Diplomacy: Theory and Practice 2022 PDF

g.r.berridge DIPLO M A CY theory and practice  Diplomacy “Probably the most prolific contemporary writer on diplomacy is Professor Geoff R. Berridge. Each of his many books is impeccably well written and full of insights into the fascinating formation of m...

g.r.berridge DIPLO M A CY theory and practice  Diplomacy “Probably the most prolific contemporary writer on diplomacy is Professor Geoff R. Berridge. Each of his many books is impeccably well written and full of insights into the fascinating formation of modern diplomacy.” —Robert William Dry, New York University, USA, and Chairman of AFSA’s Committee on the Foreign Service Profession and Ethics “I discovered Geoff Berridge’s book on diplomacy after serving as a diplomat for over 30 years. It is well-researched, sophisticated, inspiring and, where the subject invites it, suitably ironic. I used the 4th edition with my students and will now continue working with the 5th edition.” —Dr Max Schweizer, Head Foreign Affairs and Applied Diplomacy, ZHAW School of Management and Law, Switzerland “Berridge’s Diplomacy is an enlightening journey that takes the student, the practitio- ner and the general reader from the front to the backstage of current diplomatic practice. The thoroughly updated and expanded text—also enriched with a stimulat- ing new treatment of embassies—is an invaluable guide to the stratagems and out- comes, continuities and innovations, of a centuries’ long process.” —Arianna Arisi Rota, Professor of History of Diplomacy at the University of Pavia, Italy “This is an excellent text-book which fills a gap in the current writing on diplomacy.” —Lord Wright of Richmond, Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office (UK), 1986–91 “This book remains the best introduction to the subject.” —Alan Henrikson, Director of Diplomatic Studies, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, USA “Berridge is the leading authority on contemporary diplomatic practice.” —Laurence E. Pope, former US ambassador and senior official at the Department of State “Berridge’s study of diplomacy is the standard text on the subject—succinct yet sub- stantial in content, lucid in style.” —John W. Young, Professor of International History, University of Nottingham, UK  G. R. Berridge Diplomacy Theory and Practice G. R. Berridge Politics and International Relations University of Leicester Leicester, UK DiploFoundation Geneva, Switzerland ISBN 978-3-030-85930-5    ISBN 978-3-030-85931-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85931-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: The front cover shows a meeting in Geneva in 2016 of the World Health Assembly, the main decision-making body of the World Health Organization. Credit: Xinhua / Alamy Stock Photo. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland  Also by G. R. Berridge BRITISH DIPLOMACY IN TURKEY, 1583 TO THE PRESENT: A Study in the Evolution of the Resident Embassy BRITISH HEADS OF MISSION AT CONSTANTINOPLE, 1583–1922 THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN DIPLOMACY and Other Essays DIPLOMACY AND SECRET SERVICE: A Short Introduction DIPLOMACY AT THE UN (co-editor with A. Jennings) THE DIPLOMACY OF ANCIENT GREECE: A Short Introduction DIPLOMATIC CLASSICS: Selected Texts from Commynes to Vattel DIPLOMATIC THEORY FROM MACHIAVELLI TO KISSINGER (with Maurice Keens-Soper, and T. G. Otte) A DIPLOMATIC WHISTLEBLOWER IN THE VICTORIAN ERA: The Life and Writings of E. C. Grenville-Murray ECONOMIC POWER IN ANGLO-SOUTH AFRICAN DIPLOMACY: Simonstown, Sharpeville and After EMBASSIES IN ARMED CONFLICT GERALD FITZMAURICE (1865–1939), CHIEF DRAGOMAN OF THE BRITISH EMBASSY IN TURKEY INTERNATIONAL POLITICS: States, Power and Conflict since 1945, Third Edition AN INTRODUCTION TO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (with D. Heater) THE PALGRAVE MACMILLAN DICTIONARY OF DIPLOMACY: Third Edition (with Lorna Lloyd) THE POLITICS OF THE SOUTH AFRICA RUN: European Shipping and Pretoria RETURN TO THE UN: UN Diplomacy in Regional Conflicts SOUTH AFRICA, THE COLONIAL POWERS AND ‘AFRICAN DEFENCE’: The Rise and Fall of the White Entente, 1948–60 TALKING TO THE ENEMY: How States without ‘Diplomatic Relations’ Communicate TILKIDOM AND THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE: The Letters of Gerald Fitzmaurice to George Lloyd For Jack Spence  Preface and Acknowledgments This edition of Diplomacy: Theory and Practice has been updated throughout and—despite the excision of some long passages that I concluded were either out of place or no longer important—considerably expanded. With the Covid-19 pandemic in mind and because I had ignored it in previous edi- tions, health diplomacy finds a major place for illustrative purposes. Among other subjects new to this edition are capacity-building in following up, embassy branch offices, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, interpreters at summits, and—unavoidably—the diplomatic implications of former US President Donald J. Trump. Subjects covered in the previous edi- tion but to which increased attention is given in this one include the use of embassies for transnational repression, video-conferencing, Twitter, intelli- gence officers on special missions, and the variation in representative offices by degree of diplomatic status. An innovation to which I must give special notice is the addition at the end of each chapter of a list of ‘Topics for seminar discussion or essays’. This draws not only on my teaching career but also on my long experience of vetting draft exam questions while an external examiner at five British universities. A good question should be short and clear—and provoke thought, which is therefore what I have tried to achieve on these lists. A few cautions: first, very few of these questions can be answered well by reliance on this book alone, hence the ‘Further reading’; second, some questions overlap, which does not matter unless they are used by a lecturer setting an exam; and third, most lists feature a comparative question (e.g., ‘Compare the roles of Austria and ix x Preface and Acknowledgments Switzerland in conflict resolution’ in the chapter on mediation), for advice on answering which, as well as on other points, see ‘7 common pitfalls to avoid in writing essays and dissertations’ on my website. In order to give better guidance on further reading at the end of each chap- ter, here and there I have annotated the works listed. Other things being equal, I have also given preference to sources freely available on the Internet. As in earlier editions, I have avoided providing URLs for such sources, partly because they are often so long, partly because they tend to change or disap- pear, and partly because it is usually easy enough to find a web resource via a search engine; I simply add ‘[www]’ to a reference available on the Internet at the time of writing, although a few might be behind paywalls. I do not believe that footnotes or endnotes are appropriate for a textbook. However, sources for quotations must be provided and I do this by means of in-text citations of full references to be found at the end of the book. Also, where a box relies chiefly on primary sources I provide these at the foot of the box itself. The sources for unreferenced recent events are usually serious news agencies such as Reuters, news websites such as Politico, and online versions of newspa- pers such as The Guardian (which has no paywall). For many points in the text, the sources are my own earlier writings or works listed in ‘Further read- ing’ that should be fairly obvious. Works listed in ‘References’ at the end of the book include all those cited in the text, together with the more important among those on which I have drawn that are not listed in ‘Further reading’. In providing book titles, it is an idiosyncrasy of mine that I put the name of the publisher before place of publication, because I find this intuitive and because publishers have been doing the same thing on the title pages of their own books for well over half a century. (Students beware! You will probably incur the wrath of your tutors if you follow my example.) As usual, I have prepared the Index myself. Due to production difficulties and space limitations, it is much shorter than before and I have concentrated the entries on diplomatic activity, procedures and institutions at the expense of countries and—with notable exceptions—persons. I believe the Index is not seriously the worse for its relative brevity. For valuable observations on parts of the text of this edition, I am grateful to Christiaan Sys, Petru Dumitriu, John W. Young, Keith Hamilton, and my daughter Willow Berridge. For sharing with me raw data from her research on health attachés, I am in debt to Sabrina Luh. I must also mention Jelena  Preface and Acknowledgments xi Jakovljevic, who has for many years expertly managed my website, on which the book is updated. Finally, I wish to thank most warmly the two anony- mous readers of my proposal for this edition for giving me valuable ideas that have shaped the final draft and Anne-Kathrin Birchley-Brun of the publisher for her patient and prompt support throughout. The responsibility for all remaining deficiencies is mine alone. Leicester, UK G. R. Berridge May 2021  Online Updating For each chapter in the book there is a corresponding page on my website, which is hosted by DiploFoundation. These pages contain further reflections, any corrections needed, and details of recent developments. Among other things, the website also has pages on ideas for dissertation and thesis topics, primary sources for study, recommended reading, and advice on essay and dissertation writing. Please visit http://grberridge.diplomacy.edu/ Links to other sites/organizations made to the content of this book by the publisher do not necessarily reflect the views of the author. xiii  Contents 1 The Foreign Ministry  1 Staffing and Supporting Missions Abroad    5 Policy-Making and Implementation   6 Coordination of Foreign Relations   12 Dealing with Foreign Diplomats at Home   15 Building Support at Home   16 Summary  17 Further Reading  17 Part I The Art of Negotiation  21 2 Prenegotiations 23 Agreeing the Need to Negotiate   24 Agreeing the Agenda   27 Agreeing Procedure  29 Secrecy  30 Format  30 Venue  33 Delegations  36 Timing  38 Summary  39 Further Reading  39 3 ‘Around-the-Table’ Negotiations 41 The Formula Stage   41 The Details Stage   45 xv xvi Contents Difficulties  46 Negotiating Strategies  47 Summary  50 Further Reading  50 4 Diplomatic Momentum 53 Deadlines  55 Self-imposed Deadlines  55 External Deadlines  56 Symbolic Deadlines  58 Overlapping Deadlines  59 Metaphors of Movement   60 Publicity  63 Raising the Level of the Talks   65 Summary  66 Further Reading  67 5 Packaging Agreements 69 International Legal Obligations at a Premium   70 Signaling Importance at a Premium   71 Convenience at a Premium   73 Saving Face at a Premium   74 Both Languages, or More   75 Small Print  76 Euphemisms  78 ‘Separate but Related’ Agreements   79 Summary  80 Further Reading  81 6 Following Up 83 Early Methods  84 Monitoring  87 Review Meetings  90 Capacity-Building  94 Summary  95 Further Reading  95  Contents xvii Part II Diplomacy with Diplomatic Relations  99 7 Embassies101 The Normal Embassy  105 The Fortress Embassy  115 The Mini-Embassy  118 The Militarized Embassy  119 Summary 121 Further Reading  122 8 Telecommunications125 Telephone Diplomacy Flourishes  126 Video-Conferencing Peaks  133 Summary 137 Further Reading  138 9 Consulates141 Consular Functions  146 Career Consuls  149 Honorary Consuls  152 Consular Sections  154 Summary 155 Further Reading  155 10 Secret Intelligence159 Ambassadors as Agent-Runners  160 Service Attachés  161 Intelligence Officers  163 Cuckoos in the Nest?  169 Summary 175 Further Reading  176 11 Conferences179 International Organizations  181 Procedure 183 Venue 183 Participation 184 Agenda 189 Public Debate and Private Discussion  190 Decision-Making 191 xviii Contents The ‘New Multilateralism’  195 Summary 196 Further Reading  197 12 Summits199 Professional Anathemas  200 General Case for the Defense  203 Serial Summits  204 Ad hoc Summits  206 The High-Level Exchange of Views  208 Secrets of Success  209 Summary 212 Further Reading  213 13 Public Diplomacy215 Rebranding Propaganda  215 The Importance of Public Diplomacy  217 The Role of the Foreign Ministry  219 The Role of the Embassy  222 Summary 225 Further Reading  226 Part III Diplomacy Without Diplomatic Relations 229 14 Embassy Substitutes231 Interests Sections  231 Consulates 236 Representative Offices  238 Front Missions  242 Summary 243 Further Reading  244 15 Special Missions247 The Advantages of Special Missions  247 The Variety of Special Missions  249 Unofficial Envoys  249 Official Envoys  251 To Go Secretly or Openly?  