Diplomacy and Global Governance

The Diplomatic Service in an Age of Worldwide Interdependence

Thomas Nowotny

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351522243
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

Traditional diplomacy is based on the notion of competing nation-states, each attempting to maximize its autonomy and independence. This notion is at odds with today's world in which even mighty states are enmeshed in a web of interdependence. Much of the world's economy, information, industry, and culture have become global. Given these massive changes, argues Thomas Nowotny, much of traditional diplomacy has become redundant and sometimes counterproductive. Notwithstanding worldwide interdependence, states still anchor this complex global system. In a timelier version of their craft, diplomats retain an important function in safeguarding and shaping that worldwide interdependence. They are trained to transform differences into consensus and to navigate zones of conflict. But to do so effectively, and to meet today's challenges, they will have to adjust their ways and institutions. Nowotny bases his arguments on his unique experiences in internal organizational politics and in bilateral and multilateral international diplomacy, as well as on his theoretical reflections as an academic. His work aims to merge lessons from these distinct spheres into one comprehensive whole, intertwining practice and theory. To affect outcomes one, thus, has to deal with practice and theory at the same time. This is what Novotny aims to achieve, and he succeeds admirably.

1

Introduction

When was the last time you read a book on utopia—a book about a possible, bright future for mankind? You are not likely to find one in bookstores. Utopias are not in fashion. Yet books that predict a bleak future are in ample supply. As are films about the last ones from the human species roaming the garbage dump earth would have become.

Social scientists are fully in this trend. They promote it with dire predictions:

• - A “population bomb” would be about to explode, making for standing room only on the earth's surface and dragging us all down into misery.
• - We would soon, very soon run out of essential raw materials and thus soon witness a collapse of the world economy.
• - Anarchy would spread over the globe as gaps in wealth continue to widen and poorer states descend into chaos.
• - A sizeable part of humankind would perish after global warming, having overshot a “tipping point,” accelerates in an unbridled fashion.

The predominance of such stark scenarios should surprise in light of recent history. It does not support such pessimism. On the contrary, developments over the last 70 years make it difficult not to believe in human progress. People lead longer lives. Fewer children die at a young age and fewer of their mothers at childbirth. A bigger share of the world's population can read and write. Famines touch an ever-smaller percentage of humanity. And, last not least, we have obviously progressed in the political organization of human societies. The number of democratic states has grown. Wars between these have become rare. Where wars between states still occur, they seem to be symptoms of the past and not a pointer to the future.

Why should such positive trends not continue into the future? Why must optimists who believe in the continuation of such progress bear the stigma of being perceived as naïve and uninformed?

Indeed, there are weighty arguments against such optimism and against the notion that the future would resemble the past. The massive growth in the global population and the even more massive growth in overall wealth needed and created a dense interdependence between humans, societies, cultures, and states. This interdependence makes for great complexity, and complex systems are fragile. Also, with the growth of the global economy and of the earth's population, limits have become visible that would inhibit a simple continuation of past practices. That is something new. Never before has humankind been faced, for example, with the fact that its economic activities will raise dramatically the temperature of the globe.

It would therefore be unwise to simply ignore the pessimists and, in looking back on past progress, assume its continuation as inevitable. Such further progress is not preordained. It is contingent on political support and direction. Progress would stagnate or become reversed if politics would fail in that task; if humans would lack will and capacity to organize politically in order to influence the course of events.

True—the challenges for such remedial, corrective political action are now greater than they have been in the past. But even when minor in comparison with present ones, such challenges had existed in the past too. We have not been carried forward in these last 70 years by some powerful, broad current of an abstract “progress” that would have worked in absence of human intervention. Global/international politics had shaped the last 70 years of our history and made them the success they were.

So as to demonstrate the relevance of politics, consider how affairs could have evolved in the absence of political guidance; or with the wrong political guidance:

• - What if the American-Soviet confrontation would have gotten out of hand; or would have been pushed to its extreme by suicidal politics?
• - What if institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, or the World Trade Organization (previously GATT) had not been created?
• - What if after World War II the nations of Europe would have relapsed into mutual hostility just as they did after World War I?
• - What if the recent world economic crisis would have resulted in a wave of protectionist trade policies and thus in the reversal of globalization?

All these things have not happened. They were avoided because global/international politics pushed events into another direction. Progress was possible because it was supported by politics. It would not have occurred in absence of such politics. And why shouldn't politics do for the future what it has done for the past?

One possible obstacle, already mentioned, is the greater complexity brought about by global interdependence; and the emergence of massive new challenges of a nature unknown before. Yet these new obstacles make solutions not only more difficult, they also make them more urgent. And—if we exempt the eventuality of the earth being hit by a major meteor—none of these challenges is of a nature to escape the countervailing force of politics.

