[MUSIC] The lack of ethics so, I would say were we have more to a more parties again coming together and with the aim of negotiating. Walking away with enemity, walking away with a greater division between the parties, I think that is failed diplomacy. Thing is that, there are probably possibly opportunities where parties can reconcile one another but, I just feel maybe where parties walk away with more divisions and more enemity towards each other that is failed diplomacy. The lack of ethics. So, I would say where we have more two or more parties again coming together, with the aim of negotiating, walking away with enemity, walking away with a greater division between the parties. I think that is failed diplomacy. Thing is that, there are probably possibly opportunities where parties can reconcile with one another but I just feel maybe where parties walk away with more divisions, and more enmity towards each other, that is failed diplomacy. >> If you're not talking and relations are completely broken, and whether it's especially if there's not even any back channel discussions, then clearly this is a failure and the most important thing of diplomacy is to keep the dialog going. Even it's going around in circles. Even if you're shouting slogans at each other, when things have, who's job, is, is the issue on the table. The fact that you keep talking eventually, I think, is gets us. So the moment you stop talking, you say I'm not speaking to the other side, unless you have a mediator who's coming in and shuttling from room to room, that's clearly the worst thing, to not have any dialogue whatsoever. >> As I said in the beginning, the first failure in diplomacy is to stop doing it. Secondly, to recap on that previous point, that some people want the failure of diplomacy. So, you can't assume in any kind of bargain or negotiation that everybody wants an agreement. You often see diplomats frustrate agreements. And you often see this within the context of conflict that, and that actually, to sort of rewind a little bit, many would argue that the use of force is the failure of the diplomatic process the world's fight has started, then diplomacies failed, of the various definitions of diplomacy along those lines. But I prefer a sort of a version of class that is war is politics by other means. War is still part of the diplomatic process. Until you've reached all out conflict, what's actually happening is how you're doing in the conflict. Whether or not you're taking losses. Whether you're making gains. All these things will feed into what's hopefully an ongoing diplomatic process because there's always a point at which an agreement can be reached. So the failure of diplomacy is as I said both to continue the diplomatic process, but also to understand that even within conflict, you keep searching for that point at which some kind of acknowledgement that you both suffered enough or that one side understands that it's probably going to lose at this continuous to be militarized conflict. So, successful diplomacy is about keeping that conversation going up to the point at which more than anything else, conflict will cease. Diplomats did not often have high expectations. You've got to be realistic. It's about small incremental gain. >> Well I think that's a much more difficult thing to identify, because that sort of presumes that you know what diplomacy is setting out to do in the first place. I think one thing for me is, I think diplomacy is an iterative process. In other words, it's not a one shot thing. I think that's how it's often portrayed, that again, you go off to a conference, or you'd go off to a meeting. And if you don't come back with an agreement, then somehow that's a failure. I don't necessarily see that is a failure, because as I say I think diplomacy is iterative. So you keep very often going back to the same problem again and again. Likewise, what I found in my own experience both personal and looking through academic and doing research here, is that very often when one diplomatic path is closed or blocked, others remain open. So, an example that I would give here is very often something like a G7 or a G20 meeting. Yes, they'll come away with a communique, but there'll be certain areas where perhaps no deal has been reached. And you think, well that's maybe a failure of diplomacy. The very often what happens is those same people who were at that meeting, will go off into another organization, or other setting, and negotiations will continue. And the OECD in my experience is very often where that happens. So the same group of people will go away into a perhaps a less public forum and quietly resolve the matter that they haven't been able to resolve in a more public space. >> Well if they start fighting again, which of course is a very, very direct sign of failure. I think apart from that, if they resume hostilities, even if it's not armed hostility, but they are politically antagonistic towards each other, if the grounds of difference are worse than what they were before, than all you did as a diplomat was to complicate an all ready bad situation. And I think that is absolutely something which needs to be avoided. I think one of the key elements of good diplomacy is to sort out all the different complicated strands. Try not so much to simplify them, but to make them transactable, and in that way, a transactable problem becomes something which can be negotiated. There's something there which could possibly be settled. >> Well, interestingly and you and I have talked about this in the past. I think boycott is an interesting thing, boycott very popular in the modern world. Boycott is the kind of conscious severing of any formal dialogue. So I do think that if a starting point for me isn't dialogue, then, possibly the point where diplomacy has completely failed is when there's no possibility for dialogue. And again as we were saying earlier, given the fact that states have found ways to have dialogue even when they're at war with each other, I do think that that is the staring point and the absence of dialog I think ends the possibility for any improvement so I would be very, very, very careful about the ending of dialog. [MUSIC]
