31 Use of Diplomacy and Anti-War Propagandas

Rohini Sen

1. Learning Outcomes:

• To give students an overview of different types and forms of diplomacy, especially Anti-War Propoganda and their effect in mitigating wars and conflicts
• By the end of the module, the student will have a fair understanding of different roles that media and institutions play in influencing the decisions of State Actors.

2. Introduction to Diplomacy

In the 21st century, diplomacy is concerned with altering and increasing from a secluded system of inter-state relations to a common instrument of reporting among certain developing societies. In other words, it concentrates on solving issues arising in commonality among nations or its representatives. The topic of diplomacy has various issues with respect to international terrorism, peace-making, economic and social upheaval, war and human rights. Thus, the term diplomacy has various meanings to it, one such being the use of political strategies to achieve a strategic edge and to discover possible solutions that can be used to resolve the issue in a well-mannered and cordial way.

Renounced diplomat as well as a writer and politician Harold Nicolson has defined the term diplomacy as the “management of relations between independent states by a process of negotiation (and the use of tact) rather than force in gaining strategic or tactical advantage.”1 It is necessary to look at the aspect of diplomacy from a common man view. A common man is unaware of the methods adopted by government to come to a conclusion and hence, defines diplomacy as favouring someone by being avoiding criticism and without any intention being polite to the person to reduce the harshness of the reality.

One such example of diplomacy in the real world would be the meeting of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the South African President, PW Botha held in Nassau in 1985. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher without dictating her terms to the leader of another country asked for help in her stand against economic sanctions by urging President PW Botha to announce publicly specific steps which included the release of Nelson Mandela, towards the ending of apartheid. Various such examples could be cited to explain how diplomacy is beneficial towards a nation’s resources as well as time.

Thus, in this aspect certain diplomats are given the task of taking part in development of international treaties so as to avoid confusion which is created by nation’s politicians. Hence, the importance of diplomats has long been observed by the United Nations as well as the States. Rights of Diplomatic Agents have been recognized in the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic relations. One such famous example of United Nations preferring diplomacy is the Soviet war in Afghanistan. The Pakistanis have never been keen towards a united resistance movement but have preferred to deal with the problem at hand with diplomacy, which left the Afghans to fight. To support this movement of Pakistan, United Nations at its sponsored peace talks on Afghanistan continued to exclude the party which posed resistance.

Moreover, In Kenya, following the outbreak of post-electoral violence in 2008, the United Nations quietly provided strong support to the African Union-led mediation efforts that succeeded in stopping the violence and resolving the political-electoral conflict through negotiations. In the next chapter, we will talk about how diplomacy is more beneficial than war and what is the need for diplomacy.

3. Diplomacy is more beneficial than War

Diplomacy is beneficial to a nation in various aspects. It helps the nation’s representatives to take certain action to prevent disputes to result into conflicts or to restrict the spread of conflicts when they take place. Huge amount of importance is placed on diplomacy due to the fact that war places a heavy burden on the societies in the sense that it leads to a large number of lives being lost as well as requiring costly security and humanitarian engagements. As stated by the World Bank, the cost of civil war incurred by a nation can degrade a nation’s economic growth by 30 years. Another aspect of diplomacy is that in the face of crisis, diplomacy is the best option available to preserve peace.

Moreover, the nations have reached such a point that they are open to the take preventive steps to avoid any crisis which can lead to reduction in economic growth. Diplomacy is not just a peaceful option to crisis or violence but rather is an option to prepare or avoid war.

“What are we after? What are they after?” are the central questions revolving around warfare. War is a mean to physically state nation’s wishes by trying to clear away all the resistance arising in the process. Take the example of Ukraine, a false sense has been put forward that diplomacy has been beneficial in Ukraine but for diplomacy to be useful all the military conflicts need to be settled. Evidence has suggested that despite all the reforms which are put in place there is no way to fight corruption. Various international institutions have also pretended that Russia hasn’t started a war which could disrupt international peace and order.

Thus, it is necessary to think why diplomacy is necessary. In the 1900’s diplomats were given the status of “honorary mailmen” which brought about certain apprehension amongst the governments. But, this never restricted the role of diplomacy in the world. However, there arises certain personal factor which a diplomat needs to keep in mind to ensure good governance. Francois De Calliers, a great Frenchman in diplomacy, wrote: “The good diplomat must have an observant mind, a gift of application which rejects being diverted by pleasures or frivolous amusements, a sound judgement which takes the measure of things as they are and which goes straight to the goal by the shortest and most natural paths without wandering into meaningless and endless refinements and subtleties. The diplomat must be quick, resourceful, a good listener, courteous and agreeable. Above all, the good negotiator must possess enough self-control to resist the longing to speak before he has thought out what he actually intends to say. He must have a calm nature, be able to suffer fools gladly, which is not always easy, and should not be given to drinking, gambling or any other fantasies. He should also have some knowledge of literature, science, mathematics, and law.”