We still might object that the very basis of global politics has shifted, so much so that its past record has little to say about its future reach and potency. That is true also. In these last 70 years, global politics—or the “global regime” had largely been shaped by the United States (and to a much lesser degree by Western Europe). That era of exclusiveness is drawing to a close. The United States, Europe and Canada produced 68 percent of the world's wealth in 1950. By 2003 this share had dropped to 47 percent, and it will have declined further to a mere 30 percent by 2050.

Other regions and/or states of the world will come to share the till now exclusive American and the European capacity to shape the global regime. These other regions and states might hold on to some of American/European values and goals. They will not share all of them. In addition, these states and regions will not be the only ones to emerge as new “actors” on the global scene. They will be joined by potent actors of a new type, such as transnational corporations or international non-governmental organizations. Things will be complicated further by the blurring of traditional divides between internal and external politics, and by a greater diversity of both the objects and the subjects of global political action.

To quote the prince in Guiseppe Lampedusa's book, The Leopard: “if we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” If we want progress to continue, we will have to continue to shape it by politics. We will have to do that with greater efforts, but also with new concepts and new tools. Many of the past concepts and tools have become useless. They need to be replaced by more fitting ones.

For me these reflections of global governance, on its past record and on its necessary overhaul, are nothing abstract and merely academic. I am a citizen of Austria and had been Austrian diplomat until my retirement from the service. Internal and external politics had accompanied and prompted Austria's decline in the first half of the 20th century—just as they, on the other hand, had facilitated its stupendous development after World War II.

Between the two wars, the external policies of other countries, as well as the external policies of Austria itself had a major and negative impact on its economic social and political development. Dismal, dysfunctional internal politics fed on this negative influence from abroad and fed into it on its turn.

In retrospect, the disintegration of the old Austrian/Habsburg Empire must be seen as having been inevitable. The empire was destined to disappear sooner or later. That would have occurred even without the shove of World War I. But it was not inevitable and it was a conscious political decision that implicated the Austrian monarchy in the outbreak of this war, thus accelerating its own demise. Neither was it inevitable that after this war, international politics failed to substitute for the by-gone order in Central Europe a new, organic, and more cooperative one. This was an option not taken and that failure complemented the general failure of Western Allies, which, relishing their victory, impeded a solidly based economic and democratic development among the vanquished.

Internal politics among the latter became erratic, polarized, and murderous in the end. Negative trends were accentuated by the world economic crisis of the 1930s, when the leading economic powers could not agree on joint actions to counter the downward trend in production and consumption. States withdrew into self-sufficiency and protectionism. Globalization was brought to an end. Narrow, confrontational nationalism and egotism came to dominate. A new arms race escalated. No agreement was found to challenge in a timely fashion an ever-more threatening Hitler. Germany, with its insane visions of glory, dreamed of imposing, by military means, dominance not just over Europe, but over the world as a whole.

Austria was implicated in these developments, both as a victim and as a perpetrator. Civil war and the slide into authoritarian rule had weakened it internally, while its foreign policy had failed to gain it outside support. It became the first country to fall prey to Hitler's aggression; and with astounding speed, the vast majority of Austrians then came to support the German war efforts together with the associated cruelties up to the horrors of the Holocaust.

My first childhood memories were those of hours spent in bomb shelters; of the pervasive, silent threat of Nazis to my conservative Catholic family; of rumors about concentrations camps where bodies of slaughtered humans were mined for the gold of their teeth and for the hair of their scalp.

Miraculously, we had escaped. The years of terror, years of hunger, and winters of unheated apartments were followed by years of progress. Food became available. Heating oil replaced the wood in stoves. My father could in the end even buy a car. Austria was spared the fate of Germany, which was divided into a communist East and a democratic West. The foreign militaries left Austria in 1955 and, gradually, democratic practices became internalized and routine.

These developments did not present themselves as a natural and inevitable return to normalcy. Even when young, even when caught in the self-centered turmoil of youth, I was aware that politics had propelled these positive developments. Unlike in pre-war years, Austria's major political parties did not perpetuate their murderous antagonism, but joined forces to rebuild the country and to strive for its full independence from foreign occupation. Rebuilding was helped in a decisive manner by the US Marshall Plan assistance. Relations with neighboring states were normalized even at the cost of emotionally and politically onerous concessions. The country seized every option to participate in international and European cooperation. It aimed at being a “net-producer” and not a “net-consumer” of international security. As a consequence, it had its share in softening the East-West confrontation into mere “dé-tente” and thus had a hand in the ultimate “opening up” of Central and Eastern Europe.

On their turn, international politics largely favored Austria's march to prosperity and democratic consolidation. They made disappear on the European continent age-old enmities, substituting the rich rewards of cooperation for the high costs of rivalry and power politics. The United States could guarantee stability and effective defense against the Soviet threat. Expansion of international trade found support in newly created international institutions and European integration found support in organs created specifically for that purpose. Democratic proceedings and respect for human rights became anchored not just in international consensus, but in Europe, also in highly effective, operative agreements.