255 Summary 257 Further Reading  258  Contents xix 16 Mediation261 The Nature of Mediation  262 Different Mediators and Different Motives  264 Track One  264 Track Two  267 Multiparty Mediation  268 The Ideal Mediator  270 The Ripe Moment  273 Summary 274 Further Reading  275 Conclusion: The Counter-revolution in Diplomatic Practice277 References281 Index295  Abbreviations AU African Union [formerly Organization of African Unity] BCE Before the Common Era [aka ‘BC’] CGTN China Global Television Network CHOGM Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting COP Conference of the Parties [as in COP21, the twenty-first conference of the parties to the UNFCCC] CSCE Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe CSO Civil Society Organizations DFAT Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade EU European Union FAC Foreign Affairs Committee [British House of Commons] FAO UN Food and Agriculture Organization FAOHC The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the [US] Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training FARA Foreign Agents Registration Act [US] FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office FCDO Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States FOIA Freedom of Information Act G7 Group of Seven G20 Group of 20 GAVI Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters [British] GRU Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye [Russian—formerly Soviet— military intelligence] HHS Health and Human Services, US Department Humint human intelligence-gathering xxi xxii Abbreviations IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency ICJ International Court of Justice ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross ILC International Law Commission IMF International Monetary Fund ISC Intelligence and Security Committee [British] JCPOA Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [for Iran’s nuclear program] KGB Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti [Committee for State Security] KRG Kurdish Regional Government MIRV multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle MOU memorandum of understanding MSF Médecins sans Frontières [Doctors without Borders] NGO non-governmental organization NPT Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty NSA National Security Agency [US] OAS Organization of American States OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OHCHR Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN OIG Office of Inspector General [US Department of State] OSCE Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe P5 Permanent 5 [on the UN Security Council: Britain, France, PRC, Russia, United States] P5+1 P5 plus Germany PCO Passport Control Officer PLO Palestine Liberation Organization PNA Palestinian National Authority PNGed declared persona non grata—no longer welcome PRC People’s Republic of China QDDR Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review [US] SALT I Strategic Arms Limitations Talks [first negotiations, 1969–72] S&T Science and Technology Sigint Signals intelligence SIS Secret Intelligence Service [British; also known as MI6] SVR Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki [successor to the KGB—Russian External Intelligence Service] TECRO Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office TPO trade promotion organization UNESCO UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNFCCC UN Framework Convention on Climate Change UNICEF UN Children’s Fund, formerly UN International Children’s Emergency Fund  Abbreviations xxiii UNMOVIC UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission UNSCOM UN Special Commission [on Iraq] USIA United States Information Agency USINT US Interests Section Cuba USIP United States Institute of Peace VCCR Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (1963) VCDR Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961) WMD weapons of mass destruction WHO World Health Organization WTO World Trade Organization [formerly General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade]  List of Boxes Box 1.1 ‘Department of Foreign Affairs’ to ‘Department of State’ 2 Box 1.2 Communications with Embassies 3 Box 1.3 Foreign Ministries: Formal Titles Making a Point, and Some Metonyms4 Box 1.4 Crisis Management 7 Box 1.5 Should the Foreign Ministry Control Development Aid? 14 Box 2.1 The Geneva Conference Format for Middle East Peace Negotiations32 Box 3.1 Formula for an Anglo–Turkish Alliance, 12 May 1939 42 Box 3.2 Nuclear Talks with Iran: The Details Stage 45 Box 3.3 The Cost of Making Major Concessions Too Early 49 Box 4.1 The Non-paper 54 Box 4.2 The Chinese ‘Deadline’ on Hong Kong 56 Box 4.3 The Good Friday Agreement, 1998 59 Box 5.1 Treaty Registration with the UN 71 Box 5.2 The ‘Treaty’ So-called 72 Box 5.3 A Peace Treaty in the Wrong Language 75 Box 6.1 Thai Tribute to the People’s Republic of China 85 Box 6.2 Special Group on Visits to Presidential Sites: Iraq, 26 March–2 April 1998 88 Box 6.3 The International Commission 91 Box 7.1 Locally Engaged Staff and Diplomatic Immunity 106 Box 7.2 Embassy Branch Offices 107 Box 7.3 The Economic and/or Commercial Section 107 Box 7.4 The Health Attaché 108 Box 7.5 Embassies and Transnational Repression 114 Box 8.1 The White House–10 Downing Street Hotline 126 Box 8.2 The Reagan–Assad Telephone Call 130 xxv xxvi List of Boxes Box 9.1 The Main Differences Between Diplomatic and Consular Privileges and Immunities 145 Box 9.2 European Convention on Consular Functions (1967) 146 Box 9.3 Disgusted in Ibiza 148 Box 9.4 Consular Districts 151 Box 10.1 The British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) 164 Box 10.2 SIS and Passport Control Officer Cover 164 Box 10.3 British Consulate-General Hanoi During the Vietnam War 166 Box 10.4 Sigint Bases in Soviet Diplomatic and Consular Posts in the Cold War 168 Box 10.5 The State–CIA ‘Treaty of Friendship’, 1977 170 Box 10.6 The Raymond Davis Affair, Pakistan 2011 171 Box 10.7 The Five Eyes’ Alliance 174 Box 11.1 The International Sanitary Conferences, 1851–1938 180 Box 11.2 GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance 186 Box 11.3 The UN Security Council: Question of Reform 188 Box 11.4 Inflated ‘Delegations’ to the World Health Assembly, 2019 194 Box 12.1 Philippe de Commynes 201 Box 12.2 The Funeral Summit 207 Box 12.3 The Role of the Interpreter 211 Box 13.1 Twitter 218 Box 13.2 ‘News Management’: Correcting Foreign Diplomatic Correspondents220 Box 14.1 Protecting Powers and the VCDR (1961) 232 Box 14.2 Protecting Powers: When the Old System Lingers 233 Box 14.3 Diplomatic Acts and the VCCR (1963) 237 Box 14.4 The Consulates in Jerusalem 238 Box 14.5 The US/PRC Liaison Offices, 1973–1979 239 Box 15.1 The New York Convention on Special Missions (1969) 248 Box 15.2 About Lord Levy: Tony Blair’s Personal Envoy to the Middle East and Latin America 249 Box 15.3 James Clapper’s Secret Mission to North Korea, November 2014 254 Box 16.1 Good Offices, Conciliation, and Arbitration 262 Box 16.2 Dr Bruno Kreisky 266 Box 16.3 Armand Hammer: Citizen-Diplomat 268 Box 16.4 Action Group for Syria 269  Introduction Diplomacy is an essentially political activity and, well resourced and skillful, a major ingredient of power. Its chief purpose is to enable states to secure the objectives of their foreign policies without resort to force, propaganda, or law. It achieves this mainly by communication between professional diplomatic agents and other officials designed to secure agreements. Although it also includes such discrete activities as gathering information, clarifying inten- tions, and engendering goodwill, it is thus not surprising that, until the label ‘diplomacy’ was affixed to all of these activities by the British parliamentarian Edmund Burke in 1796, it was known most commonly as ‘negotiation’—by Cardinal Richelieu, the first minister of Louis XIII of France, as négociation continuelle. Diplomacy is not merely what professional diplomatic agents do; it is carried out by other officials and by private persons under the direction of officials. As we shall see, it is also carried out through many different channels besides the traditional resident mission. Together with the balance of power, which it both reflects and reinforces, diplomacy is the most important institu- tion of our society of states. The remote origins of diplomacy are probably to be found in the relations between the ‘Great Kings’ of the Near East in the second, or possibly even in the late fourth, millennium BCE. Its main features in these centuries were the dependence of communications on messengers and merchant caravans, of diplomatic immunity on codes of hospitality to strangers, and of the obser- vance of treaties on terror of the gods under whose unforgiving gaze they were confirmed. However, although apparently adequate to the times, diplomacy during these centuries remained rudimentary. In the main this would seem to be because it was not called on very often and because communications were slow, laborious, insecure, and unpredictable. xxvii xxviii Introduction Not so much later but more varied and probably more effective in its meth- ods seems to have been the diplomacy of ancient China. As early as the last two decades of the eighth century BCE, in a large region of some hundreds of independent political entities well before the empire emerged in 221 BCE, there is evidence of what were probably already well-established diplomatic customs. Rulers themselves met in twos or threes, for example, to form mili- tary plans, affirm friendly relations, make peace, or settle a marriage alli- ance—although they convened ‘in the open, generally by lakes or on hills at more or less sacred spots’, a practice probably born in times ‘when rulers dared not open their capitals or cities to other rulers accompanied by retinues’ (Britton: 619). (However, princes in some friendly relationships made court visits of a highly ceremonial nature in order to solidify their friendships.) More numerous contacts were made by envoys of high rank enjoying the ‘extra-clan immunity’ of nobles; their missions were designed for similar pur- poses but also included the delivery of gifts and preparations for the princes’ conferences (Britton: 634). Treaties were solemnized by blood oaths, and mediation—uninvited as well as encouraged—was also a customary practice. In the Greek world of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, which included over 1000 city-states, conditions both demanded and favored an even more sophisticated diplomacy, and great advances were made. First and foremost, city-states appointed resident representatives to look after their interests abroad, albeit not from their own people but instead from citizens of the for- eign city-state, who for this reason bear a superficial resemblance to the mod- ern honorary consul (see Chap. 9). The proxenos, as he was known, who was usually an influential politician or judge, differed from the honorary consul in so far as he was expected to handle any high-level political matters that came up as well as the more mundane business of looking after visitors from the city he served. Even small city-states appointed many proxenoi. The ancient Greeks also employed large special missions, invented the oratorical techniques required to gain popular acceptance of a bad as well as a good argument (the art of rhetoric), publicized important treaties by inscribing them on stone or bronze pillars (stelai) located in temples or other sacred places, practiced mul- tilateral diplomacy in religious and military ‘leagues’, and employed media- tion more or less thinly disguised as arbitration in the settlement of many territorial disputes. In late medieval Europe, the Byzantine Empire’s contribution in its declin- ing centuries was to what would now be called public diplomacy, turning its genius to ‘maintaining the illusion of world domination’ (Wozniac). Thus other rulers were treated as junior members of the Emperor’s ‘family of kings’; by means of elaborate ceremonial and extraordinary artifice, foreign envoys  Introduction xxix and minor rulers visiting Constantinople were overawed by the Emperor’s power; and treaties were dressed up as unilateral decrees (‘golden bulls’), so that even the most humiliating concessions—including the payment of trib- ute to powerful barbarians on the Empire’s retreating frontiers—were made to appear as acts of imperial grace. Toward the end of the Middle Ages and over the following centuries, the Republic of Venice had begun to set the pace, establishing new standards of honesty and technical proficiency in diplomacy; the relazioni, the detailed reports on all aspects of the country where ambassadors had served that were presented to the Senate at the end of their tours, became famous. It was in the Italian city-states’ system—of which Venice was a prominent member—that in the late fifteenth century the recognizably modern system of diplomacy first made its appearance. The hyper-insecurity of the rich but poorly defended Italian states induced by the repeated invasions of their pen- insula by the powers beyond the Alps after 1494, made essential a diplomacy that was both continuous and conducted with less fanfare. Fortunately, no great barriers were presented by language or religion, and although communi- cations still depended chiefly on messengers on horseback, the relatively short distances between city states made this less of a drawback. It is not surprising, therefore, that it was this period that saw the birth of the genuine resident embassy; that is to say, in contrast to the proxenos, a resident mission headed by a citizen of the prince or republic whose interests it served. The Italian system, the spirit and methods of which are captured so well in the despatches of Niccolò Machiavelli to the Florentine Ten of War, was later named the ‘French system of diplomacy’ by the British scholar-diplomat Harold Nicolson (Nicolson 1954: Ch. 3). He did this with some justification because it was Frenchmen—notably Cardinal Richelieu and François de Callières—who were so influential in refining its practice and developing its theory, and because French gradually replaced Latin as the working language of diplomacy. The French system was the first fully developed system of diplo- macy and the basis of the modern—essentially bilateral—system (see Chap. 7). In the early twentieth century the French system was modified but not, as some hoped and others feared, transformed. The ‘open diplomacy’ of ad hoc and permanent conferences—notably the League of Nations—was simply grafted onto the existing network of bilateral communications, which weath- ered the attacks on it by the Communist regimes in Soviet Russia and, later, China, as it had done those of the French revolutionaries of the late eigh- teenth century. Why did diplomacy survive these assaults and continue to develop to such a degree and in such an inventive manner that, at the begin- ning of the twenty-first century, we can speak with some confidence of a xxx Introduction world diplomatic system of unprecedented strength? The reason is that the conditions that first encouraged the development of diplomacy have for some decades obtained perhaps more fully than ever before. These are a balance of power between a plurality of states, mutually impinging interests of an unusu- ally urgent kind, efficient and secure international communication, and rela- tive cultural toleration—the rise of radical Islam notwithstanding. As already noted, diplomacy is an important means by which states pursue their foreign policies, and in many states these are still shaped in significant degree in a ministry of foreign affairs. Such ministries also have the major responsibility for a state’s diplomats serving abroad and for dealing (formally, at any rate) with foreign diplomats at home. It is for this reason that this book begins with the foreign ministry. Following this, it is divided into three parts. Part I considers the art of negotiation, the most important activity of the world diplomatic system as a whole. Part II examines the channels through which negotiations, together with the other functions of diplomacy, are pur- sued when states enjoy normal diplomatic relations. Part III looks at the most important ways in which these are carried on when they do not. Further Reading Adcock, F. and D. J. Mosley, Diplomacy in Ancient Greece (Thames and Hudson: London, 1975). Part 2, by Mosley. Berridge, G. R. (ed.), Diplomatic Classics: Selected texts from Commynes to Vattel (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2004). Berridge, G. R., The Diplomacy of Ancient Greece: A short introduction (DiploFoundation: Geneva, 2018). Available on the ISSUU platform. Berridge, G. R. et al (eds), Diplomatic Theory from Machiavelli to Kissinger (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2001). Britton, Roswell S., ‘Chinese interstate intercourse before 700 BC’, American Journal of International Law, vol. 29(4), 1935. Bull, Hedley and Adam Watson (eds), The Expansion of International Society (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1984). Cohen, Raymond and Raymond Westbrook (eds), Amarna Diplomacy: The beginnings of international relations (Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 2000). Eilers, Claude (ed), Diplomats and Diplomacy in the Roman World (Brill: Leiden, 2009). Introduction and ‘Roman perspectives on Greek diplo- macy’ by Sheila L. Ager.  Introduction xxxi Frey, Linda and Marsha Frey, ‘“The reign of the charlatans is over”’: the French revolutionary attack on diplomatic practice’, The Journal of Modern History, vol. 65(4), Dec., 1993. Frodsham, J. D. (transl. and ed.), The First Chinese Embassy to the West: The Journals of Kuo Sung-T’ao, Liu Hsi-Hung and Chang Te-Yi (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1974). Hamilton, Keith and Richard Langhorne, The Practice of Diplomacy, 2nd edn (Routledge: London, 2011). Chs 1–4. Jones, Raymond A., The British Diplomatic Service, 1815–1914 (Colin Smythe: Gerrards Cross, Bucks., 1983). Liverani, Mario, International Relations in the Ancient Near East (Palgrave: Basingstoke, 2001). Intro. and ch. 10. Machiavelli, Niccolò, trsl. by Christian E. Detmold, The Historical, Political, and Diplomatic Writings of Niccolo Machiavelli, (James R. Osgood: Boston, 1882), vol. III (‘Missions’) and vol. IV (‘Missions continued’). More com- monly known as the ‘Legations’, these are Machiavelli’s diplomatic des- patches sent back to Florence. Detmold’s English translation of the complete works is highly regarded and still, as far as I know, the only one available of the ‘Legations’. Mack, William, Proxeny and Polis: Institutional networks in the Ancient Greek World (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2015). Mack, William (Project Director), Proxeny Networks of the Ancient World (a database of proxeny networks of the Greek city-states) [www]. Mattingly, G., Renaissance Diplomacy (Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1965). Meier, S. A., The Messenger in the Ancient Semitic World (Scholars Press: Atlanta, GA, 1988). Mösslang, M, and T. Riotte (eds), The Diplomats’ World: A cultural history of diplomacy, 1815–1914 (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2008). Munn-Rankin, J. M., ‘Diplomacy in Western Asia in the early second millen- nium B.C.’, Iraq, Spring 1956, vol. 18(1). Nicolson, Harold, The Evolution of Diplomatic Method (Constable: London, 1954). Peyrefitte, Alain, The Collision of Two Civilisations: The British expedition to China 1792–4, trsl. from the French by J. Rothschild (Harvill: London, 1993). Queller, Donald E., The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages (Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1967). Queller, Donald E., ‘The development of ambassadorial relazioni’, in J. R. Hale (ed), Renaissance Venice (Faber and Faber: London, 1974). xxxii Introduction Selbitschka, Armin. ‘Early Chinese diplomacy: “Realpolitik” versus the so-­ called tributary system’, Asia Major, vol. 28(1), 2015. Sharp, Paul and Geoffrey Wiseman (eds), The Diplomatic Corps as an Institution of International Society (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2007). Skinner, Quentin, Machiavelli (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1981). Ch. 1, The Diplomat. Victoria Tin-bor Hui, ‘Toward a dynamic theory of international politics: insights from comparing ancient China and early modern Europe’, International Organization, vol. 58(1), Winter, 2004. Wozniak, E. E., ‘Diplomacy, Byzantine’, in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 4 (Scribner’s: New York, 1984).  