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Ambiguity in diplomacy came in useful again last week. On Friday, Serbia and Kosovo reached an agreement for Kosovo representation at regional fora. Till now, Serbia, who opposes Kosovo’s independence, was blocking Kosovo’s participation in regional meetings. According to this agreement, Kosovo’s representatives will sit behind the plate ‘Kosovo’ with an asterix pointing to the footnotes...
ACTA protest in London
Last weekend, thousands of people took to the streets of freezing European cities to protest...
Twitter has introduced a new policy allowing the possibility of filtering tweets at the request of local governments. This major departure in policy has triggered an avalanche of tweet-style protests.
‘It is a supercomplex issue’, complained Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo in a recent interview. He continued: ‘When...
The end of the last week was marked by the UK’s veto of the deal agreed by everybody else in the EU family (23+3). To be left alone around the negotiation table is the worst that can happen to any country, short of not being at the table at all, which may happen to the UK after Friday’s decision. How did this happen to one of the best and most professional diplomatic services in the...
Last week in the Hague, at the Internet Freedom Conference, European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes outlined the elements for the EU’s digital diplomacy strategy for dealing with Internet policy issues.[1]
Formally speaking, the architecture of the EU’s digital diplomacy will involve her department (...
Exactly 20 years ago, on 9 December 1991, EU leaders at the Maastricht Summit made two historical decisions: to start introducing the Euro and to recognise...
Now that the WikiLeaks hype has settled, it is a good time to look objectively at its impact and consider what we can learn. The exposure of US diplomatic cables has revealed a highly professional diplomatic service.
American diplomats write good policy analysis, clearly distinguishing facts and judgments. The reports are concise, and well-written with good humour. The early...
One of the collateral consequences of the recent WikiLeaks situation will be its effects on Internet governance and policy. The foundations of Internet politics have been seriously shaken. The fissures that did not appear during previous stress tests including Iraq and Afghanistan, manifested themselves in a matter of days during the...
Emotions have been left out of social theories for the last 40 years. They had no part to play in attempts to make scientific disciplines out of economics, sociology, and international relations. Emotions cannot be quantified and fit into theories that should be verified. Abandoning real people – who are inevitable emotional – the academics went into other direction trying to...
Last evening, as I approached my apartment, I heard my wife shouting at my daughter: “I told you not to play with Skype”. I entered as the peacemaker between warring factions and realised that there was a problem with Skype. As you know, Skype was down globally for 5 hours on Wednesday. Many of our friends reported similar “incidents” blaming others for their...
While we are discussing the thousands of diplomatic telegrams revealed by WikiLeaks, it is important to review the leaking (intentional or otherwise) of a few other telegrams that have shaped diplomatic history. The Ems telegram, leaked by Prussia’s Prince Otto Von Bismarck, led to war between France and Prussia and ultimately to the unification of Germany in 1871...
CableGate puts into sharper focus the modern relevance of one of the oldest survival principles in nature “to see and not be seen”. Today, based on an informal “Internet social contract”, the deal is that we “see” much more, but we also accept being “seen” more than ever before. This tacit Internet deal is under a lot of pressure. We are...
WikiLeaks is probably the strongest attack on diplomacy as a way of managing global affairs. Paradoxically, it may trigger open and honest discussion about its future role. This is the good news….
We need diplomacy now more than ever before. The contemporary world is so interdependent that its conflicts can no longer be resolved by military force. The geo-strategic landscape...
Like everything else, confidentiality is affected by the law of inflation. The multiplication of the inflated object (usually money) reduces its value. There are various reasons behind the growing number of confidential documents in diplomatic services. Aside from the fact that the sheer volume of one’s reporting is very often a major career ‘barometer’, diplomats often assign...
See also: “Leak in Time“
A diplomatic cable is a diplomatic message. The etymology goes back to the mid-nineteenth century when the first diplomatic messages were sent via telegraph. Telegraphs were connected by telegraph cables and the focus...
Probably the only positive impact WikiLeaks will have is that it will demystify diplomacy. Many people see diplomacy as an exclusive and mysterious profession. While diplomacy is perceived as glamour, black limousines, receptions, and the comfortable life, the reality is significantly different. Basically, diplomacy is a profession like any other. There is a lot of...
In April this year (2010) I visited the US State Department in order to learn more about its highly successful e-diplomacy project. I expected to see a state-of-the-art computer centre, a crisis room with lined with computer screens, a battalion of consultants putting together high-tech flashy presentations – a sort of modern era replica of what Byzantine used to do in its golden age with...
On Friday, many of us were at the airport leaving sunny Malta after an invigorating 38th International Forum on Diplomatic Training. Quite a few were in the long queue waiting to check in. Ambassador Winkler walked directly to the next counter and dropped his luggage. And no, it was not a special diplomatic privilege; it was an example of using e-tools in smart way. Ambassador Winkler had...
Here is my response to Sala’s message on visas…
On 9/12/10 4:23 AM, Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro wrote:
> Dear All,
I find the advocacy for the venues, interesting. I am from Fiji
Islands and found that the Shengan visas relatively easy to acquire. I
know what it’s like to be “Searched” and advised me that I needed to...
A study of 30,000 conference calls by American chief executives and chief financial officers found that frequent use of ‘extreme positive emotion words’ is indicative of what?
a) Success
b) Deception
c) Uncertainty
d) Fatigue
If you answered (b), you correctly identified one way of detecting lies online. Besides the use of ‘extreme...
There is a refreshing article on Digital Diplomacy that makes good reading on these hot summer days. The article centres on an attempt by two young officials, Jared Cohen and Alex Ross, to innovate traditional diplomacy. In their mission to provoke and challenge in a...
The reason diplomats are usually reluctant to use Twitter can be found in the saying that “Diplomats think twice before saying nothing”. They are even more cautious when it comes to writing. Tweets are just the opposite. They are an immediate reaction: they are result of the moment.The usual criticism is that tweets are not well thought out.
...
The photo above provides a clue, as does the EuroNews video clip.
Some clarification of terminology (before you provide a...
Come with me on a journey and I’ll show you…..
In the mid-1980s, I was in the middle of my studies at Belgrade University. It was a few years after the death of Tito. Change was in the making. The surface waters seemed calm, but underneath, the currents were raging. It was a great time for creativity. The old socialist system with its communist ideology was...