Diplomacy should be used as a tool to ensure balance of interest of the communities rather than balance of power. War is about power whereas diplomacy is about influence. The Diplomats should use such influence to search for compromise solutions. The thought process of achieving everything or nothing leads to only war. The need for diplomacy is to look at a global picture rather than concentrating only on the national interest of the respective nation.

Diplomacy is a crucial aspect of today’s world but it is useful only in crisis. History has taught today’s government to initiate war to achieve what they want. However, what they have failed to observe by one of the most dreadful war, that is, the Cold War is that the use of military to solve conflicts should be limited.

Diplomacy aims at promoting its nations culture for long term needs and acts as propaganda for a nation state by improving its image abroad which will be beneficial to the state. It not only promotes peace but also demonstrates democracy. When the politics and diplomacy aren’t influencing a nation it creates situation as one can see in Syria, Ukraine and Iraq today. Therefore, diplomacy is really necessary and it does help keep the world habitable.

4.Arguments in favour of Diplomacy

This section highlights the need for an open diplomacy as it is necessary for the growth of the world. There are many tasks of diplomacy which need to be done to ensure peaceful and efficient change. The first and most important function of diplomacy is representing its states interest and conduct negotiations keeping in mind the best interest of the nation. Finding a common interest is essential to be able to come up with a solution best suited to both the parties.

The second function of diplomacy is to collect information, identify the issues and evaluate the concerned states foreign policy. The third function is to not just develop own nation but also to develop the political, economic and cultural ties between both the countries. Take case of US and Britain after World War II, when both the nations aimed their foreign policy at the extermination of communism due to which today the United States State Department engages international audiences to speak about politics, security, and their values to help create an environment receptive to US national interests.

Diplomacy wouldn’t achieve you what you want when you want it. There have to be certain compromises and acceptance to work together to find innovative ways to attain common interests.

5. Integrating Diplomacy and Social Media

Social Media has replaced various old traditions of late delivery of reports, inaccurate reporting and so on with timely and accurate reporting with pressure on Diplomats to deliver the above. This shows that the development in social media and the huge level of involvement of people can push forward national interests.

Social media is a platform for the citizens to put forward their views. It could vary from creating dissent to communicating live footages all over the world. Certain nations to maintain their secrecy used methods such as blocking their citizen’s access to social media sites to ensure no momentum is created to determine the people to change the government.

Social media has been a key player in promoting the interests of the citizens of nation. In the same manner, the main aim of diplomacy is to upgrade the interest of the nation amongst the international system.A huge chunk of work carried out by Diplomats is to influence their respective audience about some foreign policy issue. The job of a diplomat isn’t restricted to just one state talking to another rather it is to talk informally with their respective audience also and influence them and the best way to carry this out is through blogs.

The task of a Diplomat is to promote and pursue their country’s interest. The blogs written by such Diplomats carry valuable information which may go unreported in the newspapers or televisions. This has been come to be termed as Public diplomacy. Public diplomacy comprises the efforts of the state to influence, inform and engage with foreign publics.

The idea behind public diplomacy was for the Diplomat to engage into direct communication with the other states citizen with the purpose of influencing their thought process and subsequently of their government. As the influence of mass media continues to grow, policy-makers tended to utilize the media for their own benefit, publicizing their policies and positions on certain issues.

Take the case of Al-Jazeera TV, initially American government didn’t want to attend Al-Jazeera’s programs for several years as the program took a very hostile position towards the United States. However, after a while, State Department officials began actively participating in the Al-Jazeera program as they came to the conclusion that any kind of publicity is good publicity. Moreover, they also realized that being on the show would give them a chance to explain their policies and achieve a better image.

It didn’t take long for the countries to realise that to have a smooth implementation of the foreign policies it is necessary to be able to influence the citizens of the nation. Hence, various nations such as United States, China, Russia and European Union started concentrating more towards developing their global media to provide detailed, accurate and comprehensive information to the people all over the world.