1 The Foreign Ministry It is difficult to find a state today that does not have, in addition to a diplo- matic service, a ministry dedicated to its administration and direction. This is usually known as the ministry of foreign affairs or, for short, foreign ministry. It is easy to forget that this ministry came relatively late onto the scene. In fact, its appearance in Europe post-dated the arrival of the resident diplomatic mission by nearly three centuries. This chapter will begin by looking briefly at the origins and development of the foreign ministry, and then examine its different roles. Until the sixteenth century, the individual states of Europe did not concen- trate responsibility for foreign affairs in one administrative unit but allocated it between different, infant bureaucracies on a geographical basis. Some of these offices were also responsible for certain domestic matters. This picture began to change under the combined pressure of the multiplying interna- tional relationships and thickening networks of resident embassies that were a feature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The first of these trends increased the possibilities of inconsistency in the formulation and execution of foreign policy, and this demanded more unified direction and better pre- served archives. The second trend—foreign policy execution by means of resi- dent missions—increased vastly the quantity of correspondence flowing home. This added the need for attention to methods of communication with the missions, including the creation and renewal of their ciphers. It also meant regard to their staffing and, especially, their financing—including that of their secret intelligence activities, because separate secret service agencies did not appear until very much later (see Chap. 10). All of this demanded better pre- served archives as well, not to mention more clerks and messengers. In sum, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1 G. R. Berridge, Diplomacy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85931-2_1 2 G. R. Berridge the rapid increase in négociation continuelle abroad required not only continu- ous organization at home but also one bureaucracy, rather than several in competition. It has often been assumed that it was in France that the first foreign minis- try began to emerge when, in 1589, Henry III gave to one of his secretaries of state, Louis de Revol, sole responsibility for foreign affairs, an administrative innovation that—after some regression—was confirmed by Richelieu in 1626. But there might well be other candidates, within and beyond Europe, for the title of first foreign ministry. Moreover, the office of the French secre- tary of state for foreign affairs in Richelieu’s time was little more than a per- sonal staff: it was not even an outline version of a modern foreign ministry, with an organized archive and defined bureaucratic structure. This had to wait until the last years of the reign of Louis XIV at the beginning of the eigh- teenth century (Picavet: 39–40). Indeed, it was only during the eighteenth century that a recognizably mod- ern foreign ministry became the general rule in Europe, and even then the administrative separation of foreign and domestic business was by no means watertight. Britain came late, having to wait until 1782 for the creation of the Foreign Office. The US Department of State was established shortly after this, in 1789 (Box 1.1). It was the middle of the nineteenth century before China, Japan, and Turkey followed suit. Box 1.1 ‘Department of Foreign Affairs’ to ‘Department of State’ A Department of Foreign Affairs was established by the Continental Congress on 10 January 1781. This title was also initially employed for the foreign ministry of the United States itself under legislation approved by the House and Senate on 21 July 1789 and signed into law by President Washington six days later. In September, the Department was given certain domestic duties as well, which subsequently came to include management of the Mint, fulfilling the role of keeper of the Great Seal of the United States, and the taking of the census. No longer charged solely with foreign tasks, it was for this reason that, at the same juncture, the department’s name was changed to ‘Department of State’. Despite surrendering most of its domestic duties in the nineteenth century, the Department found itself stuck with the name. Even in Europe, however, it was well into the nineteenth century before foreign ministries, which remained small, became anything like bureaucrati- cally sophisticated. By this time, they were divided into different administra- tive units on the basis either of specialization in a particular function (e.g., protocol and treaties), or—more commonly—geographical regions. In addi- tion to the foreign minister, who was its temporary political head, the typical  1 The Foreign Ministry 3 foreign ministry had by this time also acquired a permanent senior official to oversee its administration. As time wore on, this official also acquired influ- ence over policy, sometimes very great. Entry into the foreign ministry increas- ingly demanded suitable educational qualifications, although the pool from which recruits came was limited to the upper reaches of the social hierarchy until well into the twentieth century, and certainly in some states—and prob- ably in many—still is. The foreign ministry continued to have rivals for influence over the formu- lation and execution of foreign policy in the nineteenth century. Among these were the monarchs or presidents, chancellors or prime ministers, who felt that their positions gave them special prerogatives to dabble in this area, as also the war offices with their nascent intelligence services. Nevertheless, assisted fur- ther by the greater control of missions abroad given to it by the communica- tions revolution of the nineteenth century (Box 1.2), if the foreign ministry had a golden age, this was probably it. It did not last long. Distaste for both commerce and popular meddling in foreign policy was entrenched in most foreign ministries, which were essentially aristocratic in ethos, and this put them on the defensive in the following century. World War I was also a tre- mendous blow to their prestige because it seemed to prove the failings of the old diplomacy over which they presided. Much of the growing dissatisfaction with the way ministries such as these were staffed and organized, as well as with the manner in which they conducted their affairs, focused on the admin- istrative (and in some instances social) divisions within the bureaucracy of diplomacy. Despite the intimate link between those in the foreign ministry and the diplomats serving abroad, both their work and the social milieux in which they Box 1.2 Communications with Embassies The heavy reliance on messengers on horseback (and later in horse-drawn vehi- cles) for the carriage of diplomatic messages between home and missions abroad began to change radically with the introduction during the nineteenth century of steam ships, steam locomotives, and above all the electric telegraph. Soon, using submarine as well as land cables, written messages sent by telegraph cut delivery times over some routes from weeks to hours, although they were inse- cure and so needed to be enciphered, and for a long time were also expensive and prone to garbling. However, the invention of radio telegraphy in the 1890s improved this medium further. In the early twentieth century, it also became possible to deliver the spoken word over vast distances by telephone (available in the late nineteenth century only over short distances) and short wave radio, although it remained a very long time before foreign ministries steeled them- selves to risk these methods. 4 G. R. Berridge mixed were very different. Persons attracted to the one sphere of activity were not, as a rule, attracted to the other, and they were usually recruited by differ- ent methods. Foreign ministry officials had more in common with the civil servants in other government ministries than with their own glittering diplo- mats, whom in any case they rarely met and had good grounds for believing looked on them as social inferiors. They also tended to develop different out- looks. American diplomats, who closed ranks in the face of frequent ridicule at home (notably in the Middle and Far West), developed a particularly strong ‘fraternal spirit’ (Simpson: 3–4). The result was that, except in small states, it became the norm for the two branches of diplomacy—the foreign ministry and its representatives abroad—to be organized separately and have distinct career ladders. Between them there was little if any transfer. It was also usual for the representatives abroad to be themselves divided into separate services, the diplomatic and the consular—and, later on, the commercial as well. Box 1.3 Foreign Ministries: Formal Titles Making a Point, and Some Metonyms Most foreign ministries describe themselves as the ‘Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (or some generic equivalent), but in their formal titles it is now common to see text added that advertises a priority of the moment or a recent merger with another ministry, or makes some other point. It is a pity that a few feel the need to add the word ‘Cooperation’, as if otherwise they might be suspected of a greater interest in the opposite. Some foreign ministries are also referred to by the names of buildings or streets with which they are associated (metonyms). The following list illustrates the variety of titles given to foreign ministries at the time of writing (2021), together with some metonyms: Australia: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Austria: Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs Belgium: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade, and Development Cooperation Benin: Ministry of Foreign Affair and African Integration Botswana: Ministry of International Affairs and Cooperation Brazil: Ministry of Foreign Affairs (‘Itamaraty’) France: Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs (‘Quai d’Orsay’) India: Ministry of External Affairs (‘South Block’) Italy: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (‘Farnesina’) Japan: Ministry of Foreign Affairs (‘Gaimusho’) Malaysia: Ministry of Foreign Affairs (‘Wisma Putra’) Mauritius: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Trade Senegal: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Senegalese Abroad South Africa: Department of International Relations and Cooperation Syria: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates United Kingdom: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office United States of America: Department of State (‘Foggy Bottom’)  1 The Foreign Ministry 5 The gradual unification during the twentieth century of the bureaucracy of diplomacy, including that of the diplomatic and consular services (see Chap. 9), no doubt played its part in enabling the foreign ministry to survive the later challenge of ‘direct dial diplomacy’, discussed later in this chapter. Freedom from the conservative reflexes likely to have been produced by close relationships with powerful domestic interests also assisted the foreign minis- try by making it easier to adapt to changing circumstances. There is no doubt, however, that it is the continuing importance of the tasks discharged by the foreign ministry that has ensured its survival as a prominent department of central government in most states. What are they? Staffing and Supporting Missions Abroad The efficiency of the administrative departments that carry out the numerous tasks falling under this sub-heading is of great importance, not least in foreign ministries where the traditional glitter of the diplomatic career has been tar- nished and the loss of experienced staff in mid-career is