The origins of diplomacy are shrouded in mystery. Some say it goes back to the exchange of hostages between pre-Christian warring states in the Middle East, on the simple premise that if you have someone worthwhile in your power to kill, it provides some guarantee that the state they come from will desist from attacking. And vice-versa.
Others point to the early practice of sending envoys, sometimes under a truce, to open discussions on how to end conflict. Personally, I suspect the origins go back further to a moment when two of our early male ancestors eyed each other up for a fight over the carcass of a mammoth, and a bystander said “look, there’s more than either of you, and your village, can eat. Why don’t we share it? I’ll form a committee to decide on equal shares.” To which the female bystanders probably said “well, duh.”
It became bad form to kill your opponent’s envoy
Anyway, diplomacy was born, envoys went back and forth, made alliances, sometimes stopped conflicts or prevented them, and often failed. But on the whole most princes and kings would at least listen for a while before tiring of the speeches and having the envoy slaughtered; obviously, those weren’t very good envoys. The ones who knew how to keep the speeches short, ask lots of questions and list advantages of cooperation were the good ones.
They did well enough for the practice to become regular, and regularised, with recognised rules, including etiquette which made clear it was bad form to kill your opponent’s envoys and so on. So everything went along pretty well, until along came Attila the Hun, or Genghiz Khan, or whichever conqueror you prefer, who said “I’m here to disrupt your accepted order. Bow down before me or else.”
Diplomats don’t give up, even against Putin
So we come to President Trump. A friend and colleague at East Anglia Bylines commented to me a while back that the diplomats must be tearing their hair out, and asked how you cope with someone like Trump. They thought that as a former diplomat, and one with some experience of negotiations, including with Russians of Putin’s stamp, I might like to think about how my successors might be getting along.
What I can tell you is that, however unpromising the prospects of mutual beneficial agreement are, diplomats don’t give up. It is ingrained in us (if I may lay claim to still being “in the club”) never to stop talking, because we believe, as someone said, “Jaw jaw is better than war war”. Obviously, the talk runs out sometimes and it doesn’t always immediately degenerate into all-out fisticuffs. In general then, you look for things that your adversary would find uncomfortable and “persuasive” without giving them an obvious pretext for bombing you.
British diplomats still trying to find someone to talk to
Sanctions, alliances specifically to counter their threat, ostracism, all these things can be used and may shift the adversary into a more pliable state. President Putin is desperate for sanctions to be eased; why else would he make them a condition of agreement to any sort of ceasefire in Ukraine?
It is very clear that in Europe, and in NATO, we are still at the stage of hoping things might not get as bad as they seem. But how do you cope with a former friend and ally taken over, by popular vote, by someone who seems to closely resemble a six-year-old with ADHD? I am sure the British Embassy in Washington is working hard at trying to identify, and build a dialogue with, members of the US Administration who might still be a little open to the idea that while we need them, they also need us, and that there is something worth saving in the old order.
Does anyone Dare tell Trump he’s wrong?
If talking to the principal only gets you shouted at unintelligibly, find someone else who can try to explain what the president really meant, and who might even have the courage to suggest to the president that he might be going too far, although that seems like a self-limiting career decision.
So the “diplomacy” goes on. The efforts to persuade that there might be some mutual benefit in sharing the mammoth rather than clubbing each other into submission don’t stop, however unpromising they look. And history does provide examples of apparently unpromising dialogues finally bearing some fruit.
Is it time to launch the lifeboats?
So spare a sympathetic thought for the politicians who tell us that we may still have some common interest with the person at the helm who is determined to drive through the iceberg strewn sea. The ship is big, has all sorts of useful features, and may yet plough through. The lifeboats are much smaller and less comfortable. And building our own ship, and transferring the passengers to it in the middle of the storm is, well, difficult.
We’re still talking, even if our “negotiating partner” seems to prefer to shout unintelligibly and wave a stick, so there is just a little room for diplomacy, even if the objectives may seem rather limited. But it can’t be long before Trump hits on the idea of taking hostages.
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