“While technology could facilitate more transparent communication between the diplomatic community and private sector, the world’s foreign ministries may not always have the cultural, procedural or institutional disposition—or the abundance of information derived from these tools— to effectively integrate them into policy.”16 In such scenarios, the diplomats can go back to the traditional diplomacy however what is necessary is that an open platform is provided to both the public and diplomat to choose the best recourse available to them.

The word propaganda refers to any method of disclosure in support of national purposes which aim to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, or behaviour of any group in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly.

As defined by Jowett and O’Donnell, propaganda is “the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behaviour to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.”

The purpose of anti-wartime propaganda is to make people adjust to the abnormal condition. To make this process easy on everyone, propagandists have often represented warfare by using conventional visual codes already established in mass culture.

Media Diplomacy concentrates on making the diplomat influence the foreign citizens. Citizen Journalism is on the other hand similar to propaganda where it focuses on the capacity of citizens to generate narrations with a specific truth-claim, while at the same time avoiding the professional link with mainstream media organisations. Citizen journalism is a concept that allows enriching these participatory debates, by emphasising the potential of citizens to participate in the process of media production as non-professional journalists, thus disarticulating the need for professional employment in the media industry from the concept of journalism. However, none of these concepts are without some risks. Many a time’s the mainstreams media have attempted to enter into the field of citizen journalism.

One example of an anti-war propaganda could be when nearly a million people came on to the streets of London with the intention to protest against the war in Iraq. Nearly three years later, people continued to protest silently by lining up on the streets to end the occupations. These weren’t the only protests, multiple protests and actions took place during this period which went on to show an upsurge in peace crusade in Britain and worldwide.

Recently, the word information war has been put forward. Information war refers to constant reporting of events through the presence of thousands of journalists in the war zone. This reporting varies from blogs to tweets. However, till date most important medium for this information war has been television. Not long ago, people used to be dependent on radio and newspapers to receive notification about the war. But, today with the introduction of new technology people are kept up-to date with all the news. Information War through internet does not involve huge number of direct involvement but citizens do experience vast knowledge and extensive reporting about the war. For example, James Meek, Foreign Correspondent of the Year in 2004 for his coverage of the Iraq War, felt that, because reporters with the military did not have access to the accumulation of disparate reports that was available to listeners, readers and viewers in the UK, ‘I missed the war because I hadn’t seen it on TV.’

One of the essentials of Information war is the anti-war and peace movements. The play a major role as they question the need for war. But at the same time, they take essence of the changing media strata and use it to make their presence prominent. Activities ranging from demonstration on streets or utilizing new media activities to achieve their purpose, Information War encompasses various elements. During the times of war, when there is lot of uncertainty and conflict, it is difficult to control the journalists which lead to public interpreting the information in different ways. Nowadays, where governments and military must seek legitimacy for their policies, the anti-war and peace movements play an important role.

7. Summary:

Various types and forms of diplomacy have ensured mitigating the overall irretrievable effects of war, by use of compromise, mutual agreements and a dialogue that allows parties to take reasonable decisions, mutually benefitting each other. It can also be said that conventions and treatises like the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, Use of media diplomacy by corporations and newspaper agencies, citizen journalism, anti-war propagandas have all been instrumental to frame and influence foreign policies, and the decisions of diplomats to enter into certain agreements.

Reference

• Willcox, David R. Propaganda, the Press and Conflict: The Gulf War and Kosovo. London: Routledge, 2005.
• Cahill, Kevin M. Preventive Diplomacy: Stopping Wars before They Start. New York: BasicBooks and the Center for International Health and Cooperation, 1996.
• Scherer, Randy. The Anti-war Movement. San Diego, Calif.: Greenhaven Press, 2004.
• “Preventive Diplomacy Report: Q&A.” United Nations Department of Political Affairs. http://www.un.org/wcm/content/site/undpa/main/issues/preventive_diplomacy/qa_prev entive.
• “Tools of Statecraft: Diplomacy and War.” Foreign Policy Research Institute. Last accessed March 16, 2015. http://www.fpri.org/articles/2008/01/tools-statecraft-diplomacy-and-war
• “How Has Social Media Affected Diplomatic Reporting? | DiploFoundation.” How Has Social Media Affected Diplomatic Reporting? | DiploFoundation.. http://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/how-has-social-media-affected-diplomatic-reporting.
• “What Is Propaganda, and How Does It Differ From Persuasion?” Accessed March 16, 2015. http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/11847_Chapter1.pdf