a constant risk. These tasks include the following: Providing the personnel for the state’s diplomatic and consular missions abroad, including posts at the permanent headquarters of international organizations. This means not only their recruitment and training, some- times in a fully-fledged diplomatic academy such as the Rio Branco Institute in Brazil, but also the sensitive job of selecting the right persons for particu- lar posts, which is of special importance in the case of mini-­embassies (see Chap. 7). Supporting the diplomats and their families, especially when they find themselves in hardship posts or in the midst of an emergency. Because of the murderous attacks on its embassies in recent decades, the US Department of State has had to devote considerable energy and resources to giving them greater protection, and since 1999 has required an Office of Casualty Assistance. Providing the physical fabric of the missions abroad, which means renting, purchasing, or even constructing suitable buildings, and then providing them with equipment and furnishings, regular maintenance, guards, and secure communications with home. Performance measurement of missions against stated objectives, including periodic visits of inspection. The reports that follow such visits are usually valuable, provided they are conducted by persons commanding ­professional 6 G. R. Berridge respect. The Semiannual Reports of the Department of State’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), which has a hotline for whistle-blowers, are available on the internet. These are unclassified summaries of detailed indi- vidual reports of inspections, although some of the latter—much the more interesting and rightly in parts redacted—are also publicly available. Among those produced during 2020 were reports on the US embassies in Namibia, Bangladesh, and the Czech Republic, as well as an audit of the Department’s own Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations. By contrast, the quantitative performance measurement popular with some foreign ministries in recent years is generally worse than useless: not only is it unsuited to judging missions’ core functions of policy advice and imple- mentation but it also tends to frustrate staff and magnify the importance of their commercial and consular services simply because they are more ame- nable to measurement; for example, the value of arms sales assisted. Policy-Making and Implementation The foreign ministry has traditionally had the main role in foreign policy-­ making, issuing the appropriate instructions to missions and ensuring that they are carried out. However, communications technology now allows mis- sions to join more easily in debates at home and thereby themselves contrib- ute more to policy; and some argue it should be their responsibility alone. The foreign ministry should certainly engage its missions abroad in lively dialogue on the bilateral relationships in which they are at the sharp end, but it is important that it should not surrender too much influence to them. If it does, it risks foreign policy being infected either by ‘localitis’, a resident mission’s adoption of the host state’s point of view; or by ‘clientitis’, the sacrifice of objective reporting by the mission to what some important client in its own metropolis wants to hear. It is in regard to policy advice that what are sometimes known as the ‘politi- cal departments’ come in. Most of these are arranged either along geographi- cal or functional lines, as already mentioned, although in an acute crisis a special section within the ministry might take over (Box 1.4). Geographical departments normally concentrate on regions or individual states of particu- lar importance, while functional departments (sometimes called ‘subject’ or ‘thematic’ departments) deal typically with high-profile general issues such as climate change, drugs and international crime, human rights, and energy security.  1 The Foreign Ministry 7 Box 1.4 Crisis Management The foreign ministries of states that have to deal regularly with crises with national security implications tend to have a crisis section that is permanently operational. In the Israeli foreign ministry, for example, this is called the ‘Situation Room’, while in the US Department of State its name is the ‘Operations Center’. Significantly, both are located within the office with overall coordinat- ing functions within their ministry. Most states handle crises of this sort by means of temporary arrangements, for which they have more or less precise plans, although increasing numbers have permanent units ready to respond to con- sular emergencies abroad. In March 2020 the Ukrainian foreign ministry created a Situation Room to coordinate its response to the problems caused by the Covid-19 virus for its citizens abroad. Historically, the geographical departments dominated foreign ministries and so, until relatively recently, had more prestige. Among those in the British Foreign Office, the Eastern Department was for many years before World War I the most prestigious and aristocratic; it covered the Ottoman Empire and its predatory Russian neighbor, and was thus much absorbed with the famous ‘Eastern Question’ (whether to prop up or carve up the Ottoman Empire). In the US Department of State, an attempt in the 1950s and 1960s to give more prominence to functional departments at the expense of the regional bureaus was made more difficult by personnel distinctions remaining from the pre-­ Wriston reform era: the functional departments were staffed by civil servants, while the geographical ones were staffed by diplomatic officers. Even issue-oriented functional departments, however, had some historical pedigree. The British Foreign Office, for example, created a Slave Trade Department at the beginning of the 1820s, although it was initially an exter- nally funded add-on that did not become part of the regular establishment until 1854 and was without parallel in other European foreign ministries. Departments such as these concentrate technical expertise and advertise the fact that the foreign ministry is seized with the current international problems of greatest concern. More in harmony than geographical departments with the concept of ‘globalization’, functional departments now tend to be at least as prominent, and often more so. It is, however, highly unlikely that they will replace the geographical departments completely and—except on the part of small, poor states with very limited bilateral ties of any importance—it would be a mistake to pursue this course. Apart from the fact that the disappearance of geographical departments would weaken the case for a separate foreign ministry (since the international sections of other government departments might be regarded as capable of taking over their functional work), there are 8 G. R. Berridge two main reasons for this. First, the conduct of bilateral relations with an important individual state or region by half a dozen or more functional departments, each with a different global agenda, is hardly likely to be well coordinated. Second, functional departments inevitably have little—if any— of the kind of specialist knowledge of the languages or history of the world’s regions essential for judicious policy advice; a persuasive internal FCO report laid much of the blame on country ignorance for the failure of British policy in Iran prior to the fall of the Shah in 1979 (Browne: chs. 10, 11; FAC 2011: 11, 68–70). It is chiefly for one or both of these reasons that, in the late 1970s, major reforms in the French foreign ministry restored administrative divisions on geographical lines after decades of advance by the functional principle; that geographical departments still actively jostle functional departments in the FCDO; and that the State Department’s six regional bureaus remain ‘the heart’ of its operations, even if they might look ‘a mere bump on its impossi- bly complex and horizontal wiring diagram’ (Pope: 20). It is also reassuring that, even among small states, it is not difficult to find foreign ministries where geographical departments are prominent in their structures; Armenia and Botswana provide good examples. With the rise in importance of interna- tional organizations, most foreign ministries now have multilateral depart- ments as well, some of which also have a geographical focus in so far as they deal with regional bodies such as the African Union (AU). Some foreign ministries also have departments known by names such as ‘intelligence and research’ or ‘research and analysis’. These specialize in general background research and assessing the significance of information obtained by secret intelligence agencies (see Chap. 10). Although chiefly a consumer of the product of these agencies, the foreign ministry sometimes plays a key role in its assessment in high-level inter-departmental committees. If policy is to be well made and implemented properly, the foreign minis- try’s institutional memory must be in good order. This applies especially to the details of promises made and received in the past, and potential promises that have been long gestating in negotiations. This is why such an important sec- tion of even the earliest foreign ministries was their archive (later, ‘registry’) of correspondence and treaties, as well as maps, reports, internal memoranda, and other important documents. Before separate foreign ministries were cre- ated, such archives were kept by other secretaries of state or palace officials. They even existed in the palaces of the Great Kings of the ancient Near East. Preserving securely, organizing systematically, and facilitating rapid access to their archives by indexing are key foreign ministry responsibilities. A related task in the foreign ministries of liberal democracies is determining carefully  1 The Foreign Ministry 9 what sensitive documents—and parts of sensitive documents—can be released to the public upon application under freedom of information legislation. Many foreign ministries also have a small historians’ section that is responsi- ble, among other things, for selecting and publishing periodically hitherto secret documents of historical interest. In America, under the title Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), these have appeared since 1861. Since foreign policy should be lawful and sometimes pursued by resort to judicial procedures, and since agreements negotiated by exhausted diplomats need to be scrutinized for sloppy language, internal inconsistencies, and incompatibility with existing agreements, legal advice and support is always vital—although whether it is taken is another matter. In some states, it has been traditional to provide this from a law ministry (‘ministry of justice’) serv- ing all government departments. Nevertheless, the predominant pattern is now for a major foreign ministry to have its own legal (or ‘treaties’) division, headed by an officer usually known as the legal adviser or, in French-speaking states, directeur des affaires juridiques. It is also now more common for the members of this division to be lawyers specializing in this work and not dip- lomats with a legal education who are rotated between the legal division and general diplomatic work. It is interesting, and perhaps hopeful for the strengthening of international law, that since