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Diplomacy in the Atomic Age: Part I*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Stephen D. Kertesz
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Extract

Diplomacy in the broadest sense is the conduct of foreign relations between politically independent entities through bilateral negotiations, multilateral conferences, or through the forum of multilateral organizations. Although modern means of transportation and communication have greatly diminished the importance of distances and boundaries, for a long time to come man will continue to live in separate political units called states. And in the foreseeable future, inter-state relations will be handled through foreign policy, the executive agents of which are diplomats.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , January 1959 , pp. 151 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1959

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References

1 Cf. Numelin, Ragnar, The Beginnings of Diplomacy (New York, 1950)Google Scholar.

2 On the Manner of Negotiating with Princes (Boston, 1919)Google Scholar. French original published in 1716.

3 The School for Ambassadors and Other Essays (London, 1924)Google Scholar.

4 The Diplomatist, translated from French by Turner, C. R. (London, 1931)Google Scholar.

5 Conseils a un jeune Français entrant dans la diplomatie (Paris, 1948)Google Scholar.

6 Diplomacy (2nd edition, London, 1950)Google Scholar; The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (New York, 1954)Google Scholar.

7 “Mr. W. P. Potjomkin, in his history of Diplomacy, assures us that the Russians possess one powerful weapon denied to their opponents — namely ‘the scientific dialectic of the Marx-Lenin formula.’ I have not observed as yet that this dialectic has improved international relationships, or that the Soviet diplomatists and commissars have evolved any system of negotiation that might be called a diplomatic system. Their activity in foreign countries or at international conferences is formidable, disturbing, compulsive. I do not for one moment underestimate either its potency or its danger. But it is not diplomacy: it is something else.” The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, p. 90.

8 Discussion of the specific causes of the failure of the League of Nations is outside the scope of this paper. Cf. Walters, F. P., A History of the League of Nations (2 vols., Oxford, 1952)Google Scholar.

9 For the general aspects of conference diplomacy, see: Dunn, Frederick S., The Practice and Procedure of International Conferences (Baltimore, 1929)Google Scholar; Hill, Norman L., The Public International Conference (Stanford, 1929)Google Scholar.

10 Cf. Hankey, Lord, Diplomacy by Conference (New York, 1946), pp. 10–26Google Scholar. Lloyd George took a stand for conference diplomacy before the National Liberal Council in the following terms:

“There is only one way to effect a gradual improvement and ultimately reach the goal, and that is by insisting on bringing the nations to the test of reason and not of force. How are you to do that? By insisting on meeting, discussing, reasoning—let us say the word, conferring.… There are those who would go back to the old diplomacy, who say: ‘Let us get rid of conferences, let us interchange dispatches and letters.’ What happens? Each party states its own point of view. Instead of bringing parties nearer, it too often hardens them in their convictions. You cannot have it out with a letter. You cannot argue with a dispatch. You cannot reason with a diplomatic message. Come face to face.” Mills, J. Saxon, The Genoa Conference (London, 1922), pp. 27–28Google Scholar.

11 “Some 500 special newspaper correspondents had been sent to Paris at very great expense. From the outset, they protested that the covenants which were being negotiated were being secretly arrived at. The Supreme Council was much perturbed by this protest. They decided that the Press should be admitted to all Plenary Meetings. As a result, only six Plenary Meetings were held and, of these, only that which dealt with the Covenant of the League was of anything more than a purely fictitious character. In order to assuage the indignation of their own national correspondents, the plenipotentiaries were thus forced to provide tit-bits of information on their own. This led to mutual accusations of ‘leakage’ and to much bitter recrimination.” Nicolson, , Peacemaking 1919 (New York, 1939), p. 123Google Scholar. President Wilson and Lloyd George discussed the meaning of publicity in connection with negotiations and eventually they agreed to a statement on publicity issued at the Council of Ten to the press on January 17, 1919. This statement expressed the basic principle in the following terms: “The essence of democratic method is not that deliberations of governments should be conducted in public, but that its conclusions should be subject to the consideration of a popular Chamber and to free and open discussion on the platform and in the Press.” Foreign Relations of the United States, Paris Peace Conference, Vol. III, 621Google Scholar.

