There are dejected murmurs about the death of diplomacy and there is nothing new about it. In the past too, its death was often foretold, but because of technological advancements resulting in higher speeds of communication and travel. In the 1860s, Lord Palmerston, the then British Foreign Secretary, received the first diplomatic telegram and exclaimed, “My God! This is the end of diplomacy.”  Now, the feeling of doom stems from several other developments that are making it challenging for diplomats to keep up and to cope with.

Many Heads of States are rather young and in some cases geriatric and they have a penchant for the fun-filled life; there are fewer career diplomats. Earlier, leaders did not travel abroad solely for vacation and their visits were diplomatic forays. Justin Trudeau, was born and brought up in the Prime Minister’s home. He took a vacation in the Bahamas in December 2016 - January 2017 as a guest at the island of Aga Khan IV after his government had made an endowment for an institution related to the Aga Khan Foundation. This was found amiss by the Ethics Commission. Then he tanked relations with India by going public with allegations of the Indian state’s complicity in the murder of a Sikh separatist in Canada. Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand at 37 and Emmanuel Macron at 40, have been keeping their nations’ diplomacy in turmoil. The latter called the NATO allies “cowards” and the former found the work too taxing and quit, saying she “no longer had enough in the tank.” Earlier, a leader moved up the ladder from being what P. G. Wodehouse called a “Nodder” to being a “Yes-man” before being allowed to speak at important parleys. There is a flip side too; Biden believed in his ability to lead the US till the age of 86 but was cut short by Trump’s victory, Xi Jinping wants to be there forever and Mugabe, facing an impeachment, resigned when he was 93. The geriatric, committed to clinging on while becoming less lucid by the day, keep creating nightmares for the diplomats. 

The weapons of war are becoming smaller; fighter planes and hypersonic missiles are giving way to drones which may yield to electromagnetic waves, with powerful laser beams being developed as weapons. The US, China, Israel, the UK and Turkey have already developed prototypes of such laser weapons while Germany, Russia and India are also on the job. With laser weapons, planes, missiles and drones will substantially lose their efficacy. When lasers become capable of destroying satellites, a balance of terror, somewhat like that created by nuclear weapons, may fall in place reducing the likelihood of war. Carl von Clausewitz had said, “War is a continuation of politics by other means.” As smaller nations also acquire the capability to hit back and hurt, both wars and diplomacy become less effective and frustrated leaders make civilian infrastructure and population their targets,⁰ as is happening in Ukraine and Gaza. 

Rival political parties used to exhibit bipartisanship when contending with a rival nation. The loss of this bipartisanship has become a serious issue for diplomats; foreign nations now gleefully quote an opposition leader of a rival country to counter the arguments of the diplomats of that country. The Vietnam war had seen Eisenhower (Republican), Kennedy (Democrat) and Johnson (Democrat) in the White House with Nixon (Republican) beginning the withdrawal and on his resignation, Gerald Ford seeing the fall of Saigon. Yet, the Congress acted in a broad bipartisan manner, granting to the President wide authority to use force and approving funding even after the war had become a quagmire. Contrast this with the sharp divide in the US today between the Democrats and the Republicans on the issue of Palestine.

Today, in North America, Europe and India, the major arenas of democracy, bipartisanship is sinking in the ever-deepening chasm between the far-right and the far-left. Its place has been taken by echo chambers, where any expression or appreciation of a counter viewpoint is akin to treason. Foreign policy, a subject that was usually discussed in bipartisan committees behind closed doors, is now a slug fest in the public space. When elections result in a change in the ruling party, foreign policy is now more likely to be marked with sharper twists and turns. 

That brings us to the next disruptor of traditional diplomacy, the phenomenon of mass illegal migration that has become the prime agenda for the voices in the echo chambers and for the ideological divide in domestic politics. 2015 was a watershed moment for large-scale illegal migration when countries in Europe, particularly Germany, under the leadership of Angela Merkel, appeared to open their doors to undocumented migrants. In 2015-2016, more than 2 million asylum seekers arrived in Europe, over a million in Germany alone. In Canada, Trudeau used to be at the airport to personally welcome illegal migrants. Since 2018, 170,000 people have entered the UK illegally using small boats to cross the English Channel and the flow continues. Mass migration is making a huge impact on the stability of foreign policies in countries like the UK and France, with the governments making not-so-subtle shifts on issues like Palestine. Earlier too, people of foreign origin exercised influence but it was limited to the elite class; today it is the migrant on the street who has a loud voice. 

Mass migration of undocumented individuals has sharpened the far-left far-right divide in European countries, particularly in the two countries with the largest populations, Germany and France. In both these countries far-right parties are surging forward. If they come to power at some stage, the policies of the EU, which comprises the most liberal order anywhere in the developed world, will undergo a metamorphosis. Far-right leaders like Victor Orban are already heavily tilted towards Russia. If France and Germany drift in that direction, pleading the cause of a far-right Germany or France in foreign capitals will be a challenging swing for the diplomats of these countries. Counting Trump, in whose election migration was a major issue in his favour, in the far-right league, some commentators are already talking of a far-right takeover of the EU. NATO is already facing a far-right push from Trump and the mightiest wall in Europe against far-right policies, Germany, is seeing a surge  in the extreme far-right. If NATO and the EU fail to escape the swing, how many diplomats will be equipped for the EU or NATO going to bed with Russia? 

Cyber-attacks with the aim of election interference, attacks on critical infrastructure and disinformation are new challenges for diplomacy. Cyber-attacks are akin to disembodied terrorism and when it is state-sponsored, the victim nation is loath to engage in parleys with the perpetrator, as the latter is invariably in denial. Even a powerful nation like the US has often felt helpless against cyber-attacks and the only recourse seems to be retaliation. In response to these developments, cyber diplomacy is evolving to navigate this new world of stealth penetration of state secrets, cyberwar, the dark web and cybercrime, that is sheltered behind the sovereignty of some totalitarian states like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. 

These developments have made the conventional diplomatic parleys increasingly ineffective in recent years. We hope that the world will not watch with indifference even as war, the ‘diplomacy by other means,’ whether in trade or on the battlefields, more frequently replaces the fake smiles and innuendos of diplomats.

( R N prasher is a former IAS officer. The views expressed are his personal. )