the end of the 1980s informal meetings of the legal advisers of the foreign ministries of UN member states have been held on a regular basis at the organization’s headquarters in New York. The foreign ministries of the developed states, and a few others, also have a policy-planning department. Very much a product of the years following World War II, this was a response to the frequent criticism of unpreparedness when crises erupted and was inspired in part by the planning staffs long-­ employed by military establishments. It is no accident that the Department of State was given its first planning staff when a former soldier, General George C. Marshall, became secretary of state after the war, and that its Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR)—the first of which was com- pleted at the end of 2010—is modelled on the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review. The best planning units—in regular contact with outside bodies such as research institutes—are chiefly concerned with trying to antici- pate future problems; identifying the type, quantity, and disposition of the resources needed to meet them; and, in the process, challenging conventional mind-sets. The British foreign ministry’s planners, like those in the State Department, appear not to look much beyond the medium term of four to five years, although others are more ambitious. Their potential value was acknowledged following the failure of British diplomacy to anticipate the fall 10 G. R. Berridge of the Shah in 1979. Thus, one proposal made by the secret FCO report to help avoid such embarrassments in the future was that the planning staff should regularly suggest ‘improbable scenarios’ for political risk countries and challenge the embassy and the geographical department to refute them. This was also one of the report’s recommendations accepted by the British ambas- sador to Iran at the time, Sir Anthony Parsons, who believed that his failure was not one of information but of imagination. A radical report on Dutch diplomacy maintained that the most important element of the professional expertise of The Netherlands’ foreign ministry should be its ‘ability to predict future developments’ (Advisory Committee: 73). Foreign ministry planners are usually given freedom from current opera- tional preoccupations but are not left so remote from them that they become ‘too academic’ (Coles: 71, 87–8). With their strategic brief and supposed to provide independent judgments, it is not surprising that they are usually per- mitted to work directly under the ministry’s executive head. However, it is often difficult to get busy foreign ministers and senior officials, who must inevitably give priority to current events, to focus on discussions of even the medium term, while the operational departments might well be obstructive. As one former policy planner has observed, although they always say they want ‘a strong institutionalized challenge’ to their assumptions, ‘in reality they prefer a quiet life’ (Cowper-Coles 2012: 142). The result is that the policy planners often feel they are wasting their time, which was certainly true of George Kennan. The first director of the State Department’s planning staff, he resigned after Dean Acheson, who had replaced Marshall as secretary of state, began to make him feel like a ‘court jester’ and the operational units began to insist on policy recommendations going up through the ‘line of command’ (Kennan: 426–7, 465–6). Today’s State Department policy planners, who provide ‘mostly a speechwriting shop’, probably feel the same, although they have only themselves to blame: the first QDDR was at once turgid and other-­ worldly, ‘drew nothing but yawns’ in the White House, and is best forgotten (Pope: 39). A related development of recent years is the appearance in a few foreign ministries, notably those of Norway and the UK, of a department dedicated to the big data analysis that has proved so productive for decision-making in the business world. In February 2018 a report on the subject commissioned by the Policy Planning and Research Unit of the Finnish foreign ministry was published by DiploFoundation. This supported the creation of a ‘small, inno- vative’ big data unit in the foreign ministry to ‘explore possible big data appli- cations’, and also the appointment of a ‘big data champion’ in those departments most likely to benefit from them (Jacobson et al.: 45–8). It also  1 The Foreign Ministry 11 concluded that even large foreign ministries would need to outsource a great deal of big data work to the private sector. The foreign ministry’s influence on government policy varies from one state to another. It is usually highest in those with both a constitutional mode of government and long-established, strongly staffed foreign ministries with the reputation for being one of the ‘great offices of state’, as in France and Britain. This is one of the reasons why a major problem faced by Tony Blair (British prime minister from 1997 until 2007) when re-shuffling his cabinets was that everyone wanted to be foreign secretary and, once they had it, wanted to cling on to it ‘until the end of time, or at least the end of the government…’ (Blair 210a: 270, 340). However, even in such states the foreign ministry is at a permanent disadvantage relative to the military-intelligence complex if acute military insecurity is ingrained, as in Israel. A foreign ministry’s influence in the same state can also fluctuate markedly over time, both in the case of that of its permanent officials relative to the ministry’s political leadership and of the ministry as a whole relative to the rest of government. One reason for this is the inevitable variation in the degree to which prejudices embedded among officials chime with those of the political leadership. For example, the pro-Indian tendency of the Department of State at the time in the early 1970s when—for reasons of China policy—the Nixon White House was ‘tilting’ to Pakistan, reduced further this foreign ministry’s influence over US policy toward south Asia. But this was nothing compared to the slump in the State Department’s position following the inauguration of President Trump in January 2017. Led by secretaries of state without experi- ence, hammered with savage budget cuts, subjected to a complete reorganiza- tion without any strategic rationale, and embarrassed by a whole raft of senior positions (including chiefs of mission) left unfilled, the department became notorious in Washington for its demoralized staff and the exodus of experi- enced personnel. Meanwhile, the FCO paid the price for its opposition to Brexit, which it correctly judged would seriously weaken British diplomacy while advancing the Russian goal of disharmony in Europe. Responsibility for negotiating Brexit was given in July 2016 to a new ministry, the ‘Department for Exiting the European Union’, and some of its tasks in economic diplo- macy were simultaneously handed to a new ‘Department for [non-EU] International Trade’. Another reason for the fluctuation in a foreign ministry’s influence over time is the inevitable variation in the political weight and experience of for- eign affairs of individual foreign ministers. If new ministers are novices in foreign affairs, senior officials are well placed to ‘educate’ them in the depart- mental view. Such was the case with Jean Cruppi and Justin de Selves, who 12 G. R. Berridge were successively French foreign ministers in 1911; it was their relative inex- perience in foreign affairs that allowed a small group of activist officials in the Quai d’Orsay to press successfully for a more forward foreign policy. Today, with foreign ministers and any junior political colleagues in the min- istry having to spend so much more time meeting their counterparts abroad, in some circumstances a degree of role-reversal can be observed: diplomatic officers at home shaping tactics and even strategy; ministers abroad seeking to execute them. If the foreign minister is a political heavy-weight and the president or prime minister has limited experience and interest in foreign affairs, a perfect surge in foreign ministry influence is to be expected—as in the case of the FCO following the appointment of William Hague as foreign secretary and David Cameron as prime minister after the British general election in 2010. Coordination of Foreign Relations Despite the foreign ministry’s continuing role in foreign policy via its missions abroad, it is rare for it now to have its former authority, which in many cases was far from absolute anyway. What the foreign ministry is now inclined to aspire to instead is a coordinating role in the conduct of foreign relations. Probably in all states today the other government departments—notably commerce, finance, health, transport, environment, the central bank, and, above all, defense—engage in direct communication not only with their for- eign counterparts, but also with quite different agencies abroad; and they do so to an unprecedented degree. Indeed, the extent of this ‘direct dial diplo- macy’ is now so great that these departments commonly have their own inter- national sections. As a result, it is no longer practical—or, indeed, advisable—for the foreign ministry to insist that, in order to ensure consis- tency in foreign policy and prevent foreigners from playing off one ministry against another, it alone should have dealings with them. Direct dial diplomacy was the result of a growing list of increasingly com- plex international problems, the diminishing ability of the generalists in the foreign ministry to master them, and the increasing ease with which domestic ministries could make contact with both counterpart ministries abroad and the multiplying number of interested non-state actors—from multinational corporations to civil society organizations. But this development was by no  1 The Foreign Ministry 13 means as menacing to the foreign ministry as some observers thought and its enemies hoped. This is because direct dial diplomacy threatened the overall coherence of foreign policy. So, too, did other trends: pursuit of the same or related negotiations through multilateral as well as bilateral channels, unoffi- cial as well as official channels, and backchannels as well as front channels. The chaos in the conduct of foreign relations that this promised could only be reduced by some authoritative body charged with coordinating the foreign activities of the other government departments: enter the hardy foreign ministry. It has been noted earlier in this chapter that foreign ministries have had coordination very much in mind in reasserting the geographical principle in their internal administration, but how do they try to promote coordination beyond their own doors? Their strategies include the following: retaining control of all external diplomatic and consular missions, and seeking to ensure that officials from other ministries attached to them report home via the ambassador; placing senior foreign ministry personnel in key positions on any high-level committee specifically charged with the coordination of foreign and national security policy—attached to the office of a head of government, such committees are often known by such titles as ‘cabinet office’, ‘prime minister’s office’, or ‘national security council’; exploiting similarly the great potential of the lower-level interdepartmental or inter-agency committee focused on a particular aspect of policy; securing for the foreign ministry the position of ‘lead department’ in as many negotiations on global issues as possible, which is not realistic on financial matters but is in more areas than might be imagined; requiring written clearance from the foreign minister of other ministries’ policies on key questions with an overseas dimension and securing the legal prerogative of vetting all international treaties entered into by them; requesting prior notice of any proposed official trip abroad by a senior gov- ernment employee; exchanging staff on a temporary basis with other ministries; and finally, and most radically, bringing under its own roof ministries with which it has most affinity, the favored candidates here being those dealing with trade and development cooperation (see Box 1.5; some examples are listed in Box 1.3). 