The Future of Diplomacy by Philip Seib

Author:Philip Seib [Seib, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781509507238
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published: 2016-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

Ancient history: the Cold War

To appreciate how much the role of diplomacy had changed, look back just a few decades. For those who like their global politics easy to understand, the Cold War was ideal. Two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, dominated the world. Many other countries were friends of one or the other, or tried to remain outside the fray. They all watched as the two giants pawed the earth and snorted. The center of the universe was Europe, where members of NATO and the Warsaw Pact eyed each other warily across numerous borders. Stockpiles of conventional and nuclear weapons grew ever fatter, gorged on spending that no one could afford. The looming menace in this face-off was MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction.

Occasionally, as during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the most lethal of this weaponry came frighteningly close to being used. Diplomacy, however, prevailed. US President John Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev were the principals, but ambassadors and other diplomats were important supporting players, the United Nations was a valuable forum, and even a television correspondent was pressed into duty as a diplomatic messenger. In this instance, shrewd leadership combined with good luck to ensure that diplomacy prevailed and the Cold War stayed cold.

Until the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, superpower diplomacy played out like a high-stakes chess game. The two principal protagonists each had allies and assorted proxies. Some countries, such as India, proclaimed themselves “non-aligned” and thereby open to courtship (the more lavish the better). The Soviet Union made certain its “allies” stayed in line, using its military to crush disobedience in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere. The United States used overt and covert tactics to advance its purported interests in numerous countries. Localized wars broke out in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, but even in these instances the fingerprints of the two major powers were easily detected. No one had clean hands.

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