomatic studies section is small, the panels it organizes tend to be poorly attended, and its membership is generally dispirited over the fact that within international relations, diplomatic studies is seen as somewhat of an orphan, marginalized and sidelined by the discipline’s preoccupation with more fashionable streams of enquiry. As Paul Sharp, the former head of the section remarked to me once: “This stuff is so important… I just don’t understand why no one pays any attention”.

It feels a bit like being a ham sandwich at a banquet, or the State Department representative at a Pentagon briefing.

Last week,  however, there were signs that things might be changing. Several important developments set this session of the ISA apart from its recent predecessors, and in combination suggest that diplomacy, at least within the ISA and perhaps even beyond, may be on the rebound.

One major shift involved the level and intensity of participation on the part of members of Canada’s oft-maligned Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT). I began to attend these conferences regularly back in 1997, and can recall many occasions when there were few if any DFAIT staff in attendance. This year I counted at least ten, including the Deputy Minister, Morris Rosenburg. His appearance at a reception co-hosted by CIGI was as unprecedented as it was welcome. I can think of no better way for the deputy head of the foreign ministry to meet face to face with the major Canadian and international thinkers in his area of responsibility.

Kudos to those who recognized the ISA meeting in Montreal as a strategic and cost-effective outreach opportunity, and moved to seize it.

Also noteworthy at this year’s event was the formation of a Public Diplomacy Working Group. This new body drew wide participation from among members of both the Diplomatic Studies and International Communications sections of the ISA in a full day pre-conference seminar. Discussions at this convocation, and at several panels organized by the working group over the course of the ISA itself, included topics such as PD results measurement, theory and research, new media and multidisciplinary approaches. The creation of this new PD entity, in combination with the much improved attendance at the various of the other sessions on diplomacy, has provided some much needed inspiration to those committed to the study, practice and promotion of the world’s second oldest profession.

In total, there were the eighteen panels this year dedicated to the discussion of diplomacy. The topics widely varied, and included nuclear non-proliferation, global health, and multilateral negotiations. I attended many of these sessions, and also served as the commentator for a panel on diplomatic training. All of which got me thinking – if diplomacy is on the rebound at the ISA, what of its broader prospects?

Will governments be prepared to revisit their international policy priorities and provide the resources necessary to engineer a diplomatic renaissance?

What is the future for diplomacy in the 21^st century?

More on that in a later entry.

The following commentary, based in part on my “Ferment in North Africa” entry, was posted by the University of Southern California’s Public Diplomacy Blog 02 February:

This is one of those rare, defining moments in world history. In Egypt – as well as Tunisia, Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere – change is unfolding at almost blinding speed. The reactions of the USA, EU, and UN  so far have succeeded mainly in positioning the international community well behind the curve, scrambling to catch up. Developments on the ground continue to outpace responses by a wide margin.

In Washington, Brussels, Paris, and London, the deepening crisis, with Cairo at its epicentre,  underscores the difficulties inherent in trying to balance values – democracy, human rights, good governance, the rule of law – and interests, and in expressing that balance through the articulation of coherent international policy. When autocratic regimes have been supported for decades, and even when the status quo becomes obviously untenable, it is difficult to know how best to react.