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Mediating estrangement: a theory for diplomacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Extract

How does one live according to reason if the other, the alien, the foreigner whether remote or nearby may burst into one's world at any moment?

Raymond Aron, Peace and War

Diplomacy has been particularly resistant to theory. What knowledge we do have of the practice and principles of diplomacy is largely drawn from the works of former diplomatists like Abraham de Wicquefort's L'Ambassadeur et ses Fonctions (1681), Frangois de Callières' De la Manière de Négocier Avec les Souverains (1716), Ernest Satow's Guide to Diplomatic Practice (1917) and Harold Nicolson's Diplomacy (1939).1 Conveying a view of diplomacy as a specialized skill of negotiation, these works seek to ‘maxim-ize’ that skill for the benefit of novices entering the profession. Understandably, their histories of diplomacy tend to be sketchy and rather anecdotal, and their theories of diplomacy, when they do exist, usually consist of underdeveloped and implicit propositions. Moreover, since the authors were serving governments at the apogee of imperial power, they were not interested in looking too widely and too deeply into a past which might undermine the foundations of skilful negotiation—order, continuity, and ‘common sense’.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1987

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References

1. de Wicquefort, A., L'Ambassadeur et ses Fonctions (Amsterdam, 1730);Google Scholarde Callières, F., On the Manner of Negotiating with Princes, A. Whyte (trans.), (Notre Dame, Ind., 1963)Google Scholar; Satow, E., Guide to Diplomatic Practice (London, 1979)Google Scholar; Nicolson, H., Diplomacy (London, 1963).Google Scholar

2. However, an admirable sequel to Nicolson's work has recently appeared, Watson's, AdamDiplomacy: The Dialogue between States (London, 1982).Google Scholar Watson's work is also valuable because it investigates early non-western views of diplomacy (such as Kautilya's Arthashastra), an area which will be peripheral to our enquiry into the form of diplomacy which spread to become the dominant global system, Western diplomacy.

3. See Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Northedge, F. S., The International Political System (London, 1976)Google Scholar; Wight, Martin, Power Politics Bull, H. and Holbraad, C. (eds.), (Harmonds-worth, 1979)Google Scholar; and Systems of States, Bull, H. (ed.), (Leicester, 1977).Google Scholar

4. This is not to imply that the behaviouralist approach is inherently less conservative. Interesting (but certainly not sufficient) evidence of this is provided by its nominal origins. Seeking to avoid any objections from corporate trustees, the Ford Foundation changed a ‘social’ (too close to ‘socialism’) science research proposal to a ‘behavioural’ (thought to be mor e neutral in connotation) science proposal. See Deutsch, K., ‘Problem Solving: The Behavioral Approach’, in Hoffman, A. (ed.), International Communication and the New Diplomacy (Bloomington, 1968), p. 75.Google Scholar

5. Nicolson, , Diplomacy, pp. 20, 24.Google Scholar

6. Wight, , Power Politics, p. 94.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., p. 81.

8. See Bull, , Anarchical Society, pp. 173–83Google Scholar, on diplomatic culture and Nicolson, , Diplomacy, p. 16Google Scholar, for a general discussion of diplomatic theory (‘the generally accepted idea of the principles and methods of international conduct and negotiation’).

9. Hegel, , ‘Spirit in Self-Estrangement’, Phenomenology of the Mind, quoted in Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Struik, Dir (ed.), (New York, 1967), p. 38;Google ScholarFeuerbach, L., The Essence of Christianity, George Eliot (trans.), (New York, 1957)Google Scholar; and Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts.

10. This enquiry shuns narrow definitions of terms. If I were to pretend that a single definition could capture the essence of diplomacy, then there would be n o purpose for an enquiry. In fact, it would negate an enquiry, for its very rationale is to question the existence of a defining essence. Moreover, the high level of ambiguity inherent in international relations can render the attempt for exactitude in definition a specious activity. Specificity of terms should, of course, be expected from any historical investigation which would apply alienation theories.

11. See Ollman, Bertell, Alienation (Cambridge, 1971).Google Scholar

12. Marx, , ‘Comments on James Mills Elements of Political Economy’, MEWE, Suppl. vol. I, p. 463Google Scholar, quoted by Mészáros, I., Marx's Theory of Alienation (London, 1970), p. 91;Google Scholar and Writings of Young Marx, pp. 176, 229.

13. One example of a test-case states: ‘L’idée que suggère tout natureilement le mot “aliener” est celle de transmission d'un sujet a un autre: il semble toutefois que ce mot peut aussi j'en signifier “perdre volontairement se défaire de, renoncer, etc”’ Dictionnaire de la Terminologie du Droit International (Paris, 1959).Google Scholar

14. See also Smit, H., et al., International Law, Cases and Materials (St. Paul, Minn., 1980), pp. 175–7Google Scholar, for a modern use of the term in the treaty of 1931 which established a customs union between Germany and Austria and ‘imposed a duty on Austria not to alienate her independence without the consent of the council of the League of Nations’.

