They were actually, also at the very same moment in time, fighting a war.
So the extent to which this was diplomacy, and I think it was because there was some
effort to try and reach agreement so the guns would fall silent.
But also that was bound up very much with the way in which the military would then
try to fight the wars.
So, for instance, launching operations in order to
exert leverage at the diplomatic bargaining table.
And also finally as well, because there's an ongoing look at just the military
struggle in Korea, but also a more general Cold War struggle going on.
These so-called diplomatic interactions also became very much
bound up with propaganda.
So, both sides were making points as well, and
I think the fundamental element here was just how much more difficult it was for
the military on either side to reach agreement.
Now, it was bound that with some of these problems that I've discussed, but I think
it was also bound up with sort of these characters just weren't trained in this.
Rosemary Foot argues I think very well in her book on the Korean War,
A Substitute for Victory, that actually the military mind and
the whole military upbringing isn't really prepared for sort of the giving and take.
It's very much sort of what can we coerce these others into doing,
rather than where the way we might see a sort of traditional,
sort of suave diplomat basically playing a sort of perpetual, subtle game.
>> Okay, great.
In terms of your experience and the research you've undertaken,
how do you know when diplomacy has gone well?
What are the measures of success in diplomacy?
>> I think for an historian that's particularly difficult,
because I think it relates to obviously the time, the timing afterwards.
So, I think for instance, a great example of this was at the Yalta conference.
Roosevelt comes back from Yalta in early 1945 as a major success.
And actually, in Roosevelt's own terms, and I think those around him,
it was a major success.
Because it had a very real goal, and
that was to bring the Soviet Union into the war against Japan.
And that was a key goal in that moment in time, the atomic bomb hadn't yet
been tested, and so that was a key goal.
So it was viewed I think publicly as a major success, but it was also viewed as
a success because of the way in which the leaders defined their own objectives.
Now you take a different vantage point, a year or two, five years later,
and of course, it looks very, very different.
So, and you can say that with lots of these sort of big summits,
even summits where perhaps less controversial,
it really depends pretty much on your point of view in time.
Helsinki in 1974 is another good example.
To what extent where the Americans really that interested in an outcome that
might have actually helped to undermine the Soviet war in eastern Europe?
Which is part of the claim that was made in the 15 or so years later.
At the time, they were viewing it very different.
So trying to, I think, two ways, obviously,
is trying to sort of establish as you can, with the primary focus as an historian,
what were the leaders' objectives going in?
And to what extent did they achieve them in the short term?
But then secondly, saying how much can we read into this particular moment in time,
for what later advantage, but it's very easy to read back a lot into it.
So I would take very much what the leaders are trying to achieve and
very much in the sort of short term, is it actually achieved then.
Because things look very different from 10 or 15 years later and
I think it's very easy to sort of read too much back into all the success or failure.