Diplomacy in a Changing World

Shivshankar Menon

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This blog is adapted from a piece written for St Stephen’s College in December 2023

I. A Death Often Foretold

“My God! This is the end of diplomacy,” said Lord Palmerston, the British prime minister, when he received the first diplomatic telegram in 1860. He was not the first to express this sentiment, nor would he be the last.

With each advance in technology, and each generation’s conviction that they are better than those that came before and face an entirely new level of challenges, diplomacy’s death has been proclaimed or foretold.

With each advance in technology, and each generation’s conviction that they are better than those that came before and face an entirely new level of challenges, diplomacy’s death has been proclaimed or foretold. When Woodrow Wilson spoke of “open covenants openly arrived at” in 1918, democracy was said to now make diplomacy, that autocratic monarchical invention, an unnecessary anachronism. When information and communications technology made conversations across continents possible and facile from the eighties onwards, diplomats were said to be about to lose their relevance. When summit meetings between leaders, with their attractive possibilities of photo ops and image building (for leaders), became increasingly common in the nineties, we were told that diplomats would lose all agency.

And yet here we are, with more diplomats and diplomacy in a globalised world knit together by the same technologies that were supposed to kill off diplomacy.

II. Why is Diplomacy Still Alive?

Why are reports of diplomacy’s death premature? Why is diplomacy still alive and flourishing? Why do we complain about not having enough diplomats?

The primary reason must be that decisions are still made by people and that human beings do so through a process of conversation, negotiation, and discussion with other humans. The technology to replace that human element in decision making has yet to be deployed for the higher functions of the state involving issues of life and death, peace, and war. Politics is by, with, and for human beings, and the advent of democracy made it more so.

Politics is by, with, and for human beings, and the advent of democracy made it more so. To arrive at peaceful solutions to issues, and to build the institutions, laws, and norms to sustain them, diplomacy is the best way known to man.

To arrive at peaceful solutions to issues, and to build the institutions, laws, and norms to sustain them, diplomacy is the best way known to man.

Arriving at mutually acceptable solutions involves give and take, or bargaining, something that is best done in private. At its core, diplomacy is a private and personal art, for it involves getting others to do what one wants while giving them as little as necessary to make it worth their while to do so. If this sounds manipulative, it is no more or less so than most other political processes. In diplomacy too, it is the process of making the sausage that is messy, not the result, which is desirable and serves both sides’ interests in order to be durable.

III. Today’s World

We are today in a world between orders, not just in the geopolitical balance-of-power sense, but also in terms of technology. This is how it has been for most of history. The certitudes of the bipolar Cold War were really a historical anomaly. And this state of flux has increased the need for diplomacy. But sadly, the same political factors which make more diplomacy necessary also make it more unlikely. Great power rivalry and the rise of new authoritarian leaders basing their legitimacy on hyper-nationalism have made hotspots live and rekindled old disputes throughout maritime Asia. We now have leaders in the great powers who are less capable of the flexibility, and give and take that diplomacy requires, lest it affect their outsized image as strong, decisive, nationalist leaders. That is the paradox of our times for diplomats.

We now have leaders in the great powers who are less capable of the flexibility, and give and take that diplomacy requires, lest it affect their outsized image as strong, decisive, nationalist leaders. That is the paradox of our times for diplomats.

If anything, today’s world has made diplomacy more, and not less relevant. There are ever more topics, sectors, and scope for diplomacy, and the number and type of actors involved in diplomacy have expanded phenomenally in the globalised world that we have built in the last half century. We have created global transnational issues that require global transnational solutions like climate change, and new domains of contention like cyber space. We have expanded our definition of security to include many aspects of human activity and now speak of human security. As a result, diplomacy now includes not just the representatives of heads of state and government but of multilateral organisations, NGOs, and others in a host of fields requiring specialised knowledge and skills alongside that of negotiation and deal making. In other words, there is much more for diplomats to do now.

