The Contemporary Embassy

Paths to Diplomatic Excellence

Kenneth A. Loparo, Kishan S. Rana

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137340825
• eBook ISBN: 9781137340832
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This innovative study considers why embassies today are especially relevant to the international system, examining the new representation options and global diplomacy techniques in an information age. Rana uniquely presents perspectives from developing states and analyses how embassies can improve their modes of function.

1

The Context

Volatility is the New Normal

Abstract: Despite their superficial, though partly correct, image of glamor, most embassies are in less-than-salubrious locations. The purposes of diplomacy are set out in the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and over the years have evolved beyond the guidelines of this Convention. Today, the key roles of embassies are those of promoter, negotiator, communicator, manager, synthesizer, and service provider, across the entire gamut of external affairs. In essence, diplomatic work today is more intensive and proactive than before. This is reflected in the work of bilateral embassies and multilateral missions. The practice of making political appointments of ambassadorships, so widely prevalent in the United States and some other places, undermines the development of professionalism, especially when the appointees do not bring with them public service competence. Although the United States’ situation is unique and can be rationalized in its context, in Africa and Latin America such political appointments reduce the efficacy of embassies.

Rana, Kishan S. The Contemporary Embassy: Paths to Diplomatic Excellence. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. DOI: 10.1057/9781137340832.

Embassies are the foot soldiers of the diplomatic system, scattered across the globe in places that may be salubrious or inhospitable. Alas, there are too few comfortable capitals: insecurity, problems over children’s education, and local employment difficulties for spouses are all too frequent. Officials assigned to embassies are agents of their home country’s foreign ministry or represent other official entities; they work to advance a broad range of home-country interests. They confront cross-cultural communication challenges as a part of their daily routine, even those in neighboring states. Embassies represent their national government system, and even its ethos, operating in alien environments, which can be quite different from one location to another, but are almost always different from what obtains at home. They are the crossover point of international discourse, where ‘home’ and ‘foreign’ encounter each other.

In the popular imagination, embassies are glamorous places to be, and those who work in them are objects of envy and speculation for their supposedly glittering lifestyles: luxury residences, chauffeured limousines, and hobnobbing with the glitterati are the norm. In stark contrast, the lives that embassy employees – many of them career officials of foreign ministries – actually lead involve hardship, loneliness, suppressed tension, and even danger, which take their toll on them and their families. Such images came to mind during a conversation with an Indian colleague when he described his life in Myanmar in the early 1980s: there were no bookshops, no cinema or TV, and Myanmar’s ruling military regime of that time did not encourage contact with locals. Yet, life was enjoyable in its own way, and the small diplomatic community found its amusements and diversions. The same colleague went on to describe his experience a decade later in establishing an embassy in Ukraine, where he and his wife lived in a hotel suite for two years, but derived satisfaction from locating and then renovating a fine building in a prime location which became the embassy residence. They had inspired a local architect to renovate the public rooms with an Indian outlook, although they were able to use the residence only for their farewell reception!¹

I sketch here a multidimensional picture of a generic contemporary embassy, warts and all, examining its working, and the ingredients of its success. I use the term ‘embassy’ in a broad sense: it includes, of course, high commissions, those quaint symbols of the 54-member political group, the Commonwealth of Nations, comprising countries of the former British Empire that retain their old connections with the United Kingdom. Other than some stylistic distinctions, high commissions are full equivalents of embassies.² Much of what is written about embassies also applies to consulates, which increasingly operate as sub-embassies, located in cities other than the capital of the assignment country.³ Besides purely consular tasks, the work they do parallels that of embassies, with the exception that consulates do not engage with mainstream political contacts in the host country capital. However, consulates increasingly carry out political outreach to the regional, provincial and city governments, in their jurisdiction area. Consulates concentrate on economic, cultural and public diplomacy, and by virtue of their location outside the capital, are especially well equipped for diaspora contacts. As I note in Chapter 5 consulates have now gained in utility, in pace with the rise of sub-state diplomacy.

Purpose of diplomacy

‘As domestic ministries contribute more to foreign policy, which itself becomes more domestic, many argue that the foreign ministry has lost its role. They have lost their monopoly over foreign policy making. Their aspiration to coordinate the foreign policy role of other ministries will be disappointed’ (Hocking et al., 2013, p. 1). These doomsayers about the future of the foreign ministry do not, in contrast, anticipate any loss of relevance for the embassy. I am skeptical of such sweeping assertions; even if some of the policymaking role of foreign ministries has been transferred to the offices of heads of governments, the exponential growth in the density of international dealings – bilateral, regional and global – and the challenges of managing the network of embassies will ensure the continuity of the MFA. We will come back to this topic in Chapter 6.

