[MUSIC] Hello, I'm joined by Professor Stephen Hopgood, SOAS International Studies and Politics department. Stephen, thinking about your experience, how do you conceive diplomacy today? >> Well, diplomacy is, at one level diplomacy is something that we do every day. So even though it's become this kind of high status profession. In fact, when you handle a meeting, when you handle your personal relations, when you handle almost any aspect of your life, you'll often use the same skills that you'd see a diplomat use. The conventional few of diplomacy is something that governments do with each other. And that sort of makes it kind of sense, because in the past, when the people who talked to each other as diplomats were effectively the ruling classes within most states. So not only did they represent the country, they owned the country in many respects and ran the country. So not just kings and queens and princes, but also, aristocrats of one sort or another. The conventional view of diplomacy's very different for two or three reasons. One is there's a huge array of new kinds of actors in the diplomatic process. So not just multinational corporations and others, but international NGOs. And the growth of sort of popular engagement, particularly through social media and a much greater democratization. So these are all features within modern diplomacy. And then also, the development if you like of sort of an international interest, pre- the 20th century. You didn't really have the standing organizations that claim to represent the interest of humanity or human kind in some sense. And their interest is very different from the interest of states. So the interest of states might be winning a conflict and the interest of an international organization might be preventing a conflict. So even though these diplomatic skills are present in our everyday lives, the sort of widely understood sphere of diplomacy is effectively an ongoing conversation with numerous actors about matters sometimes of mutual interest and sometimes where their interests conflict. >> Great thank you, In that light what do you consider successful diplomacy to look like? What are its key characteristics? >> Well, the first thing about successful diplomacy I think is that diplomacy continues. This is a key thing. The failure of diplomacy is really diplomacy stops and then after what you're left with is just wool. So Syria at the moment is a very good example. It seems a hopeless case. Iraq is sort of collapsing, Syria is collapsing, it's begging to spread as we can see that conflict into other countries. Countries a long way away, but the diplomatic process is still going on, there are still conversations in an attempt to try and prevent that conflict from continuing. So the first thing about successful diplomacy is just that you can carry on doing it. And there's an old joke that the most successful diplomats are the ones who can stay awake the longest. That you're still there at three in the morning, day after day after day, trying to reach some kind of resolution. In thinking about successful diplomacy, it's also important to remember that different negotiators within the diplomatic process may want different things out of it. So some countries may want to keep fighting. President Assad in Syria has wanted to extend this conflict because he wants to defeat his opposition. And so Russia coming into the conflict has been a boon for him. And in some respects he's winning, but the diplomatic process for him would have been about staying in power, not about resolving the conflict. On the other side, many of the diplomats involved wanted to stop the fighting. So one must appreciate that successful diplomacy for some may mean that others don't get their interest realized. In a broader sense successful diplomacy is about reaching some kind of agreement, bargain, compromise that everybody can live with. So the sort of old idea that if nobody's happy with an agreement, then it's probably a decent agreement. Because everybody has some complaints about it, but everybody signed up to it. Everybody has to give a little bit, you're not going to get all of what you want. So to go back to the Syria example, the United States really does not want President Assad to be part of the solution. But its pretty clear President Assad will be part of the solution. The Americans are going to have to give on this. On the other hand, the Russians and Assad are going to have to give some other things in order to get the Americans to buy into any kind of final solution. So there'd be various ways to describe this but essentially, successful diplomacy is where it effects some kind of agreement deal or compromises reached. Everybody gives something. But whatever the worst harm is is to some degree contained. >> Thank you so much. Just push a little bit on what you mentioned there about the failure of diplomacy and what does that constitute in your eyes. >> As I said in the beginning >> The first failure diplomacy is to stop doing it. Secondly, to recap on that previous point, 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. And actually to sort of rewind a little bit, many would argue that the use of force is the failure of the diplomatic process. That once fighting has started then diplomacy's failed and the various definitions of diplomacy along those lines. But I prefer sort of a version of Clausewitz's 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 with the diplomatic process. But also to understand