IV. Artificial Intelligence

What about technological change? Will the advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and the prospect of artificial general intelligence (AGI)[1] finally make Palmerston’s prophecy about the end of diplomacy come true?

Several foreign offices already use AI tools to support public diplomacy, to simulate negotiations, to game multilateral scenarios, and for management support (in postings etc.). Certain mechanical tasks like preparing briefs and drafting standard notes might be entrusted to AI tools. This is a rapidly evolving field. But so far, this is only one more step in the adoption of modern technologies to make existing tasks easier, as happened with telegraph, word processors, mobile telephony, and other past technical advances. It has not yet led to qualitative change in the fundamental functions of diplomacy. What AI has changed until now is how, and not what diplomats do. And that is unlikely to change until human nature does.

What AI has changed until now is how, and not what diplomats do. And that is unlikely to change until human nature does.

Even this change brings with it both risks and rewards and has its limits.

The risks include what we see around us in the proliferation of fake news and amplification of emotion and opinion in our public life. The new technologies, particularly ICT, bring risks to reputation. The verisimilitude of the ability to mimic the tone, language, and voice of leaders makes it much easier to mislead an adversary with less (rather than more) information than oneself. (Intelligence services survive on this conviction.) Sophisticated disinformation campaigns can sway elections in democracies and could affect decisions on questions of war and peace.

Each advance in communications and AI technology also brings a certain diminution in the diplomat’s agency. When communications relied on horses and ships individual diplomats wielded considerable power. As communications have gotten faster, power has shifted home, to headquarters, and the latitude that diplomats enjoy has shrunk. Diplomats now are more directly and constantly directed and supervised by their home offices. ChatGPT, for instance, could create content, and might replace the specialised knowledge that diplomats bring to decision making and the negotiating table, their strongest suit.

These two risks—to reputation and of diminished agency—are not new, but their speed and scale are. AI has already changed how we diplomats do our job. However, in the simulations that I have seen, and the use that my students make of ChatGPT so far, suggest that AI today still makes mistakes and relies on human expertise to be effective as a diplomatic tool. In a blind test, Foreign Policy magazine asked an undergraduate student and ChatGPT in June 2023 to write essays on Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and it was quite apparent which essay was written by the human being.[2] I use the product of ChatGPT in my courses by asking students to correct the errors in what the programme produces on a given topic.

At the same time, the complexity of the issues we deal with makes local knowledge and contacts more, not less important and redresses the balance somewhat in favour of diplomatic agency. The broader point is that the proliferation of backchannels, free lancers, NSAs, and intelligence officials who trespass regularly on diplomatic turf only proves how much diplomacy is needed today. If anything, the demand for diplomacy rises with crisis and uncertainty, as we face today.

Will AGI bring about qualitative change in diplomatic practice?

The immediate question must be can AI bargain? In any negotiation, intent, not capability is the core issue, and human intent, as any analyst or scholar will tell you, is the hardest thing to fathom or decipher. I suppose AGI could certainly bargain with itself or another AI. But can it do so with a human being? The day we trust a machine to do so and take the human out of the decision-making loop will be the day when AI will diplomacy forever. But that day is yet to come. Credibility is the diplomat’s ultimate calling card, what gets him in the door and makes his words count. And credibility is subjective. The choice of whether to grant it to AI or its successors is still ours. In the meantime, we have a powerful and useful new tool in AI to add to the armoury that human diplomats use to create desirable outcomes. Enjoy it.

The choice of whether to grant it to AI or its successors is still ours. In the meantime, we have a powerful and useful new tool in AI to add to the armoury that human diplomats use to create desirable outcomes.

V. Conclusion

Diplomats can still look forward to great lifetime employment, with both the joys and tribulations, intellectual and physical, that political processes involving other humans involve. For anyone who likes people, change, variety, travel, and intellectual challenge, diplomacy remains a profession with few rivals.