I was intrigued when I read an article written by Christopher Meyer about “How different is the digital diplomat?” He posed a question on whether digital revolution is really transforming diplomacy or not. I would argue that digital revolution does change some elements of diplomacy, but not at all.
Diplomacy, in traditional sense, is understood as the way of diplomats doing their business; diplomats are the officials of Foreign Affairs Ministries and missions overseas to conduct five core diplomatic functions in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, namely representing, negotiating, reporting, protecting, and promoting, as well as consular affairs. Meanwhile, ‘transformed diplomacy’ is the changing of diplomats’ works due to the utilisation of digital tools and platforms, which is further called as digital diplomacy.
The world is continuously evolving. While it used to be the official diplomats who play roles in international environment, diplomatic actors nowadays have expanded not only diplomats, but also other government officials, business, NGOs, experts, and media. Similarly, the issues have also grown not only about political and traditional security issue, but also human security, environment, gender, and other low political issues. Bearing in mind that such evolutionary process does not only create transformation per se, but also both changes and continuities.
The changes and continuities in diplomacy can be seen through the core functions of diplomats in the 21st century, namely information gathering and diplomatic reporting, negotiation, communication and public diplomacy, and consular affairs.
Information gathering and diplomatic reporting. The capital (Ministry of Foreign Affairs/MFA) can now access any information directly from the internet without waiting a report from the embassies. Nevertheless, there is some information that is not available in the internet or, at least, yet to be published, for example, negotiated documents and reports from hardship posts or crisis countries where media exposure is very unlikely. In short, traditional practice of information gathering and reporting remains imperative.
Negotiation. diplomats can communicate directly via cell phone without sending diplomatic notes to their counterparts. Members of a delegation in a conference can also communicate with each other faster via whatsapp group. Unfortunately, digital communication cannot become a basis for official documents or references. Digital tools cannot do all delegation tasks, such as doing corridor lobbying, making reports, delivering speech, participating in press conference, etc, in a relatively tight schedule. These practices cannot be replaced by digital diplomacy.
Public diplomacy. Digital diplomacy offers an opportunity to engage with broader foreign audiences, for example through virtual embassy. This is an advantage, yet there is also a drawback. Digital tools also play as “fertile grounds” for hackers to obtain some confidential information (referring to WikiLeaks case).
Consular affairs. Some consular tasks have indeed been replaced by digital diplomacy, such as making online visa, tracking countries’ information through satellite data, and building online application in smart phone for citizen protection purposes. Nonetheless, when it comes to emergency situation (for instance, citizens affected by natural disaster), diplomats should directly engage with emergency response in order to handle their affected citizens in the host country.
In conclusion, while digitalisation is getting popular in diplomacy, there remain some diplomatic’ tasks that cannot be replaced by digital technology and, to some extent, digitalisation poses new challenges to diplomacy itself. Thus, diplomacy deals with changes and continuities as well as provides challenges and opportunities.
Made
Diplomacy AND Beyond 