that even within conflict, you keep searching for that point at which some kind of acknowledgment that you've both suffered enough, or that one side understands that it's probably going to lose if this continues to be a militarized conflict. So successful diplomacy is about keeping that conversation going up to the point at which, more than anything else, conflict will cease. If you just allow the war to play itself out, then there will be untold suffering. And that's why I think Syria, again, is a good example of trying to keep the conversation going even though the suffering continues, because in the end all that's going to happen to the civilians in Syria is that they're going to continue being bombed. Effectively forever so even though it would like it's failed if it eventually prevents the fighting then we could call that a success. But diplomats did not often have high expectations, you've got to be realistic. It's about small incremental gains. >> Thank you, in terms of your experience in looking at the world as we see it today and also the work that you've done as an academic. Who do see is in a particular good examples of diplomats. Who are people you could look to and say they're skilled diplomat? One are the things you say about that is that we probably don't know who's the most skilled that for matter. One of the things that I think i's important to recognize by skilled diplomat are often they are precisely the people who don't make themselves a story. So the world of diplomacy, what we see is 1% of the diplomatic process at the highest level, with people flying from Geneva to Vienna to New York. But most diplomacy goes on behind the scenes. And it's about developing workable and realistic international agreements and conventions that facilitate trade, dealing with disease, dealing with drug trafficking. Dealing with all sorts of international problems. So the unsung heroes of which there are tens of thousands people we don't particularly see. I mean a diplomat of the sort of better known you could tink about people like for example Richard Hallbrook the American state department negotiator. Was in some ways very effective, particularly in dealing with aspects of the war in the Balkans. Some people would query whether he was a diplomat at all. Often he was a very sort of aggressive and odd negotiator. And so there's just an interesting question there about, when you have so much parent influence an American negotiator would have. Are they really diplomats or are they trying to force a deal upon others? And then someone, and obvious alternative would be somebody like Kofi Annan, who did two or three things which I think are important. One, he symbolized the idea that that process of negotiation should never stop. Secondly he was courageous enough at various points to stand up and say for example in relation to Iraq. This conflict doesn't need to happen. And to involve himself even though he was going to annoy a lot of the people he needed for support in New York particularly. And thirdly, it's part of that actually, in relation with Rwanda for which he felt very badly afterwords for not advocating a UN force in Rwanda. I know that in his recent book about this, he actually is quite frank about the difficulties of this. Of saying I got a telegram from Dealre, he's head of UN peacekeeping at the time. To galvanize the entire security counsel to intervene in a sovereign country on the basis of this would have led to a significant amount of skepticism about whether this was the right thing to do. But it's a very difficult call, and that you have to use this very sort of patient kind of diplomacy. And his sort of good humor, his willingness to engage himself, I think he, sort of post being Secretary General. But in Syria he sort of had had enough of the talk about reaching a peace agreement and the realities, that the conflict was just ongoing and wasn't really being resolved at all. But that sort of level of dignity under pressure. It sort of embodies the we must keep talking, there must be a way to do something about this. >> So Stephen, talk a little bit about the qualities of a diplomat. >> I think a good diplomat has to have three or four qualities. First of all I think trustworthiness. There's a book by an American political scientist called John Mearsheimer where he discovered that diplomats some times lie to their own populations about things, but they very rarely lie to each other. Because they understand that the next time around you'll lack credibility in a negotiation. So you have a degree of integrity and trustworthiness. You have to be creative, you have to be able to think of ways in which a deal might be done, ways in which you might be able to link one deal to another deal in order to make the negotiation more attractive for others, the resolution more attractive. And then a sort of sense of good humor, and remaining to some degree calm. That you must persevere with the process. You must not want diplomats to become extremely emotional about various sorts of things. Then they've, to some degree, forgotten what they're there for, which is really, to constantly negotiate. To put their own egos to one side and try to find anyway in which some kind of agreement can be reached. And then finally perseverance, it's just being able to keep going, being on top of your brief, so being very diligent about that, I think they would be the principal, vertues you'd look for in a successful diplomat. >> Thank you so much. [MUSIC]