15. For instance, see the address of the representatives of Corcyra to the assembled Athenian and Corinthian representatives on the question of gaining support from Athens against the threat of a Corinthian naval rearmament: ‘If the Corinthians say that you have no right to receive one of their colonies into your alliance, they should be told tha t every colony, if it is treated properly, honours its mother city, and only becomes estranged/emphasis added/when it has been treated badly. Colonists are not sent abroad to be the slaves of those who remain behind, but to be their equals.’ Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, R. Warner, (trans.), (Harmondsworth, 1954), p. 56.Google ScholarPubMed

16. For instance: Bull, , Anarchical Society, pp. 308–9Google Scholar (‘The Third World is alienated from the Western states not simply because of the latters' lack of high-mindedness but because of their overwhelming power…’); Keens-Soper, , ‘The Liberal Disposition of Diplomacy’, International Relations, v (1973), p. 913Google Scholar (‘Here the issue is the sense of alienation with which newcomers from several different traditions of civility confront the predominantly European character of diplomacy.’); Wight, Power Politics, p. 32Google Scholar(‘Alien societies had different principles of existence from Europe…’) ; Watson, Diplomacy, p. 15Google Scholar (‘initially diplomacy appears as a sporadic communication between very separate states…/some/states remained alien to the cultural and historical assumptions which engendered the rules and conventions of European diplomacy’).

17. Hegel, , Phenomenology of the Spirit (Oxford, 1979), p. 18.Google Scholar

18. Marx, , ‘Critique of Hegel's Dialectic’, Fromm, E., (ed.), Marx's Concept of Man (New York, 1966), p. 174.Google Scholar

19. Cornford, F. M., From Religion to Philosophy, p. 201, quoted by Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (London, 1961), p. 52.Google Scholar

20. Kaufmann, W., ‘The Inevitability of Alienation’ in Preface to R. Schacht, Alienation (New York, 1970), p. xxvii.Google Scholar Kaufmann also notes that many of the great classical thinkers were estranged from societies which highly valued harmony and unity. He also asserts that many of the great modern philosophers suffered psychological or societal estrangement. He adduces the fact that Descartes, Spinoza, Liebnitz, Pascal, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Russell and Sartre lost one, in some instances, both, parents when young.

21. Ludz, P., ‘A Forgotten Intellectual Tradition of the Alienation Concept’ in Geyer, R. F. and Schweitzer, P. (eds.), Alienation: Problems of Theory and Method (London, 1981), pp. 24–5.Google Scholar

22. For an excellent synopsis of structuralist and post-structuralist approaches, see Eagleton, T., Literary Theory (Minneapolis, 1983).Google Scholar

23. See Hoffmann's, S. valuable appraisal of the discipline, ‘An American Social Science: International Relations’, Daedalus, cvi (1977), pp. 4160.Google Scholar

24. These definitions were compiled from the following books on alienation from which more detailed histories of the term and the concept can be found: , Geyer and Schweitzer, , Alienation: Problems of Theory and Method, pp. 2133, 3840, 6870;Google ScholarMészáros, I., Marx's Theory of Alienation, pp. 2765Google Scholar; Schacht, , Alienation, pp. 937Google Scholar; Torrance, John, Estrangement, Alienation and Exploitation: A Sociological Approach to Historical Materialism (London, 1977), pp. xixvi, 320.Google Scholar

25. Smith, A., An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of The Wealth of Nations (London n.d.), vol. II, p. 342, quoted by Mészáros, p. 34.Google Scholar

26. Kirath, H. and Kuhn, S. (eds.), Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1956), quoted in Schacht, Alienation, p. 10.Google Scholar

27. Murray, J. (ed.), New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford, 1888), quoted by Schacht, Alienation, p. 11.Google Scholar

28. J., and Grimm, W., Deutsches Wörterbuch (Leipzig, 1862), quoted in Schacht, Alienation, p. 8.Google Scholar

29. Aron, R., Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (London, 1962), p. 7.Google Scholar

30. Rapetti, P. N. (ed.), Livre dejustice et deplait (Paris, 1850), p. 47Google Scholar; and Beugnot, A. A. (ed.), Assises de Jérusalem (Paris, 1841), vol. I, p. 183Google Scholar, quoted in Mészáros, , Marx's Theory of Alienation, p. 34.Google Scholar

31. Augustine, , City of God, H. Bettenson (trans.), (Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 761.Google Scholar

32. Feuer, Lewis, ‘What is Alienation? The Career of a Concept’, New Politics, I (1962), p. 117.Google Scholar

33. See Bull, , ‘Martin Wight and the Theory of International Relations’, British Journal of International Studies, 2 (1976), pp. 104108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. Grotius, H., De Jure Belli ac Pads, W. Whewell (trans.), (London, 1853), pp. 340350.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., pp. 342–3.

