Secret Diplomacy

Corneliu Bjola, Stuart Murray, Corneliu Bjola, Stuart Murray

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317330912
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Diplomazia e trattati

This volume investigates secret diplomacy with the aim of understanding its role in shaping foreign policy.

Recent events, including covert intelligence gathering operations, accusations of spying, and the leaking of sensitive government documents, have demonstrated that secrecy endures as a crucial, yet overlooked, aspect of international diplomacy. The book brings together different research programmes and views on secret diplomacy and integrates them into a coherent analytical framework, thereby filling an important gap in the literature. The aim is to stimulate, generate and direct the further development of theoretical understandings of secret diplomacy by highlighting 'gaps' in existing bodies of knowledge. To this end, the volume is structured around three distinct themes: concepts, contexts and cases. The first section elaborates on the different meanings and manifestations of the concept; the second part examines basic contexts that underpin the practice of secret diplomacy; while the third section presents a series of empirical cases of particular relevance for contemporary diplomatic practice. While the fundamental conditions diplomacy seeks to overcome – alienation, estrangement and separation – are imbued with distrust and secrecy, this volume highlights that, if anything, secret diplomacy is a vital, if misunderstood and unfairly criticised, aspect of diplomacy.

This book will be of much interest to students of diplomacy, intelligence studies, foreign policy and IR in general.

Part I

Conceptualising secret diplomacy

1 Secret “versus” open diplomacy across the ages

Stuart Murray

Introduction

Secrecy, the practice of concealing information from certain individuals or groups, is characteristic of many institutions. Businesses keep secrets for competitive advantage, to hide new products under development or to protect cash cows. The recipe for Coca-Cola is a closely guarded secret, as is the key algorithm for Google. Secret societies, from the Freemasons to Yale’s Order of the Skull and Bones, abound and intrigue, and secrets can matter in sport, the defensive plays for a Super Bowl or the opening moves for a chess match, for example.

Governments are no different. They conceal information – weapon designs, military operations and diplomatic negotiation tactics, to name but a few – from other governments, the media and the public. Most nations have official secrets acts, secret services and complex rules about access to sensitive information that pertains to national security. In the anarchic international space, secrecy is a competitive, entrenched aspect of the dialogue between states, a murky, clandestine and contentious business often shrouded in mystery. Although accepted as a mainstay of international relations, secrecy is often decried by the media or civil libertarians as excessive, mainly because it conflicts with privacy, openness and transparency.

These issues manifest in a state’s diplomacy. Keeping secrets, illicitly gathering them and/or strategically sharing them with allies and publics, both at home and abroad, are present in all historical periods of diplomacy. Secret diplomacy has long been an important if, at times, derided component in the relations between estranged states, nations and peoples. So much so that a recurring, moral debate crystallises: should diplomacy should be secret or open?

In the postmodern information age this debate is gathering strength. Prominent organisations and individuals such as WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, journalists and some academics claim that “the end of secrecy is nigh” (Jarvis 2013: paragraph 1). Traditional advocates of secret diplomacy, however, strongly disagree, arguing that secret diplomacy is vital to a nation’s security and survival, even more so in the postmodern, information age.

In this polemic context, this chapter has two broad purposes. First, it charts and frames secret diplomacy in relation to states, survivability and diplomacy across European history. From this survey a working definition of the term is introduced, as well as the key elements of secret diplomacy. Using recent examples of public disclosures of diplomatic secrets, the chapter then turns to the present debate: in an age of increasing transparency is secret diplomacy at an end or does it still have a vital role to play in state-qua-state relations? The analysis suggests that the current secrecy versus transparency debate is typical in the theory and practice of diplomacy, a familiar contretemps between the old and new; the reticent state being challenged, derided and criticised by outsiders. The chapter argues that secret diplomacy will endure, simply because of the mutually reinforcing interplay between estranged states, diplomacy and the secrecy dilemma. So long as there are states, in other words, secrecy will persist.

The chapter has four parameters. Considering its ambitious focus on history (from the Greeks to the postmodern information age), as well as its short length, the chapter adopts a grand or meta-theoretical approach. It seeks broad themes and trends in secret diplomacy from the past to the present. Second, the state and realism are the key referent objects for inquiry, not civil society organisations (CSOs) and liberalism. Third, this chapter concentrates on secret diplomacy from a European perspective; it does not consider Asian or Arab opinions, theories and cases, for example.¹ And, fourth, fascinating and scary as it is, the chapter does not indulge in the domestic government business of secrecy, surveillance and intelligence gathering.

