In different parts of the world, diplomacy and dialogue appear to be in full-blown retreat.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani announced last week that he was cancelling an official trip to the US after a row over whether his Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, had “begged” American President Donald Trump for a photo at the G7 meeting. Ms Meloni said Mr Trump’s claim was “completely fabricated”.
The same week, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said he would suspend contact with the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, after reports that she had compared his country’s treatment of Palestinians to the former apartheid system in South Africa. In a further almost simultaneous development, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim accused Norway’s government of treating his country “like a banana republic” after it cancelled the export licence for a naval missile system for which Malaysia had already paid 95 per cent of the contract value.
Many have described the US Department of State as having been hollowed out under the current administration. Reuters reported last month that “at least half of America’s 195 ambassadorial posts worldwide are now vacant”. In the broader background, Confucius Institutes, which promote Chinese language and culture, have been shuttered at universities in America, Australia and Europe, while scores of pro-democracy NGOs that were funded by the US abroad have had to close after sweeping cuts were made during Elon Musk’s tenure at the Department of Government Efficiency.
Accusations of propaganda and undue influence were made in both cases; nevertheless, opportunities for different peoples to learn more about each other have been reduced.
And all this comes at a time when the need for diplomacy and dialogue could not be more obvious. Both are vital for talks between the US and Iran to have any chance of being successful.
This is not just about hammering out details. It is, to an extent, gaining the ability – which comes from dialogue – to put yourself in the other’s shoes, even if you disagree strongly with their position. As former UN under-secretary general Martin Griffiths put it: “If you don’t prioritise an understanding of your friends, enemies or people you don’t yet even know – if you don’t try to empathise – then frankly you have failed to give it your best shot.”
So to take the current negotiations: whatever your views of the Islamic Republic of Iran, no one can understand its focus on the nuclear programme without being aware of the programme’s history as a matter of patriotic identity (quite apart from the irony of the US having helped set it up in 1957). Similarly, no one can appreciate the degree of restraint China has shown towards European countries and the US since its rise to great power status, if they don’t know about the “century of humiliation”, when “unequal treaties” and humiliating extra-territoriality were forced on Beijing by Britain, France, the US, Japan and others.
Reducing other countries to crude caricatures, however, and then carelessly cutting down opportunities for dialogue, does not encourage the acquisition of such knowledge.
In this age of information overload, we hear constant demands for transparency. Yet diplomacy cannot be conducted under a spotlight, and its gains must sometimes remain unheralded. The Cuban Missile crisis, for example, was solved partially by US withdrawal of nuclear missiles from Turkey, but this was kept secret.
It is highly likely that both Iran and the US have to make compromises that will never be publicly spoken of; if that leads to a durable peace, it will be worth it, and further prove diplomacy’s merit. I like the approach of Mr Anwar of Malaysia, where I live. He calls China’s leaders his “friends”, but he concedes that they sometimes disagree. They do so, however, in private. The diplomatic approach is far more harmonious. Moreover, saving face can often save lives.
We need the space for such channels, and for the norms around diplomacy to be respected and protected – which is why the Israeli attacks on Hamas negotiators in Doha, and the starting of the current war by Israel and the US in the middle of talks with Iran, were both so damaging. The inviolability of emissaries and diplomats is a tradition that goes back thousands of years.
This principle has been broken on occasion. In the 15th century, legend has it that Vlad the Impaler of Wallachia was so offended by Ottoman emissaries refusing to take off their turbans in his presence that he had them nailed to their heads. But such incidents are shocking because they offend what is deemed to be such a sacrosanct norm.
Similarly, we need the space for dialogue. Those who criticise Russia’s Valdai Discussion Club, for instance, as being a tool to “whitewash” behaviour they don’t like, are missing the value that comes from interaction. Over four years as a senior fellow at Malaysia’s national think tank from 2015-19, I was fortunate to attend numerous discussions with think tanks and diplomats (current and retired) from China, Japan, North Korea, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and numerous others, as well as, yes, a delegation from the Valdai club.
These meetings didn’t all change my mind, but they enriched my perspective: even the trio from the North Korean embassy whom, I thought, could not possibly believe all the stories they were telling about their socialist paradise back home.
So please get on that plane to the US, Mr Tajani. Israel’s Mr Saar and the EU’s Ms Kallas should set up a phone call. The government of Norway might want to consider keeping to its agreement with Malaysia after all. Let’s encourage, not disparage, cultural centres and the learning of each other’s languages, and reinforce norms about the sanctity of diplomacy and the safety of negotiators.
Then-British prime minister Harold Macmillan’s famous paraphrase of Winston Churchill in 1958 may have become well-worn, but it’s as true today as it was then. “Jaw-jaw,” he said, “is better than war-war.”