36. Rousseau, J.-J., The Social Contract and Discourses, F. P. H. Cole (trans.), (London, 1966), p. 4.Google Scholar

37. Contract and justice form the twin legal pillars of the Grotian order. Since alienation is given a central role in the formulation of both, it is an important conceptual foundation of that order. For further evidence see De Jure Belli, vol. I, chapter XX ‘Of Promises’, pp. 33–5: vol. II, chapter XII, ‘Of Contracts’, pp. 55–8.

38. Rousseau, , The Social Contract, p. 22.Google Scholar

39. Hobbes, T., Leviathan, Oakeshott, M. (ed.), (Oxford, n.d.), p. 85.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., p. 87.

41. Ibid., p. 112.

42. Rousseau, , The Social Contract, p. 7.Google Scholar

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid., p. 12. See Book II, Chapter I, ‘That Sovereignty is Inalienable’, for the relationship between sovereignty, the general will and alienation. Here is one example: ‘I hold then that sovereignty, being nothing less than the exercise of the general will, can never be alienated, and that the sovereign, who is no less than a collective being, cannot be represented except by himself: the power indeed may be transmitted but not the will’, p. 20.

46. Ibid., p. 201.

47. Ibid., p. 211.

48. See MacPherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford, 1962), pp. 41, 163–91.Google Scholar

49. See Locke, J., Two Treatises of Civil Government, Laslett, Peter (ed.), (Cambridge, 1960), Part II, sect. 26, 36, 173, 323.Google Scholar

50. See Torrance, , Estrangement, pp. 92, 143, 241.Google Scholar

51. See Smith, A., Wealth of Nations, II, p. 342.Google Scholar

52. See Ludz, , ‘A Forgotten Intellectual Tradition’, p. 25.Google Scholar

53. See Feuer, , ‘What is Alienation?’ p. 117; Mészáros, Marx's Theory of Alienation, pp. 33Google Scholar; Schacht, , Alienation, pp. 1516.Google Scholar

54. See Ludz, , ‘A Forgotten Intellectual Tradition’, pp. 2627Google Scholar; Mészáros, , Marx's Theory of Alienation, pp. 6061Google Scholar; Schacht, , Alienation, pp. 2125, 30.Google Scholar

55. See Kant, I., Perpetual Peace and other essays, T. Humphrey (trans.), (Ind., 1983), pp. 108110, and 115–18.Google Scholar Kant also believed a ‘spirit of commerce’ might provide the opportunity for a natural alienation of power by states, leading to a treaty for perpetual peace (pp. 122–5).

56. Kant, I., Werke (Berlin: Akademishe Ausgabe, 1902), vol. vi, p. 271, quoted and trans, by Mészáros, p. 34.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., p. 315.

58. Hegel, Fragment of a System, quoted by Lukasc, G., The Young Hegel: Studies in The Relation between Dialectics and Economics, R. Livingstone (trans.), (London, 1975), p. 263.Google Scholar This work is actually a collection of notes to which Herman Nohl gave the title Systemfragment. Hegel's quote on disunity as the source of philosophy also appears in Difference between the Philosophical Systems of Fichte and Schelling (1801) See Copleston, F., A History of Philosophy, vol. 7, part 1 (New York, 1965), pp. 201–3.Google Scholar

59. Hegel, , Erste Druckschriften, p. 219, quoted by Lukásc, p. 307.Google Scholar

60. Ibid., p. 91 in Lukásc, , p. 267. The same idea is more poetically expressed in the famous 1820 ‘preface’ to The Philosophy of Right: ‘The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk’.Google Scholar

61. Hegel, G., The Phenomenology of Spirit, A. V. Miller (trans.), (Oxford, 1977), p. 11.Google Scholar

62. Ibid., p. 111.

63. Torrance, , Estrangement, pp. 24–5.Google Scholar

64. Ibid.

65. Hegel, p. 112.

66. Wight, , Power Politics, p. 48.Google Scholar

67. Hegel, pp. 118–19.

68. Marx, , The Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, in Bottomore, Early Writings, p. 44.Google Scholar

69. Marx, , 1844 Manuscripts, p. 106. and p. 137.Google Scholar

70. Ibid., p. 175. The phrasing of ‘separation through surrender’ is derived from Richard Schacht's lucid account of Marxian alienation. See Schacht, , Alienation, p. 120.Google Scholar

71. Ibid., p. 11.

72. Ibid., p. 108.

73. Marx, , ‘On the Jewish Question’, in Early Writings, p. 25.Google Scholar

74. Ibid., p. 26.

75. Sartre, J.-P., Critique of Dialectical Reason, A. S. Smith (trans.), (London, 1976), p. 152.Google Scholar

76. Sartre, quoted by Schacht, , Alienation, p. 236.Google Scholar

77. Engels, F., ‘Preface to the English Edition’ in K. Marx, Capital, vol. I (Moscow, 1974), p. 14.Google Scholar Unfortunately, Engels did not live long enough to witness the ironic decision of a Russian censor to allow the entry of Capital, not because it wasn't subversive but because he thought it too difficult for the general public.