12 President Wilson proposed in his Point I: “Open Covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understanding of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.” Considering the suggestion that agreements be “openly arrived at,” diplomats of Allied Powers were surprised to see that in Paris Wilson himself negotiated behind closed doors guarded by marines. Cf. Nicolson, , The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, p. 86Google Scholar. Although Wilson considered secrecy an evil in diplomacy, he did not exclude private discussions of delicate matters. He explained the meaning of Point I in a letter of June 12, 1918, to Secretary Lansing: “When I pronounced for open diplomacy, I meant not that there should be no private discussions of delicate matters, but that no secret agreements should be entered upon, and that all international relations, when fixed, should be open, above-board and explicit.” One of the results of Wilson's Proclamation against secret diplomacy was article 18 of the Covenant which provided for compulsory registration with, and publication by, the League Secretariat of every treaty or international engagement entered into by any member of the League. Article 102 of the Charter contains similar provisions although the legal consequences of non-registration are different in the League and United Nations systems.

13 In reference to the permanent state of conference introduced by the League system, Nicolson noted: “These conferences do little to satisfy the vague desire for what is called ‘open diplomacy’; but they do much to diminish the utility of professional diplomatists and, in that they entail much publicity, many rumors, and wide speculation, — in that they tempt politicians to achieve quick, spectacular and often fictitious results, — they tend to promote rather than allay suspicion, and to create those very states of uncertainty which it is the purpose of good diplomatic method to prevent.” The Evolution of Diplomatic Method, p. 89. Cf. Nicolson, Harold, “An Open Look at Secret Diplomacy,” New York Times Magazine, 09 13, 1953, pp. 17, 47–48Google Scholar.

14 The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, Vol. I (New York, 1948), 218Google Scholar.

15 The new way of thinking with respect to the position of small powers was expressed by M. Hymans, delegate of Belgium at the first Assembly meeting: “One of the features of the Assembly has been the recognition of the equality of states. It is a feature to which we must draw attention, the more particularly because we are emerging from a period which is still very recent when a strange and artificial distinction was drawn between the states which were called states with limited interests and those which were called states with general interests. The interest of humanity and the interest of the world is a general interest. The small states, whatever the size of their territory and whatever their population, have the same interest as large states in the safety of humanity.” The First Assembly of the League of Nations, World Peace Foundation Pamphlets, Vol. IV, No. 1, 11Google Scholar.

16 After his speech, Hughes adjourned the Conference, “giving the startled delegations three days in which to recover their equilibrium, to study and digest the American plan, and also to feel the world-wide popular repercussions from this extraordinary beginning. … Not only in technique but also in timing was the opening session of the Conference a masterpiece of political strategy calculated to mobilize public opinion behind the American proposal to reduce and limit naval armaments.” Harold, and Sprout, Margaret, Toward a New Order of Sea Power: American Naval Policy and the World Scene, 1918–1922 (Princeton, 1940), p. 153Google Scholar.

17 “Mr. Baldwin's confession in 1936, that he did not dare to propose rearmament as he could not ‘think of anything which would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more certain,’ is a good illustration of how democracy can jeopardize the highest interests of the state.” SirWellesley, Victor, Diplomacy in Fetters (London, 1944), p. 24Google Scholar.

18 “From September 18th, 1934, until a few months before the outbreak of the second World War, Russia continued to be a convinced supporter of the League. Her record in the Council and the Assembly, and her conduct toward the aggressive powers, were more consistent with the Covenant than those of any other great power.” Walters, F. P., op. cit., p. 585Google Scholar.

19 Gibson, Hugh, The Road to Foreign Policy (New York, 1944), p. 63Google Scholar. Cf. Cooper, Duff, “The World Still Needs the Diplomat,” The New York Times Magazine, 07 25, 1948, p. 5Google Scholar.

20 The preliminary article of this treaty is as follows: “The present Agreement is subject to the fulfillment of the following conditions, namely:

(a) That each party refrains from hostile action or undertakings against the other and from conducting outside of its own borders any official propaganda direct or indirect … to encourage any of the peoples of Asia in any form of hostile action against British interests or the British Empire, especially in India and in the independent state of Afghanistan. The British Government gives a similar particular undertaking to the Russian Soviet Government in respect of the countries which formed part of the former Russian Empire and which have now become independent.” Handbook of Commercial Treaties between Great Britain and Foreign Powers, published by the Foreign Office (London, 1924), p. 725Google Scholar.