14 G. R. Berridge Box 1.5 Should the Foreign Ministry Control Development Aid? This issue has been around for a long time but caused controversy again in 2020 when a hard nationalist government in the UK brought the separate Department for International Development (DfID) back under the control of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. (Development aid had been ping-ponged by successive governments into and out of the FCO for over three decades.) The FCO duly became the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)—Britain’s so-called ‘super-department for international affairs’. This was officially described as a ‘merger’ but, as the allocation of senior appointments made clear, was in fact a hostile takeover. The chief argument for giving development assistance to the foreign min- istry of any high-income state is that this makes it easier to direct it to coun- tries where it will foster important national interests; in other words, it makes aid a more effective instrument of economic statecraft. The separate ministry had to go, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, told the House of Commons on 16 June 2020, because ‘For too long, frankly, UK overseas aid has been treated like a giant cashpoint in the sky, that arrives without any reference to UK interests’ (House of Commons Debates col. 670). Aside from the con- siderable short- to medium-­term costs of administrative dislocation of merg- ing major departments, the practice of locating development aid in a foreign ministry has two main drawbacks. First, foreign aid work requires special skills, notably in project manage- ment, and a super-department for international affairs in which foreign aid is the poor relation and lacks budgetary control is not attractive to the most qualified, experienced and highly motivated individuals in this field; nor are they likely to be replaced by the ablest foreign ministry staff since, as British experience shows, aid work is not appealing to them as a route to improving their career prospects. Second, because a super-department is predicated on rejection of the argument that aid should go to the most deserving, irrespective of any tan- gible quid pro quo, it surrenders the moral high ground. In the process, it also forfeits the influence or, if you will, soft power that derives from a repu- tation for generosity, although against this has to be set the influence that comes from ‘tied aid’. There are other ways of keeping a separate development ministry while ensur- ing that aid decisions do not ignore serious foreign policy considerations. Top-­ level oversight, inter-departmental committees, joint junior ministers and in-country collaboration between ambassadors and aid officials are well tried methods. But for a populist government they do not work well with tabloid journalism. Such strategies are by no means always successful, especially in the case of the US Department of State.  1 The Foreign Ministry 15 Dealing with Foreign Diplomats at Home Senior foreign ministry officials periodically find themselves having to respond to a démarche on a particular subject made by a foreign ambassador; occasion- ally, too, foreign ministers will summon a head of mission to listen to a protest of their own. When something of this nature occurs, the foreign ministry is engaged in a function already discussed; namely, policy implementation. However, it has other responsibilities relative to the diplomatic corps resident in its capital. Well aware of the capacity of diplomats for intrigue, as well as their legiti- mate role as observers, governments have treated their official guests with suspicion since the inception of resident missions in the second half of the fifteenth century. In some states, notably China in the 100 years or so follow- ing the mid-nineteenth century, and latterly in Saudi Arabia and North Korea, foreign missions have even been firmly steered to a particular quarter of the capital—the better to keep their activities under close scrutiny and avoid con- tamination of the population with degenerate foreign habits and subversive ideas. Today, most states are more relaxed about the political activities and moral character of diplomats but there remains a concern that they will abuse their immunities from the criminal and civil law. This concern has grown since the 1950s, chiefly because the explosion in the number of states since that time has greatly increased both the size of the diplomatic corps and the size and frequency of special missions. Accordingly, all foreign ministries must have either a separate protocol department or one that embraces protocol together with a closely related function. Such depart- ments contain experts in ceremonial and in diplomatic and consular law. Among other things, they serve as bridges between the diplomatic corps and the local community and oversee arrangements for visiting dignitaries. For its part, the Chinese government still takes a particularly close interest in the activities of the diplomatic corps, with a vast Beijing Diplomatic Service Bureau affiliated to the foreign ministry, as well as a Protocol Department. Among other things, the bureau provides service staff for the diplomatic and consular missions in Beijing. Old habits also die hard in Russia, where an analogous organization—the Main Administration for Service to the Diplomatic Corps (GlavUpDK)—still survives. In some states, too, the for- eign ministry is responsible for assisting in both the physical protection of certain visiting dignitaries and foreign missions. In the United States, for example, special agents of the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security are charged with coordinating the protection of all foreign officials and their missions across the country. 16 G. R. Berridge Building Support at Home Foreign ministries and their diplomatic services have for a long time intermittently been targets of attack from politicians and commissions of inquiry, and have been frequently sniped at by the tabloid press. This was marked after World War I—and in some cases earlier—and it was not so long after World War II that the attacks resumed with something of a vengeance. It is not difficult to see why: they had acquired reputations for social exclusiveness in recruitment and for high living abroad, and faced a growing challenge to their very raison d’être. It was, therefore, an acute weakness that they had no domestic political base on which to fall back for support. Education ministries had teachers, agriculture ministries had farmers, defense ministries had the armed forces—but foreign ministries had only foreigners, a political base worse than useless. The foreign ministries in many countries belatedly responded to this situa- tion with some success. They now tend to nurture their national media at least as carefully as they cosset foreign correspondents in the capital, and actively cultivate parliamentarians and domestic interests. They stress the fact that their officers abroad are the country’s ‘first line of defence’, and cost only a fraction of the military’s budget. They seek popular approval, as well as greater efficiency, by recruiting more women and members of ethnic minorities, and, at least in the West, by flinging open their doors to the representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academics, and oth- ers, even attaching them to conference delegations; a few—from Britain to Mongolia—go so far as to open their doors literally by having ‘open days’. On their websites, foreign ministries advertise their value by providing up-­ to-­date information on foreign travel destinations, including advice on per- sonal safety. These sites also highlight the consular services available to their nationals should they find themselves in need of assistance abroad (see Chap. 9). A logical bureaucratic extension of arrangements of this sort, also much hyped up by numerous foreign ministries and particularly poignant in the case of Syria (Box 1.3), is a separate department devoted to the welfare needs of nationals permanently resident abroad, including the facilitation of their return, even if in the case of authoritarian states this can too often have sinister undertones (see Box 7.5). Foreign ministries also take every opportu- nity to impress on exporters, and agencies seeking inward investment, the value of the commercial diplomacy of their overseas missions and the top priority they now give to this. And, in the small number of cases where for- eign ministries have actually merged with trade ministries, they have not only promoted coordination but also moved directly to capture a share of a key political constituency, the private business sector.  1 The Foreign Ministry 17 In short, it is now widely recognized that it is as important for head office to engage in ‘outreach’ at home as it is for its missions to undertake this abroad. Summary In most states today, the foreign ministry must formally share control over the making of foreign policy with other ministries and executive agencies—and to a growing extent with its missions abroad. Nevertheless, it tends to retain signifi- cant influence via its broader perspective, geographical expertise, control of the diplomatic service, investment in public diplomacy (discussed in Chap. 13), nur- turing of domestic allies, and acceptance by outsiders that it is well positioned to make a major contribution to the coordination of the state’s complex interna- tional relations. Most of these relationships issue, from time to time, in the activity of negotiation, which—even narrowly conceived—represents the most important function of diplomacy. It is therefore appropriate to turn next to this subject. Topics for Seminar Discussion or Essays 1. What is the foreign ministry’s most important task? 2. ‘The US State Department’s Office of Inspector General provides a model that all but the smallest foreign ministries should strive to adopt.’ What do you think of this statement? 3. Should the development assistance programs of high-income states be run from their foreign ministries? Make detailed reference to the experience of AT LEAST TWO countries. 4. To what extent do you agree with the view that functional departments in foreign ministries should be kept to the bare minimum? 