SKILLED DIPLOMATS AS NEGOTIATORS

 GLOBALISATION and economic interdependence alter diplomacy and therefore change the skill-set needed for diplomats. While in the past diplomats negotiated with the political ideology and military alliance of their governments in mind, today economic and business benefits and transparency towards the public are behind negotiations.

Whereas in traditional diplomacy before globalisation, the most important features of a diplomat were his or her family and social status, combined with military experience but today it is specialised education in business and public relations. In this new globalised political-economic environment, the only way to conduct successful diplomacy is to adjust to the new game.

Governance

As an efficient tool of good global governance, diplomacy needs first to overcome the stereotypes of ideology and military confrontation. And the task of diplomacy by foreign ministries as practiced in a modern world is to search not for the balance of power, but for the balance of interest. The top priority today is to reinvigorate in full scope traditional methods of diplomacy, the search for compromise solutions, the all or nothing mentality no longer works.

A partial and balanced approach is an answer to the new geopolitical and economic realities.  Trade has traditionally been a concern of diplomacy. Trade interest and trade policies are generally part of the central preoccupation of most States. Ideally, trade policy and foreign policy should support each other in the same way that defence and foreign policy have a mutually symbiotic relationship.

Foreign affairs ministries in an international relations trade policy rather more than defence has tended to pull in divergent directions from foreign policy, unless, as is sometimes the cases, economic issues dominate external policy, as a result, an additional task for diplomacy is dealing with external problems arising from the consequences of differing lines of external policy.

Task

An additional task for diplomacy is divergence between trade and foreign policy that can sometimes arise from the practice of having separate diplomatic and trade missions, though reflecting the tendency to treat the political and foreign policy may also diverge in international relations because of demands made by established trade interest within States.

Trade interest may of course be acquired for a number of reasons, such as long- standing commercial links, entrepreneurial exploitation of overseas markets or a successful domestic lobbying. (The case of Malawi and Britain, although Britain benefits more through non-payment of some taxes due to double taxation avoidance treaty which the two countries signed before 1964, and this benefit by British firms will continue with the Brexit in place, Britain trade interests will focus much on all Commonwealth member States around the globe)

It is also a role of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation in international relations to explain or reconcile divergent interests to appropriate external actors or to bring the trade policy and interests into line with foreign policy. The process of bringing trade and foreign policy into alignment can be difficult if trade interest, broadly defined, secure either sufficient economic, importance or official support for the separate conduct of trade or even its pursuit at the expense of foreign policy.

The good example is the long running diplomatic dispute between the European Union and the United States over the aspects of the European Union Common Agricultural policy, as suggested in the New Economic Diplomacy, trade policy may become a direct instrument of foreign policy. In this sense, trade is used to support or further objectives that are not exclusively economic but political or military.

The political use of trade involves diplomacy in initiatives to develop goodwill, promote regional cooperation, gain political influence or strategic assets within another State through coercive sanctions and other forms of punitive ways.

Trade interests and trade politics have played a key role in diplomatic power politics whereby countries have threatened each other through trade embargoes, territorial disputes and economic sanctions that have managed to submerge many countries’ economies.

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