[MUSIC]
Hello, I'm joined by Richard Woodward of Coventry Business School.
Richard, in your experience in your academic career,
what do you conceive diplomacy to be?
>> Well, I have a slightly schizophrenic personality on this one which is,
when someone mentions diplomacy or diplomats,
the first thing that I still think of even now is the very conventional idea of men.
And of course very often is still men,
in very smart suits going to big international conferences,
representing their national interest in very important matters of state.
But of course in my own research,
I've come to realize that's a very narrow view of diplomacy.
And what I call the three As, which is something I hear by copyright,
and my three As are actors, audiences, and ambitions.
And by actors, I've come to realize that there are many,
many more actors involved in diplomacy than just states or just the professionals
who inhabit Ministries of Foreign Affairs, and the like.
And I suppose while it would be trite to say that we are all diplomats now,
we have the potential I think all to be diplomats.
Technology has made that possible.
In terms of the audience, I think something else that's changed is that
traditionally we would once think of the audience being the elite of another state.
In other words, their foreign policy establishment.
Whereas I think now the audiences tend to be very often the public's
of those states as well.
And the last thing I think is in terms of the ambition.
I think there's a much greater emphasis now on using diplomacy to augment
soft power in world affairs.
In other words, to try to get the people, foreign audiences, to want what you want.
Which might obviate the need for diplomacy in future or
at least smooth the path of future diplomacy.
>> Okay, that's very interesting though in thinking about how that plays out.
What do you identify as successful diplomacy therefore?
>> I think, for me, successful diplomacy is about getting to yes.
In other words getting some sort of agreement.
I suppose if you think back to the more conventional views of diplomacy here,
it's about getting to yes in the knowledge that there are constraints here.
You know partly of course what your opposite numbers will be thinking and
what you want, but
you also of course know what your own side would want in an ideal world.
So I think it's about getting to yes, but
with the knowledge that their are constraints.
And getting to yes without giving too much away, being a skilled and
tough negotiator.
>> Okay, so, conversely what does failed diplomacy look like to your mind?
>> Well, I think that's a much more difficult thing to identify,
because that sort of presumes that you know what diplomacy is
setting out to do in the first place.
I think one of the things for me is I think diplomacy is an iterative process.
In other words, it's not a one shot thing.
I think that's how it's often portrayed.
That again, you go off to a conference, or you go off to a meeting,
and if you don't come back with an agreement then somehow that's a failure.
I don't necessarily see that as a failure because as I said,
I think diplomacy is iterative.
So you keep, very often going back to the same problem again and again.
Likewise what I've found in my own experience both personal and
looking through academic and doing research here is that very often when
one diplomatic path is closed or blocked, others remain open.
So an example that I would give here is very often that something like a G7 or
a G20 meeting.
Yes, they'll come away with the communique but
there will be certain areas where perhaps no deal has been reached, and
you think well, that's maybe a failure of diplomacy.
But very often what happens is those same people who were at that meeting will go
off into another organization, another setting and negotiations will continue.
And the OECD, in my experience, is very often where that happens.
So the same group of people will go away into a, perhaps a less public forum and
quietly resolve the matter that they haven't been able to resolve in a more
public space.