Austria now ranks among the wealthiest countries of the world. Other indicators of well-being also show it in a positive light: unemployment is low, life expectancy and literacy are high, corruption is less than the European average, government and administration are effective.

Frequently this rise has been described as a “miracle,” as if it had been brought about by mysterious forces and not by human efforts. But wealth and democracy do not maintain themselves without continuing efforts; without a never-ending struggle against the erosion and decay that inevitably threaten human constructs such as politics and the economy.

I came of age in this period of Austria's rapid economic and political advance. It instilled in me an appreciation of the positive potential in humans and in human society; and an appreciation of those politics that had facilitated the realization of such potential.

It is difficult, in retrospect, to clearly analyze all the motives that made one decide on a professional career in preference to other ones. I do believe though, that the realization of the positive potential of politics, of their decisive impact on society and life, did have an influence on my opting for a career as diplomat and for my becoming engaged on the liberal-left side of politics. After a stint of work at an institute for empirical economic research, I took the entrance exam for the Austrian diplomatic service.

My first foreign posting was with the consulate general in New York.¹ This was in 1960s. New York was an exciting place. But it also resounded with the unrest of that period. Protests against the US engagement in Vietnam had become massive and shrill. These were the times too, of the civil rights marches and of cities burning. Nonetheless, US power still seemed unchallenged and the “American way of life” was accepted as an ideal over much of the globe.

Back in Austria for the consecutive five years, I became private secretary to the Austrian head of government Bruno Kreisky. Kreisky, a moderate Social Democrat, is still widely regarded as one of Austria's most successful politicians, owing this repute also to his international role. He was prominent in launching the so-called “Helsinki process” which bolstered peaceful coexistence between the two rivaling superpowers. And he is best known for his efforts to promote peace between Arabs and Israelis.

When returning to my original turf in the diplomatic service, I was sent as counselor to the embassy in Cairo. Prospects for a lasting Arab-Israeli peace opened as the Egyptian President Sadat switched alliances from the Soviet Union to the United States and established diplomatic relations with Israel. This decision of the Egyptian leader was symptomatic too, of the by-then evident failure of the Non-Aligned Movement that had sought to establish a potent, political, and ideological counterweight to the groups dominated by the United States and by the Soviet Union respectively.

From Egypt I moved to New York—this time as head of the consulate general—while my wife, also a diplomat, became political counselor at our mission to the United Nations. This was a period of renewed East-West tensions, of the hostage crisis in Iran, of the United States supporting insurgent movements in Nicaragua and, increasingly, in Afghanistan. Many of those US foreign policy decisions reflected the ascendency of the US neoconservatives. Their ideological hegemony was to last for another quarter of a century.

Having returned to Austria in 1983, I resumed work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as head of a department for Council of Europe matters and for political planning,² while it became the turn of my wife to work for the head of government. For ten years she held the position as foreign affairs advisor to the Austrian chancellor. Europe continued its economic and political renaissance and Austria started negotiations for membership in the European Union. The Soviet empire collapsed. In Austria, postwar consensus and postwar political structures began to crumble with a parallel rise of populist/right-wing political parties.

I took leave from the diplomatic service when my wife was appointed ambassador to France in 1992, three years after the former Soviet satellite states had shed the yoke of communist domination. It was in the obvious and urgent interest of Western Europe to assist them in their economic and political consolidation. I applied myself to this task in Paris at the OECD Center for Co-Operation with Economies in Transition. Continuing in the same field when my wife was made ambassador to the United Kingdom, I was appointed senior political advisor to the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development—a bank specifically created to assist formerly communist countries.

In the years since my entry into the Foreign Service, I thus had been witness to the consolidation and integration of Europe; to the demise of the Soviet empire; and to the first symptoms of a weakening US position in the world. Equally if not more relevant to the world was, I believe, the rapid economic and political rise of Eastern and Southern Asia; accompanied by a waning power and declining relevance of some institutions that had girded the post-World War II order, such as the International Monetary Fund, NATO, or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Austria's position too, had been transformed profoundly through its membership (since 1995) in the European Union. It affected both the content and the tools of its external politics.

After Paris and London came a second, shorter interlude in Austria. In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, my wife reached the highest civil service rank as head of the section for European and for economic affairs. I myself had quit the Foreign Service for good and became employed by a semi-public bank that promotes economic innovation and small and medium enterprise. I also devoted myself with renewed energy to academic work.

Four years thereafter we returned to the United States—my wife as Austrian ambassador and I still in my capacity as consultant of this promotional and development bank. The mood in the United States had darkened since our last stay. The terror attacks on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon made the US public painfully aware of no longer being invulnerable. The American dream was fading, with a growing divide separating the few super-rich from the rest...