21 When the United States recognized the Soviet Union in an exchange of letters of November 16, 1933, Litvinov “gave far-reaching pledges concerning Soviet non-interference in the domestic affairs of the United States. Article 4 stated that it will be a fixed policy of the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics:

“4. Not to permit the formation or residence on its territory of any organization or group — and to prevent the activity on its territory of any organization or group, or of representatives or officials of any organization or group — which has as an aim the overthrow or the preparation for the overthrow of, or the bringing about by force of a change in, the political or social order of the whole or any part of the United States, its territories or possessions.”

Although since 1924 the Soviet Government gave similar pledges to many other states, Litvinov's letter addressed to President Roosevelt contained the most sweeping obligations of non-interference. Cf. Browder, Robert P., The Origins of Soviet-American Diplomacy (Princeton, 1953), pp. 142–143CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Soviet Union by its very nature has been unwilling and probably unable to carry out such commitments and many other treaty obligations. Cf. Soviet Political Treaties and Violations. Staff Study for the Subcommittee … of the Committee on the Judiciary. United States Senate, 84th Congress (Washington, 1953).

22 The major component factors of Soviet foreign policy, that is, ideology, strategy, operational direction, and tactics together with the role of an allembracing propaganda are well-presented in a short compass by Triska, Jan F., “A Model for Study of Soviet Foreign Policy,” The American Political Science Review, LII (1958), 64–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

It is characteristic that the Soviet Union never submitted a conflict to arbitration. The Soviet Government, however, accepted a clause for arbitration during the Moscow Conference for Limitation of Armaments, on December 6, 1922. Conférence de Moscou pour la limitation des armements (Moscou, 1923), p. 127Google Scholar. But the treaty discussed at this conference did not come into being. In the same year, on July 12, at the Conference of Russian Affairs at the Hague, Litvinov answered the question whether it would be impossible to find a single impartial judge in the whole world. “It was necessary to face the fact that there was not one world but two, a Soviet world and a non-Soviet world, or, if it were preferred, a Russian world and a non-Russian world, … only an angel could be unbiased in judging Russian affairs. …” Sohn, Louis B. (ed.), Cases and Other Materials on World Law (Brooklyn, 1950), p. 1046Google Scholar.

23 The State Department's memorandum on Certain Aspects of the hoi-shevist Movement in Russia and the memorandum on The Bolshevist or Communist Party in Russia and Its Relations to the Third or Communist International and to the Russian Soviets were published in International Conciliation in March and 04, 1920Google Scholar; January and February, 1921. The quoted text is the conclusion of the latter memorandum. International Conciliation, 1921, p. 66.

24 In the decade extending from 1947 to 1957, world Communist party membership increased from an estimated 20 million to 31.5 million. At a session of the Supreme Soviet, Khrushchev claimed 33 million members on November 6, 1957. Asian Communist party membership claims (over 14.5 million) are greater than those for the USSR and its European orbit (12.5 million). At the end of 1957, party membership in Communist states accounted for 88 percent of the total estimated membership, compared with about 80 percent in 1947.

Communist party membership in the non-Communist areas of the world has remained constant — between three and four million during the period from 1947 to 1957. But the distribution of the strength has shown a shift from Western Europe to the Asian area. In Western Europe party membership dropped from four million in 1947 to about two million in 1957. The decline started in the early postwar years, continued at a more moderate pace after 1950 until de-Stalinization, and the Polish and Hungarian revolts accelerated the process in some countries. The Italian Communist party, for example, lost only 20,000 in 1955–1956, but 200,000 in 1956–1957.

