Fading European powers have a lesson or two to teach

Now that the excitement of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the US presidential election are over, it is time for the world to turn its attention back to the diplomatic challenges that face it.

Like everything else, diplomacy is being affected by the great shifts that are taking place in the global balance of power. Economic powerhouses such as China are feeling confident, brainstorming about what they can contribute to the new international order and expanding their diplomatic networks. Nevertheless it is Europe, forced to do ever more with ever less, that is taking the lead in diplomatic innovation. Emerging powers such as China should pay attention.

Two big challenges confront diplomacy. First, the age-old principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of countries is breaking down. On some issues this is not too challenging. Climate change and health, and more familiar issues such as international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, for example, are issues on which such interference is taken for granted by many states. However, the Arab world clearly reveals the sorts of problems created by this breakdown.

European governments required their diplomats to establish relationships with the opposition movements in countries such as Libya and Egypt at the same time as maintaining diplomatic relations with the authorities. How do you manage this without making all the parties to the conflict, and other great powers, angry at you? China had its own heroic but also chilling experience when it flew out thousands of Chinese citizens from a Libya in violent turmoil.

The non-intervention dilemma is not going away any time soon. This poses new challenges for diplomats, requiring global collaboration that goes well beyond governments to reach out to NGOs, and civil society in general.

The second big challenge to diplomacy is the growing disagreement about existing rules governing international political and commercial relations. Emerging powers become more restless about being subject to these rules. They seek to overturn them and, where they are not powerful enough to do this, to ignore them and go their own way. Thus China no longer feels the need to follow the West's commercial and financial models. Saudi Arabia not only feels it can play geopolitics in Syria, but also asserts the superiority of Islamic banking systems over the Western interest-obsessed alternatives.

A future of conflicting value systems will offer countries and corporations considerable leeway in deciding which to use. It will confront future diplomacy with the challenge of managing more rather than less global diversity. And appeals to universal rules will become less effective. Richard Haas, president of the US Council on Foreign Relations, has described this emerging world as "messy multilateralism". This is where the European Union and its diplomats may yet possess a global edge.

What is true for all is that diplomats must learn to share the stage with a broad range of other governmental actors and non-governmental actors, or become irrelevant. Their role changes from executor of policy and negotiator of agreements to facilitator of networks and social entrepreneur identifying possible civil society partners and the venues in which they can meet. Post-modern Europe, with its strong international civil society, can show how to make such a transition.

So perhaps two sorts of diplomats are needed: those who can fulfil the requirements of new issues on the diplomatic agenda; and those who deal with traditional geopolitical agendas. This poses serious challenges for foreign ministries that need to deal with both.

These conflicts and uncertainties condition the roles government diplomats will play in the years to come: facilitate global policy networks to engage the new security agenda; manage more traditional geopolitical relationships; manage the conflicts between the two (which may require different types of diplomats); analyze and navigate the competing value systems and international rule sets; and long-term strategic analysis and planning.

In the years to come, diplomats and diplomatic services will be an ever more important part of maintaining physical and economic security and welfare. This will be as true of the new emerging powers such as China as of the fading European powers. In this area, at least, where Europe leads, others may have to follow. They will do well to keep abreast of Europe's latest thinking.

The writers co-wrote the recently published Clingendael Report Futures for Diplomacy: Integrative Diplomacy in the 21st Century. They are affiliated with the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael in The Hague. The views expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily 11/30/2012 page9)