Secret versus open diplomacy across the ages

To understand secret diplomacy it is important to contextualise it in a historical, statist lens. As any international relations graduate knows, states have many ideal functions such as order, justice, welfare, freedom and so on. For realists, however, none are more important than survival and security. Without security the state cannot survive, and if it cannot survive all subsequent functions are redundant. Stalin captured this notion, arguing that “we can and must build socialism in the Soviet Union … but in order to do so we first of all have to exist” (as cited in Mearsheimer 2001: 30). Survival therefore is the primary goal of any state. They must “never subordinate survival to any other goal, including prosperity” (Mearsheimer 2001: 371). In the competitive, anarchical realm of international relations, survival and security are considered primal and supreme. Thucydides wrote of anake (necessity or compulsion), Machiavelli of necissita and Richelieu of raison d’état, where any means conducive to survival are permissible, moral or amoral. The list of means conducive to state survival – alliances, war, economic partnerships, etc. – is exhaustive; however this chapter concentrates on diplomacy.

Similarly, there are many means to diplomacy. For example, Butterfield and Wight (1966: 17) note that diplomats

have often worked by means of promises, appeals to interest, attempts at striking a bargain, devices of cajolery. They have resorted sometimes to taunts and to bullying, sometimes to quiet blackmail or impudent bluff. Even the threat of war may be one of the counters which the diplomat uses, and this itself might be merely a piece of bluff or might call for some delicate interpretation…. Diplomacy may include anything short of actual war, therefore, and sometimes the kindest thing that one can say of it is that it is better than having the guns actually firing.

Generally, diplomacy is a means to foreign policy ends, state security and survival, and can easily be defined in a traditional fashion as “the application of intelligence or tact to the conduct of relations between the governments of independent states; or more briefly still, the conduct of business between states by peaceful means” (Satow 1957: 1). Diplomacy also has several key functions – negotiation, representation, communication, for instance – however its chief purpose is the gathering and dissemination of information, without which none of the other functions would be possible. Information – getting it, sharing it and harnessing it for strategic purposes – is the base currency of diplomacy.

There are many venues and forums for diplomacy. It can occur in a bilateral, multilateral, official or unofficial setting, and can be conducted publically or, more so, privately and in secret. Secret diplomacy, therefore, is a means to a means to an end. At its most basic, secret diplomacy is the practice of obtaining information from certain individuals and groups, hiding it from all or some, and/or sharing it with others. Information is obtained overtly and covertly (intelligence) and, depending on the circumstance, can be manipulated, spun or propagandised to suit national interests or foreign policy goals.

To fully understand the term, however, is to delve into the long and storied history of secret diplomacy, which has always been a controversial, mysterious activity. It fluctuates between the private and the public, across all periods of history. For example, the Greek city states were so derisive of secrecy, so “suspicious of their own diplomatists”, that they insisted negotiations be conducted “orally and with full publicity, at least in theory” (Nicolson 1998 [1954]: 7). Under the Greek system, emissaries delivered speeches to foreign monarchs and conducted negotiations in public,

much as happens in the ill-ordered international conferences of today. If the negotiations resulted in a treaty, the terms of that treaty were engraved in a pure attic on a tablet for all to see. Its ratification was accomplished by the public exchange of solemn oaths. Thus it could certainly be said that the Greeks adopted the system of open covenant openly arrived … [which] did preserve them from the curse of secret treaties.

(Nicolson 1998 [1954]: 7–22)

Public debate and open diplomacy, however, were eventually written off as ineffective. For one, diplomats appealed more to the crowd than to the issue, receiving state or interlocutor. Envoys were also issued with “extremely restrictive instructions”, meaning there was little room for negotiation, and because of the public setting diplomats rarely backed down, reneged on positions or revealed secrets (Hamilton and Langhorne 2011: 15). The practice seems more akin to bad theatre, for the “pace was extremely slow”, held up by long winded, ambiguous speeches that often lasted for hours, perhaps the reason that Greek diplomacy came to be known as the “art of talking without saying anything” (Hamilton and Langhorne 2011: 15).

