DIPLOMATIC NORMS AND PRACTICES FACILITATING CONFLICT RESOLUTION

As an international institution, diplomacy has throughout the ages rested on certain fundamental norms and provided more or less detailed rules of appropriate procedures in the intercourse between states.

Coexistence and reciprocity

Ultimately, diplomacy rests on a norm of coexistence, allowing states “to live and let live.” In the words of Garrett Mattingly (1955: 196), “unless people realize that they have to live together, indefinitely, in spite of their differences, diplomats have no place to stand.” Acceptance of coexistence reflects the realization on the part of states that they are mutually dependent to a significant degree. Interdependence may be, and is most often, asymmetrical. Yet coexistence implies, if not equality, at least equal rights to participate in international intercourse. The norm of coexistence obviously facilitates conflict resolution, in contrast to notions of exclusion or excommunication, which render interaction with disapproved partners impossible.

Reciprocity appears to be another core normative theme running through all diplo­matic practice (Cohen, 2001:25). Reciprocity implies that exchanges should be of roughly equivalent values. Moreover, reciprocity enta­ils contingency, insofar as actions are condi­tional on responses from others. Reciprocal behavior returns good for good, ill for ill. The distinction between specific and diffuse reciprocity is pertinent in this connection. In situations of specific reciprocity, partners exchange items of equivalent value in a delimited time sequence, whereas diffuse reciprocity implies less precise definitions of equivalence and less narrowly bounded time sequences.

Buyers and sellers of houses or cars practice specific reciprocity; families or groups of close friends rely on diffuse reciprocity. Reciprocity in diplomatic relations falls in between, or oscillates between the two poles. To the extent that diplomatic interaction comes close to the pole of diffuse reci­procity, conflict resolution becomes easier. Conversely, insistence on specific reciprocity often makes it more difficult. The practice of expelling foreign diplomats for espionage or otherwise declaring them persona non grata represents one variant of specific reciprocity. When a state expels diplomats from a foreign country, that government is likely to respond in kind by immediately expelling an equivalent number of the initiating state's own diplomats. On the one hand, the anticipation of specific reciprocity may deter states from initiating cycles of uncooperative behavior. On the other hand, the specific reciprocity triggered by the expulsion of diplomats has often aggravated interstate conflicts.

Successful conflict resolution seems to require at least a semblance of reciprocity. The denouement of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 is a case in point. In exchange for the Soviet Union's withdrawal of its missiles from Cuba, the United States dismantled its missiles in Turkey (which President Kennedy had previously ordered removed as obsolescent) and pledged not to invade Cuba (which it had no intention to do). As Glenn Snyder and Paul Diesing (1977: 19) noted in their pioneering study of 16 major twentieth-century international crises, it is important “whether the loser is ‘driven to the wall' and humiliated or given some face-saving concession that can be presented as a ‘compromise'.” And all compromises presuppose reciprocity.

Open communication channels and a shared language

Keeping communication channels open is another aspect of diplomacy that facilitates conflict resolution.

Today, the need to communicate is most graphically demonstrated, paradoxically, when diplomatic relations are severed and the parties almost always look for, and find, other ways of communicating (James, 1993: 96). States lacking diplomatic relations may exchange messages through intermediaries. They may also communicate directly. One method builds on the established state practice of entrusting the protection of their interests to the mission of a third state in cases of broken diplomatic relations. Through the creation of “interests sections,” consisting of diplomats of the protected state operating under the legal auspices of the protecting state, enemies may permit their own diplomats to remain in states from which they have been legally expelled. In 1977, for instance, the United States created a US interests section in the Swiss embassy in Havana at the same time as Cuba opened its interests section in the Czechoslovak embassy in Washington. Trade missions and other diplomatic fronts with genuine “cover” functions represent alternative “disguised embassies” (Berridge, 1994: 32-58). Ceremonial occasions, such as “working funerals,” and the exchange of secret, special envoys are other ways of communicating despite severed diplomatic relations (cf. Berridge, 1993, 1994).

Mediators play a central role in keeping communication channels open, ongoing and undistorted between mistrusting parties who attempt to settle a conflict.

Most importantly, diplomatic communi­cation is facilitated by a shared lan­guage with mutually understood phrases and expressions as well as rules gov­erning the external form of intercourse. The institutionalization of diplomacy has involved the development of a common language with ritualized phrases, which have allowed cross-cultural communication with a minimum of unnecessary misunderstanding. Courtesy, non-redundancy and constructive ambiguity are prominent features of diplo­matic language. Each era appears to have its own set of ritualized phrases that enable diplo­matic agents to communicate even unpleasant things with an amount of tact and courtesy. The principle of non-redundancy means that “a diplomatic communication should say neither too much nor too little because every word, nuance of omission will be meticu­lously studied for any shade of meaning” (Cohen, 1981: 32). Constructive ambiguity avoids premature closure of options. Circum­locution, such as understatements and loaded omissions, permits controversial things to be said in a way understood in the diplomatic community but without needless provocation (Cohen, 1981: 32-4).

