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Open Diplomacy at the Washington Conference of 1921–2: The British and French Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Donald S. Birn
Donald S. Birn
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Albany
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Extract

The widespread reaction against secret diplomacy which followed the First World War led to demands that statesmen conduct their affairs openly and be responsive to public opinion. The specific forms that Open Diplomacy might take in the post-war world were hard to envision, even for the most ardent advocates of change. At the Paris Peace Conference several hundred newsmen discovered that ‘open covenants openly arrived at’ did not mean that negotiations would be held in public. Similarly, the whole process by which governments were supposed to determine domestic or world opinion on a given issue and then formulate policies in accord with it was easier to talk about than to implement. If supporters of Open Diplomacy wanted simplicity, they were in fact getting a host of new complexities in their quest for a more democratic foreign policy.

Type
Open Diplomacy
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , July 1970 , pp. 297 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1970

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