During the same decade Communist party membership declined in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. But the Communist movement was greatly strengthened in South Asia and the Far East. The Indian Communist Party doubled its 1952 votes in 1957 and became the largest single opposition party in the national legislature. In the State of Kerala the Communists together with their allies secured 38.6 percent of the popular votes and 65 of the 126 seats in the state legislature. In Japan, Communist party membership decreased but in Indonesia it has risen to over a million. One should add to this statistical picture that the real strength and capabilities of the Communist party are influenced by numerous factors in a particular country and party membership is only one of them. For figures on world Communism, based on Communist sources, see “World Communism in Figures,” The World Today, XIV (05, 1958), 212–216Google Scholar.

25 For details see, Knorr, Klaus E., Ruble Diplomacy Challenge to American Foreign Aid, Center of International studies (Princeton University, 1956)Google Scholar; The Sino-Soviet Economic Offensive in the Less Developed Countries, Department of State Publication 6632 (Washington, 1958)Google Scholar. Cf. Foreign Aspects of U. S. National Security, Conference Report and Proceedings (Washington, 1958)Google Scholar, published by the Committee for International Economic Growth; Smith, Howard K. et al. , The Ruble War (Buffalo, 1958)Google Scholar.

26 There are some notable exceptions. Most of the political leaders of the new independent states in Africa are moderate men who are conscious of the importance of their friendly relations with Western states. The leaders of French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa consider their continued close political ties with France a mutual advantage. The local white minorities participate in political life on the basis of equality and a considerable number of them were elected to parliament and are cabinet members. Thoughtful Africans are more and more convinced that instead of African separatism, a cooperation with Europe would be mutually beneficial. Although the concept of Eurafrica is gaining, its ultimate victory greatly depends on Western attitudes.

27 The Suez Canal Problem, July 26-September 22, 1956. A Documentary Publication of the Department of State (Washington, 1956), p. 84. This international development is somewhat analogous to the new concepts and arrangements concerning property and income made in the Western states in recent decades.

28 International Law, II (London, 1935), 172Google Scholar.

29 “Der Krieg is ein Akt der Gewalt, urn den Gegner zur Erfüllung unseres Willens zu zwingen” (Carl von Clausewitz Vom Kriege, 1832)Google Scholar. “La guerre est un ensemble d'actes de violence par lesquels un État s'efforce d'imposer sa volonté à un autre État” (Louis Renault, 1843–1918)Google Scholar. While these definitions reflect nineteenth century thinking, we may note that Emeric de Vattel's definition in 1758 (“La guerre est cet état dans lequel on oursuit son droit par la force.”) was in harmony with the ideology of bellum justum and natural law. Vattel in the title of his book, identified international law with the principles of natural law “applied to the affairs of nations and sovereigns.”

30 Lang, David in The New Yorker (06 7, 1958), pp. 46–47Google Scholar.

31 Cf. McDougal, Myers S. and Lipson, Leon, “Perspectives for a Law of Outer Space,” The American Journal of International Law, LII (1958), 407–431CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Rusk, Dean, “Parliamentary Diplomacy-Debate vs. Negotiation,” World Affairs Interpreter, XXVI (1955), 121–138Google Scholar. Cf. below footnote 48.

33 For a brief review of American cultural diplomacy since the establishment of a Division of Cultural Relations in the State Department in July, 1938, see Colligan, Francis J., “Twenty Years After: Two Decades of Government-Sponsored Cultural Relations,” Bulletin of The Department of State (hereafter, Bulletin), XXXIX (1958), 112–120Google Scholar.

34 For details see Kertesz, Stephen D., “Reflections on Soviet and American Negotiating Behavior,” Review of Politics, XIX (1957), 3–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Kohler, Foy D., “Negotiation as an Effective Instrument of American Foreign Policy,” Bulletin XXXVIII (1958), 901–910Google Scholar.

35 Patch, Richard W., “Nixon In Peru,” American Universities Field Staff Report. (05 20, 1958), 5Google Scholar.

36 An Ambassador's Report (New York, 1954)Google Scholar.

37 The New York Times (July 4, 1958).

38 Direct contact between people would be greatly facilitated if the language barrier could be eliminated. Professor Pei's idea concerning the acceptance of a second language to be taught to all children in all countries will be helpful but its realization within the foreseeable future is not likely. This second language could be a national language like English or Russian or a constructed one like Esperanto. Cf. Pei, Mario, One Language for the World (New York, 1958)Google Scholar.