Following the Greeks, Rome’s contribution to diplomacy was rather scant. Their doctrine of imperialism backed up by an effective military and a belief that it was their destiny to “impose on other nations the Pax Romana” and “obliterate all opposition and to offer succor only to those who bowed to their dominance” doesn’t suggest much of a predisposition toward diplomacy, open or closed (Nicolson 1998 [1954]: 17). However, the Romans “lack of frequent military intervention in the years after 188”, as well as a number of “unsubdued tribes and a wide varieties of client kingdoms” along the Empire’s porous borders, suggests a thriving system of diplomacy (Eckstein 2009: 187). Moreover, during the decline of Rome, bribery, intelligence and negotiation kept the empire afloat.

Moving on, Rome’s successor, Eastern Byzantium, was too weak to survive except by secret diplomacy. Threatened by invasion from virtually all quarters its only hope lay in strategically playing off its enemy nations against one another via a broad range of methods: bribery, flattery, deceit, fraud, intelligence gathering, disinformation, suspicion and elaborate ceremonial proceedings to greet, amaze and confuse foreign emissaries. They practised a diplomacy of hospitality, wonderment and duplicity, all of which created an impression of an “Empire at the center of the universe” (Hamilton and Langhorne 2011: 20). Without gathering and manipulating information on allies and enemies it is doubtful the Byzantine Empire would have endured for so long, from 330 to 1453.

After Constantinople fell and diplomacy “returned” to Europe, it thus came “neither illumed by Athenian Intelligence, nor dignified by Roman seriousness, but falsified and discredited by the practices of the Oriental Court” (Nicolson 1998 [1954]: 24). During the Renaissance, secrecy, ceremony, suspicion and duplicity became established diplomatic techniques. It was Louis XI (1423–1483) who decided that the pursuit of raison d’état was above morality, and infamously instructed his ambassador to Brittany “if they lie to you, see to it that you lie much more than them” (as cited in Nicolson 1998 [1954]: 31). Quite naturally, there existed a high suspicion of foreign emissaries as spies during this time. A 1481 Venetian regulation, for example, “forbade Venetian Ambassadors to discuss politics with any unofficial foreigner” (in the following year, a sentence of banishment and fines of up to 2,000 ducats were decreed) (Nicolson 1998 [1954]: 30). And, in 1492, the year Columbus “discovered” the Americas and a Borgia became pope, the relations between the Italian states became extremely competitive, often dangerously so. In the words of Mattingly (1955: 48), diplomacy at the time was

always beset by enemies. There were implacable exiles, the leaders of the faction out of power, prowling just beyond reach. There were rival cities, eager to make a profit out of a neighbor’s difficulties. And there were usually secret enemies conspiring within the gates.

Alongside frequent war amongst the Italian city states, diplomacy was labelled as “amoral, ruthless”, and heavily imbued with intrigue and secrecy, “a characteristic symptom of the new power relations of the nascent modern world” (Mattingly 1955: 48). Little wonder then that, in 1611, Sir Henry Wotton, an English diplomat serving under King James, egregiously described his vocation as nothing more than “an honest man sent to lie abroad for his country” (as cited in Low 1918: 217). During the Renaissance, diplomacy was “vicious, immoral and dangerous”, the divine attribute of kings, emperors and popes, who “made war, contracted alliances, bartered territory, sacrificed liberty for a whim or superstitious fear … with much mystery and always great secrecy” (Low 1918: 209). Needless to say, the general public was not privy to the private machinations of those in power. The end of Renaissance diplomacy came about during the Thirty Years War, a brutal and chaotic conflict where alliances shifted almost daily. Whether on the battlefield or in the cloistered palaces of the Habsburgs, French or Bohemians, secret diplomacy prevailed, much as it did during the negotiations at Munster and Osnabruck in the district of Westphalia, all of which were conducted behind closed doors.

The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia institutionalised many revolutionary concepts: secularism, sovereignty, religious particularism, international law, raison d’état, and a system of permanent and continuous diplomacy, for example. From the outset, however, this “new” diplomacy was very much like its “old” predecessor. Driven by security, distrust, power, territory and resources, the Westphalian system became immediately strategic and chess-like, a shrewd, tactful and at times deceptive game embodied by men like Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV. “Richelieu was always making and breaking secret agreements” (Low 1918: 213) and believed that the interests of the state were above “sentimental, ideological or doctrinal prejudices and affections” (Nicolson 1998 [1954]). Louis XIV had the “occasional outburst of separate and secret activity” but was generally against open or conference diplomacy as it was slow, tedious, expensive, cumbersome and rarely effective (Hamilton and Langhorne 2011: 78). The Sun King preferred confidential discussions between experts, where it was “far easier to make concession in private discussion than when many observers are present around the table” (Nicolson 1998 [1954]: 61).

