by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ
More than half a century ago, the American sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote a book on the quality of mind that he believed sociologists must possess. He called this quality of mind, the “sociological imagination.” This quality of mind, Mills asserted, enables its possessor “to grasp the interplay of man and society, of biography and history, of self and world.”1 Our personal lives, Mills explained, are inextricably linked with the social structures of which we are part, and vice versa. Our biographies are inescapably intertwined with history. The sociological imagination enables us to understand ourselves and our world better by making us see the dynamic “intersections” between one and the other.
Like sociologists, diplomats need to develop a peculiar quality of mind that will enable them exercise their “calling” optimally. With due apologies to C. Wright Mills, I wish to call this quality of mind the “diplomatic imagination.”
Before we can describe what this diplomatic imagination is, however, we have to clarify first what diplomacy is all about.
Diplomacy has been defined in various ways by different people. The definitions range from the sardonic to the panegyric.2 Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice defines it as “the application of intelligence and tact to the conduct of official relations between the governments of independent states, extending sometimes also to their relations with vassal states; or, more briefly still, the conduct of business between states by peaceful means.”3 On the other hand, Harold Nicolson concurs with the definition given by The Oxford English Dictionary”: “Diplomacy is the management of international relations by negotiation; the method by which these relations are adjusted and managed by ambassadors and envoys; the business or art of the diplomatist.”4
R.G. Feltham asserts that, in its relations with other states, the main objective of any state “is to direct and influence these relations for its own maximum advantage; but at the same time, and if only in self-interest, it has the responsibility of formulating its policies towards other states and managing its relations in the interests of world harmony, thus helping to prevent wars and the waste of wealth. The formulation of foreign policy is one of the aspects of national politics and is the task of the politician, while the management of international relations and the reconciliation of diverse foreign policy priorities is the task of the diplomat.”5
If the management of international relations is the basic task of diplomacy, then the first requirement for a diplomat is to develop a mind that systematically understands the dynamics of international relations. It is a truism that one can only manage (or “control”) that which one understands. A diplomat will not be in a position to manage international relations if he does not understand how this phenomenon works in the first place. This, then, is the first element of the diplomatic imagination: it systematically tries to explain to itself how and why states relate with one another the way they do.
To construct this first element of the diplomatic imagination, a diplomat does not really have to reinvent the wheel (so to speak). There exists a number of international relations theories that can help him understand the interplay between and among states. It will serve a diplomat well to acquaint himself with these theories since they can provide him with the intellectual tools and implements with which he can fruitfully analyze and understand the workings of international relations.
While trying to acquaint himself with these theories, a diplomat might find himself leaning towards one or the other perspective. He might even find himself embracing one perspective as the theory from the vantage point of which he would henceforth analyze international relations. This tendency is natural, but I would advise him to avoid it if he can. Theories are there to help us understand reality. To embrace one theory to the exclusion of others will put us at the risk of trying to make reality serve our preferred theory.
Instead of embracing one theory, then, it would be better for a diplomat to adopt what I would call a “revolving perspective” on international relations. By that I mean: a diplomat should use as many theoretical and conceptual tools as possible when analyzing international relations. He should view the subject from all the perspectives at his disposal – trying this one first, then the other next, and so on and so forth. He will soon realize, of course, that taking a revolving perspective is not as comfortable as settling down with a single theory of one’s choice. A revolving perspective often yields different, nay, contradictory ideas about the international issue one is trying to understand. On the other hand, a unitary perspective yields more “consistent” insights into the same issue.
This takes us back to our previous statement on the price of adopting a theory to the exclusion of others. Reality is often too complex, too fluid, too dynamic to be neatly captured by one single theory. While a revolving perspective does not give us the comfort and ease that a unitary perspective gives, it is more likely going to give us a better, more holistic picture of the international reality we are trying to understand.
The second element of the diplomatic imagination that every diplomat must develop is its nationalist bias. This is what distinguishes it from the imagination of the international relations scholar. This is what separates the mind of the diplomat from that of the political scientist or theorist.