We may think of diplomats as “intuitive semioticians,” as conscious producers and interpreters of signs. Although semiotics is rarely part of their formal education, diplomats are by training and experience experts at weighing words and gestures with a view to their effect on potential receivers (Jonsson, 1990: 31).

Commitment to peace

Diplomats are commonly described as sharing a commitment to peace or international order. Diplomat-cum-scholar Adam Watson (1982), for example, argues that diplomats throughout history have been guided not only by raison d’etat, but also by raison de systeme. One author refers to diplomacy as “the angels' game,” arguing that diplomats, “regardless of nationality, have an enduring obligation to their guild and to each other to work always toward that most elusive of human objectives - a just, universal, and stable peace” (Macomber, 1997: 26). One may even wonder whether “the idea that diplomats serve peace predates that of serving the prince” (Sharp, 1998: 67). Diplomats are said to be “conscious of world interests superior to immediate national interests” (Nicolson, 1959: xi), and to feel bound by their professional ethic to “act in such a way as to ensure that the functioning of the international state system is sustained and improved” (Freeman, 1997: 139). While this may sound like old-fashioned rhetoric, benefiting the diplomatic guild, outside observers point to the continued representation of ideas.

Secularism and statism were great spurs to the development of diplomacy as a profession, but they did not overwhelm the earlier commitment to peace. Indeed, a shared com­mitment to peace and saving their respective princes from themselves became hallmarks of the profession, something which diplomats could hold in common to cement their sense of corps and to gain some distance from their political leaderships (Sharp, 1998: 67).

To the extent that diplomatic agents are able to “strike a balance between diplomacy as a means of identifying and fostering ‘us' and diplomacy as a means of fostering the latent community of mankind” (Hill, 1991: 99), diplomacy contributes to effective conflict resolution.

Diplomatic immunity

The principle of diplomatic immunity rep­resents another facilitating norm, insofar as it provides for unharmed contacts between diplomats of conflicting states. It is reasonable to assume, as Nicolson (1977:6) does, that this principle was the first to become established in pre-historic times. Anthropoid apes and savages must at some stage have realized the advantages of negotiating understandings about the limits of hunting territories. With this must have come the realization that these negotiations could never reach a satisfactory conclusion if emissaries were killed and eaten. The inviolability of messengers seems to be an accepted principle among aboriginal peoples (Numelin, 1950: 147-52).

The inviolability of diplomatic agents is seen to be a prerequisite for the establishment of stable relations between polities. “Rooted in necessity, immunity was buttressed by religion, sanctioned by custom, and forti­fied by reciprocity” (Frey and Frey, 1999: 4). The sanctity of diplomatic messengers in the ancient world implied inviolability. Traditional codes of hospitality may have con­tributed to the notion of according diplomatic envoys inviolability. The medieval diplomat “represented his sovereign in the sense that he was him or embodied him (literally in some readings) when he presented himself at court” (Sharp, 1998: 61). While such a view is alien to modern thought, today's principle of diplomatic immunity has deep roots in notions of personal representation. The most perennial and robust foundation of diplomatic immunity seems to be functional necessity: the privileges and immunities that diplomatic envoys have enjoyed throughout the ages have simply been seen as necessary to enable diplo­mats to perform their functions (McClanahan, 1989: 32). Functional necessity rests on the principle of reciprocity: “governments expect that other governments will reciprocate in the extension of immunities to similar categories of diplomatic and non-diplomatic personnel” (Wilson, 1967: 32).

Pacta sunt servanda

The old dictum pacta sunt servanda, which has been a cornerstone of diplomacy for ages, increases the likelihood that agreements resolving interstate conflicts will be honored. In the Ancient Near East, treaties invariably ended with summons to the deities of both parties to act as witnesses to the treaty provi­sions and explicit threats of divine retribution in case of violation. The number of deities assembled as treaty witnesses was often substantial, in some cases approaching one thousand (see Beckman, 1996: 80-1). Oaths were sworn by the gods of both parties, so that each ruler exposed himself to the punishment of both sets of deities should he fail to comply. The practice of uttering religious oaths as part of the ceremony of signing treaty documents is found in early Byzantine diplomacy as well. The Byzantines accepted non-Christian oaths of validation, in a way reminiscent of the Ancient Near East practice of invoking multiple deities as witnesses (Chrysos, 1992: 30). Religious appeals, at a time when gods were considered as real as the material world, had its advantages; “since divine sanction rather than national consent gave ancient international law its obligatory quality, it was in some respects more feared and binding than modern international law” (Cohen and Westbrook, 2000: 230).