After Westphalia, while the theory of diplomacy became quite idealistic its practice clung to secrecy. Many seventeenth-century writers were keen to enhance the poor image of diplomacy, which remained associated with “spying and excesses of theatre and show” (Holsti 2004: 183). Keens-Soper (1973: 497) notes that between 1625 and 1700 153 titles on diplomacy were published in Europe; of these, 114 were new contributions to the canon while the remainders were translations. Most of these works proposed a number of virtues a diplomat should personify, a literary fascination with a diplomat’s “moral physiognomy” (Keens-Soper 1973: 497). This new body of literature was aspirational and introduced an image of the diplomat as reliable, trustworthy and moral, which, again, “belied the actual state of diplomatic conduct” (Holsti 2004: 183). At least on paper, duplicity, secrecy and deceit were seen to be poor partners for good diplomacy. For one, De Callières (as cited in Keens-Soper 1973: 497), claimed that

it is a fundamental error and one widely held, that a clever negotiator must be a master of deceit. Honesty is here and everywhere the best policy; a lie always leaves behind it a drop of poison, it awakes in the defeated party a sense of irritation and a desire for vengeance.

This period of idealistic scholarship is enlightening. A pattern emerges where, for the most part, the practice of diplomacy continues to be secret, duplicitous and downright Machiavellian while outsiders, in this case theorists, ardently criticise such activities as the antithesis of sound diplomacy.

In the following centuries this pattern of reality versus idealism ensues. Practically, secret treaties, agreements and negotiation became more deeply embedded in the international relations system. The family compact between the Bourbons, France and Spain in 1733, one of the causes of the French and English war in America, was a classic example of secret diplomacy, as was, later, the Sykes–Picot agreement,² the London Pact³ and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a hush-hush, non-aggression treaty between Russia and Germany signed in 1939. Secrecy, whether in a negotiation treaty or a treaty or an international conference, was considered “not only proper, but, in many cases, absolutely essential … so necessary that if negotiations were not kept secret few treaties could be concluded” (Low 1918: 212–14). By and large, secrecy endured as a practical necessity for statist diplomacy and confirmed that international affairs remained the preserve of the elite. The masses “knew nothing of diplomacy;” it was the “royal prerogative … one of the divine attributes of kings … beyond the comprehension of the common mortal” (Low 1918: 209).

In fact, it wasn’t until another “Great” war that the debate between secrecy and transparency inched closer to the public conscience. Much of the blame for the outbreak of the First World War fell on state-qua-state diplomacy, especially the defence treaties between kings and emperors. The clandestine agreements between Germany in Austria in 1914, or Britain and France, or how far Germany was prepared to go in support of Austria in reducing Serbia to terms, were shrouded in mystery even for decades after. For James Connolly (1915: paragraph 10), a leading Marxist and socialist at the time, such diplomacy was “hypocrisy incarnate”, full of “false prophets” where

the diplomat holds all acts honourable which bring him success, all things are righteous which serve his ends. If cheating is necessary, he will cheat; if lying is useful, he will lie; if bribery helps, he will bribe; if murder serves, he will order murder; if burglary, seduction, arson or forgery brings success nearer, all and each of these will be done.

Similarly, the journalist Maurice A. Low (1918: 210) blamed the war on “evils of secret diplomacy, that is the power of sovereigns to enter into agreements without the knowledge or acquiescence of their subjects”, for the “wretched farce”, the “endless intrigue and cabal” that involved “millions of lives and millions of treasure”. Who was responsible? The emperors and their secret treaties, the “necromancers who practised the black art of secret diplomacy”, the “ridiculous institution” of diplomacy, the “absurdity of the frippery of modern diplomacy” (Low 1918: 210–17). Leon Trotsky also opined. In October 1917, the then people’s commissar for foreign affairs in the new workers’ government revealed to the public secret treaties and diplomatic documents that laid bare the predatory war aims of Britain, France and tsarist Russia. “Secret diplomacy”, Trotsky (1917: paragraph 1) wrote, “is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests”. However, it is perhaps US president Woodrow Wilson who, with echoes of the Greeks, is best remembered for disparaging secret diplomacy, calling for diplomacy to be conducted in full public view with “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at”. To his credit, Wilson did not resort to making secret promises and agreements at Versailles but soon realised the practical difficulties of conducting public negotiations with cynical, war weary European leaders.

What is notable in this debate bet...