The international relations scholar, the political scientist and theorist strive to analyze international relations from as objective a vantage point as possible. This is of course a Sisyphean project since, as every social scientist now acknowledges, there is no such thing as a totally objective, bias-free, or unprejudiced knowledge. Whether he likes it or not, a scholar’s biases and prejudices will find their way into his eyes as he views his subject. Every scholar is biased in one way or another, although he must strive to rid himself of his biases as best he can.
The diplomatic imagination is also biased but – and I must underline this – it is consciously so; which is to say that it is, by its own choice, “prejudiced” in favor of something. The diplomat surveys international relations with one overriding aim in mind: to find out how he can direct and influence the flow of international relations to his sending state’s advantage. Unlike the international relations scholar, he cannot afford the luxury of studying international relations merely for its own sake, nor even for the purpose of eventually writing an article or a book about the topic, or delivering a lecture on the subject, or providing “expert advice” to foreign policy makers if and when his advice is sought. His search for knowledge has a definite motivation which he must never lose sight of: to place his knowledge of international relations in the service of his nation’s interests.
This does not mean, of course, that he must only have his nation’s welfare in mind. As everybody now knows, our world has become more than ever a “global village” (to borrow Marshall McLuhan’s now famous term). Our personal lives as well as those of our nations have become so interconnected with one another that what happens in one country to a number of individuals will certainly have an impact on our own personal and national lives. A diplomat will sooner or later realize that he must strive to serve the interests of the world community if he wants to serve those of his own country. He must, therefore, temper his nationalism with an internationalist sense. But (unless he is a UN diplomat or a diplomat serving in some other multilateral or regional body) even his internationalism must be anchored on his nationalism. He must strive to serve the interests of the global village in such a way that, by doing so, he will ultimately promote the welfare of his national “household.” The diplomatic imagination is imbued to its core with this nationalistic spirit.
Last but not least, the diplomatic imagination cannot but be a “grounded” perspective. The international relations scholar, the political scientist and theorist can have the luxury of remaining in the stratosphere of theories and concepts; but this cannot be the case with the diplomat. Whatever ideas he comes up with while exercising his imagination, he must bring down with him, as it were, to the ground. His ideas cannot exist for their own sakes. They have to serve him in his never-ending efforts to promote the interests of his state in the arena of international relations.
The diplomatic imagination, in short, is practical and experiential in the fullest senses of those terms. It maintains a constant and dynamic link with the actual realities on the ground. It is of one mind with Carl Von Clausewitz when he states that “in the same way as many plants only bear fruit when they do not shoot too high, so in the practical arts the theoretical leaves and flowers must not be made to sprout too far, but kept near to experience, which is their proper soil… Investigation and observation, philosophy and experience, must neither despise nor exclude one another; they mutually afford each other the rights of citizenship.”6
In his biography of Henry Kissinger, Walter Isaacson wrote: “At the core of [Kissinger’s] brilliance was an ability to see the relationships between different events and to conceptualize patterns. Like a spider in its web, he sensed, sometimes too acutely, how an action in one corner of the world would reverberate in another, how the application of power in one place would ripple elsewhere.”7
To develop in a diplomat something of the spider’s total grasp of its web is what the diplomatic imagination seeks to achieve.
NOTES
1C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 40th anniv. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000), 4.
2Of the sardonic definitions, the most popular are Wynn Catlin’s description of diplomacy as “the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ till you can find a rock,” and Caskie Stinnett’s “A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.” On the other hand, according to Nicolson, the diplomatic theorists of the sixteenth century contended that “the first diplomatists were angels, in that they served as ‘angeloi’ or messengers between heaven and earth.” Nicolson, however, quickly points out: “This is not a view which would be held by modern historians” (Harold Nicolson, Diplomacy [Washington DC: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, 1988], 5-6.)
3Lord Gore-Booth, ed. Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic Practice, 5th ed. (London: Longman, 1979), 3.
4Nicolson, 4-5.
5R.G. Feltham, Diplomatic Handbook (London: Longman, 1993), 1.
6Carl Von Clausewitz, On the Nature of War (London: Penguin Books – Great Ideas, 2005), 1.
7Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 760, italics mine.
