The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn't What It Used to Be by Naim Moises

Author:Naim, Moises [Naim, Moises]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780465037810
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2013-03-04T20:00:00+00:00

FROM AMBASSADORS TO GONGOS: THE NEW EMISSARIES

“American ambassadors—an obsolete species?” The question was posed as early as 1984 by Elmer Plischke, a distinguished practitioner of that now-fading field, diplomatic history. Plischke pointed out the changes that were eroding the primacy of ambassadors as representatives of their nation, including easier travel and communications technology, the rise of ways for governments to communicate directly with publics in other countries, and the diluting effect of the proliferation of nation-states, including so many very small ones, each with its own diplomatic corps deployed.43 All of these transformations, of course, have only accelerated in the ensuing three decades.

The idea of diplomacy as a field in decline is not new. In 1962 the scholar Josef Korbel, a Czech emigré and Madeleine Albright’s father, wrote about the “decline of diplomacy” as old values and procedures developed over centuries in the diplomatic profession began to crumble. Among these were discretion, manners, patience, thorough knowledge of the relevant topics, and the shunning of premature publicity. “The modern diplomatic world has trespassed much too frequently against these basic rules of diplomacy,” Korbel wrote, “and one is compelled regretfully to add that the sin cannot be attributed exclusively to its Communist sector.” In addition to the decay of these traditional values, Korbel pointed out the bypassing of diplomats by politicians at summit meetings and state visits, when for many years heads of state and even foreign ministers rarely traveled abroad. And he pointed out that democratic regimes create spaces for other countries to present their case directly, even when they do not reciprocate; thus, he noted, Soviet leaders had access to the American press while Americans enjoyed no such direct access to the Soviet population.44

These days, those direct-access channels have exploded into a cornucopia of political, ethnic, and religious advocacy groups; pleas by well-to-do immigrant communities on behalf of their home nation, or emigrants on behalf of their host; friendly news coverage and public relations inserts in newspapers; sponsored events by cultural or tourism organizations; the activities of paid lawyers and lobbyists; and a wellspring of blogs, forums, advertising, and propaganda in cyberspace. For some nations, the leading edge of overseas advocacy is not the embassy staff, with its protocol and security restrictions, but the Gongo. What is a Gongo? It is a government-organized nongovernmental organization: an impostor that purports to be part of civil society but is in fact instigated, funded, or directed by a government or people acting on its behalf.45

One Gongo, for instance, occupies a pleasant, innocuous office building in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, close to the Imperial Palace. Chongryon, the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, has about 150,000 members and serves an ethnic community several times larger. It runs about sixty schools, including a university; it also owns businesses, including banks and gaming interests in Japan’s popular pachinko parlors. But it delivers passports as well. That’s because Chongryon serves as the de facto embassy in Tokyo for North Korea, which has no diplomatic relations with Japan. In its schools, it faithfully advances the ideology of Kim Jong-Un’s regime.

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