Article 3 of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (VCDR) states:

1 The functions of a diplomatic mission consist in, inter alia:

a) representing the sending State in the receiving State;

b) protecting in the receiving State the interests of the sending State and of its nationals, within the limits permitted by international law;

c) negotiating with the Government of the receiving state;

d) ascertaining by all lawful means conditions and developments in the receiving State, and reporting thereon to the Government of the sending State;

e) promoting friendly relations between the sending State and the receiving State, and developing their economic, cultural and scientific relations.

2 Nothing in the present Convention shall be construed as preventing the performance of consular functions by a diplomatic mission.

The keywords are representing, protecting, negotiating, ascertaining (... conditions), and promoting. Has the purpose of diplomacy changed since 1961 consequent to globalization, enhanced interdependence among countries, and transformations in international relations since the end of Cold War? On the face of it, this seems an unnecessary question, given that the sovereign state remains the principal actor in world affairs, even as it jostles with many other actors, such as international and regional organizations at one end, and a wide group of non-official actors, benign or malevolent, at the other. The question is more pertinent in Europe, where a quasi-sovereign European Union (EU) has created a new space for collective activity that is neither domestic nor foreign in the old Westphalian sense. Within the EU, this new in-between hybrid poses many unresolved challenges, though it is not my purpose to address this issue here. Seen from outside, the EU simply adds one more layer at which member countries negotiate and resolve issues; this does not, however, change the purpose of diplomacy, which remains the advancement of the state’s external relationships.

Box 1.1 One definition: representation and communication

Representation begins with the notion of the diplomatic actor itself, but asks how the actor represents itself to others with whom it wishes to establish and maintain a relationship or dialogue ... communication is distinct though inseparable from representation. Communication by its nature must take place not between collective or aggregate entities such as nation-states, multinational organizations or global firms, but between individuals charged with representing or speaking for them.

Geoffrey Allen Pigman, Contemporary Diplomacy: Representation and Communication in a Globalized World (Polity, Cambridge, 2010).

Geoffrey Pigman has neatly condensed the classic tasks of diplomacy, distilling them down to representation and communication (Pigman, 2010). The problem with this is that it does not capture the proactive character of contemporary diplomacy. From a practitioner’s perspective, it is better to disaggregate these two tasks into several distinct elements, because the expanded categories better reflect the practice of modern diplomacy. We can define these disaggregated elements as promotion, negotiation, communication, management, synthesis and servicing (in which ‘representation’ and ‘protection’ are implicit).⁴ Based on these, we can list the following roles for today’s embassy:

Promoter

Negotiator

Communicator

Manager

Synthesizer

Service provider

Promotion and outreach go together as the foundation for relationship building. When diplomats move out of their towers and comfort zones, they function as active builders of multilayered ties, that is as ‘public entrepreneurs’, in a process that is largely open, both in the obvious sense that its is accessible to others, and also because it benefits from the inputs of state and non-state actors. This entails diplomats working as catalysts, even risk-takers, attempting to weave new connections between home and foreign actors, and to service or improve existing ones; they have to be largely self-driven, while also seeking advice from specialists in all the domains that are amenable to relationship building. One direct consequence is that even though embassies are located abroad, promotion and outreach take place both in the country of assignment and in the home country. One of the hallmarks of contemporary diplomacy is the growing the importance of ‘domestic diplomacy’ (a topic we examine in greater detail in Chapter 3).

Negotiation is our old friend from VCDR, but in new attire. Some will argue that most formal agreements concern technical subjects in which embassies and foreign ministries have a limited role, say, phytosanitary regulations covering agricultural exports, or seat capacity on aviation routes. But even here, embassies help in the pre-negotiation process by framing the issues, sounding out different stakeholders in the target country, and acting as local catalysts and facilitators; they may also play a role in the post-negotiation phase, assisting with smooth implementation.

Negotiation, in a broad sense, is at the core of diplomacy. But in terms of the actual work of embassies, the task is less and less about working to produce precise agreements in ratifiable form (in the words of Harold Nicolson), and much more about advocacy, persuasion, and coalition building. Since this kind of nego...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  The Context
• 2  The New and the Old
• 3  The Domestic Arena
• 4  Operation: Managing amidst Complexity
• 5  Representation Formats
• 6  The Future
• Selected Readings
• Index