5. What is the most serious threat to the influence of the foreign ministry? Further Reading1 Advisory Committee on Modernising the Diplomatic Service, Modernising Dutch Diplomacy: Progress Report, Final Report (May 2014) [www]. 1 Many foreign ministries have their own websites, some of which provide at least a list of the different departments (sometimes even an organization chart), while a few go so far as to give a detailed history of the ministry; in the last regard, the website of the Canadian foreign ministry (‘Global Affairs Canada’) is outstanding. The back copies of State Magazine, available via the US State Department’s website, are also useful. 18 G. R. Berridge American Academy of Diplomacy, ‘American Diplomacy at Risk’, April 2015 [www]. Anderson, M. S., The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450–1919 (Longman: London, 1993). See especially pp. 73–80, 110–19. Browne, N. W., ‘British Policy on Iran, 1974–1978’ (FCO: ca. 1980). Chs. 10 and 11 and the rejoinder by Sir Anthony Parsons in the Appendix [www]. A highly influential internal FCO report on the failures of the British Embassy in Iran prior to the fall of the Shah in 1979. Burke, Shannon, ‘Office of the Chief of Protocol: Following protocol is this office’s charter’, State Magazine, January, 1999 [www]. Cowper-Coles, Sherard, Ever the Diplomat: Confessions of a Foreign Office mandarin (HarperPress: London, 2012). Chs 4 (includes his time in policy planning) and 13. A Democratic Staff Report prepared for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate, Diplomacy in Crisis: The Trump Administration’s decimation of the State Department, 28 July 2020 [www]. Hard-hitting but cer- tainly not just a polemic: clearly organized and authoritatively supported with 274 footnotes full of references for further reading. Durrant, Tim, ‘There’s good reason to reform Whitehall—but the government needs to know what it wants to achieve’, Institute for Government, 19 December 2019 [www]. FAC, ‘The Role of the FCO in UK Government’, Seventh Report of Session 2010–12, Volume I, 12 May 2011, HC 665 [www]. See also the government’s response at ‘Seventh Report…’ lower down this list. FCO Historians, ‘The Permanent Under-Secretary of State: A Brief History of the Office and its Holders’, History Notes, Issue 15 (FCO, January 2002) [www]. Fitzmaurice, Gerald G., ‘Legal advisers and foreign affairs’, American Journal of International Law, vol. 59(1), 1965. See pp. 72–86. Fitzmaurice, Gerald G., ‘Legal advisers and international organizations’, American Journal of International Law, vol. 62(1), 1968. See pp. 114–27. Gates, Robert M., Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (Knopf: New York, 2014). Useful on Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Hamilton, Keith, ‘Zealots and helots: the Slave Trade Department of the nineteenth century Foreign Office’, in K. Hamilton and P. Salmon (eds), Slavery, Diplomacy and Empire: Britain and the suppression of the slave trade, 1807–1975 (Sussex Academic Press: Eastbourne, 2009). A chapter of great interest written with immense authority. Hamilton, Keith, Servants of Diplomacy: A domestic history of the Victorian Foreign Office (Bloomsbury: London, 2021). Ingram, George, ‘Rightsizing the relationship between the State Department and USAID’, Brookings, 11 April 2018 [www]. Ioffe, Julia, ‘The State of Trump’s State Department’, The Atlantic, 1 March 2017 [www]. Jacobson, Barbara Rosen, Katharina E. Höne, and Jovan Kurbalija, Data Diplomacy: Updating diplomacy to the big data era (DiploFoundation: Geneva, February 2018) [www]. An important and accessible piece.  1 The Foreign Ministry 19 Kennan, George E., Memoirs, 1925–1950 (Hutchinson: London, 1967). See pp. 325–7, 426–7, 465–6, on formation of the policy planning staff in the State Department. Kissinger, Henry A., Years of Upheaval (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, and Michael Joseph: London, 1982). See pp. 432–49, on the Department of State and the Foreign Service. Kurbalija, Jovan (ed.), Knowledge and Diplomacy (DiploFoundation: Malta, 1999). See ch. by Keith Hamilton. Mitchell, Ian, ‘Should the UK’s Development Department be Merged with Foreign Affairs and Trade?’, Centre for Global Development, 22 January 2019 [www]. Neilson, Keith and T. G. Otte, The Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 1854–1946 (Routledge: New York, 2009). Pope, Laurence, The Demilitarization of American Diplomacy: Two cheers for striped pants (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2014). Pope was a US scholar-diplomat; see chs 2–3. Rana, Kishan S., 21st Century Diplomacy: A practitioner’s guide (Continuum: London, 2011). Authored by a former senior Indian ambassador; see ch. 6. Rana, Kishan S., Asian Diplomacy: The foreign ministries of China, India, Japan, Singapore and Thailand (DiploFoundation: Malta, 2007). A rare compara- tive exercise. Rice, Condoleezza, No Higher Honor: A memoir of my years in Washington (Crown: New York, 2011). Ch. 21—interesting reflections on the State Department, including policy planning; previously National Security Advisor, Rice was Secretary of State, 2005–9. Rogin, Joe, ‘The State Department’s entire senior administrative team just resigned’, The Washington Post, 26 January 2017 [www]. Seldon, Anthony, ‘Power returns to the Foreign Office’, The House Magazine, July 2013. Seventh Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee Session 2010–12. The Role of the FCO in UK Government. Response of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, July 2011, Cm 8125 [www]. Stewart, Heather, and Patrick Wintour, ‘Three ex-PMs attack plan to merge DfID with Foreign Office’, The Guardian, 16 June 2020 [www].  Part I The Art of Negotiation Introduction to Part I In international politics, negotiation consists of discussion between officially designated representatives with the object of achieving the formal agreement of their governments to a way forward on an issue that has come up in their relations. Negotiation, as noted in the Introduction to this book, is only one of the functions of diplomacy and, in some situations, not the most urgent; in traditional diplomacy via resident missions, neither is it the activity to which most time is now generally devoted. (Although when diplomats ‘lobby’ some agency of the state to which they are accredited, the only differences from negotiation are that the dialogue is configured differently and successes are not formally registered.) Nevertheless, negotiation remains the most impor- tant function of diplomacy. This is, in part, because the diplomatic system now encompasses considerably more than the work of resident missions, and because negotiation becomes more and more its operational focus as we move into the realms of multilateral diplomacy, summitry, and that other growth sector of the world diplomatic system—mediation. Furthermore, it hardly needs laboring that it is the process of negotiation that grapples directly with the most threatening problems, whether they be pandemics, economic dislo- cation, environmental catastrophe, global financial meltdown, or brutal civil wars generating millions of refugees and internally displaced persons. It is because negotiation is the most important function of diplomacy that it is to this that Part I of this book is devoted. Students of negotiations, notably Zartman and Berman, divide them into three distinct stages: those concerned with prenegotiations, formula, and 22 The Art of Negotiation details. The first two chapters of Part I hinge on these distinctions, Chap. 2 dealing with prenegotiations and Chap. 3 with the formula and details stages together—‘around-the-table’ negotiations (Saunders). The characteristics of each stage are analyzed, together with their characteristic difficulties. However, two cautions must at once be registered. First, the concept of sequential stages of negotiation is an analytical construct: in reality, not only do the stages usu- ally overlap but, sometimes, the difficulties of a particular stage are so acute that return to an earlier stage is unavoidable (‘back-tracking’). Second, the notion of three-stage negotiations has developed principally out of analysis of talks on issues where the stakes are high, typically between recently or still warring parties; in negotiations between friendly states on matters of relatively low importance the prenegotiations stage will often present few problems and might barely be noticeable at all. Following discussion of the stages of negotiations, Chap. 4 considers the various devices whereby their momentum might be preserved or—if lost— regained. In Chap. 5, an examination will be found of the different ways in which negotiated agreements are presented to the world and why different situations demand that agreements be differently ‘packaged’. Part I concludes with a chapter dealing with the question of how agreements are best followed up in order to ensure that their provisions are actually implemented without the need for recourse to economic sanctions, law, or force. Since high-stakes negotiations are of greatest interest and, by definition, most consequential, it is these that are principally in mind throughout this part of the book.  2 Prenegotiations Prenegotiations, despite their misleading name, are the first stage of negotia- tions. Also commonly referred to as ‘preliminaries’ or ‘talks about talks’, their job is to establish that substantive, around-the-table negotiations are worth- while, and then to agree the agenda and the necessary procedures for tackling it. In bilateral relationships, these discussions are usually informal and well out of the public gaze. In nineteenth century Europe, favored venues were the spa towns of France, Germany, Austria, and Belgium, where statesmen and diplomats took annual ‘cures’ from their mineral waters. However, in multi- lateral diplomacy, where the parties are more numerous and procedure is more complex, a good part of the prenegotiations might be both formal and well-advertised. For example, the substantive stage of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which had 35 participating states and culminated in the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, was preceded by nine months of preparatory talks that produced a document containing their recommendations. Whether formal or informal, public or well hidden, prenegotiations are often far more important and far more difficult than is usually supposed. This is especially true in tense relationships, where prenegotiations are always frag- ile. This chapter considers, in turn, each of the chief tasks confronting the negotiators in this stage. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 23 G. R. Berridge, Diplomacy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85931-2_2 24 G. R. Berridge Agreeing the Need to Negotiate States sometimes engage in prenegotiations, and even substantive negotia- tions, merely in order to buy time or obtain a good press for being thought accommodating. This is why a party fearing it might fall victim to such pro- crastination, and also nervous about its hard-liners, often insists on ‘precondi- tions’—key concessions from the other side as a condition for sitting down to substantive talks; this has long been a prominent feature of the relations between Israel and its Arab rivals. But sometimes even the party most skepti- cal about the real commitment of the other to talks feels compelled to