The art of diplomacy remains little changed since ancient days, writes Gamil Mattar* I recently had the opportunity to spend a day with a group of young people hoping to pursue diplomatic careers. I was happy to discover that the majority, 10 out of 17, were women. Not that this is particularly remarkable -- a high ratio of women to men has become the norm among applicants to many types of occupations. We are living in an age of "summit diplomacy," which represents a departure from past practices. In days of old diplomats were messengers, bearing written or oral communications from one ruler to another. But because of the difficulty of travel between nations, and the length of time it took for messages to be conveyed, diplomats were vested with enormous powers. They were able to take crucial decisions without referring back to their rulers. In Athens, for example, diplomatic envoys were chosen by popular ballot and were empowered to declare war and conclude peace. Little wonder that the Athenians considered diplomacy sacred. It had its own god -- Hermes, the god of messengers. In the ancient world diplomats were the bearers of messages in the fullest sense. They not only transmitted them, they had a hand in formulating them, so much so that they would not convey them to their destined recipient unless they were themselves thoroughly convinced of the contents of the messages. According to Harold Nicholson, the famous historian of diplomacy, Sri Krishna, the messenger of an Indian ruler who lived many centuries ago, would say before embarking on a mission: "I will go to convey the matter of my master, the ruler, in the most eloquent manner... I will persuade the men of their court to accede to his demands. Then, if I fail and war erupts, the world will see how we were right and how they were wrong... and the world will not judge us wrongly." In those distant days rulers didn't do the negotiating; they would take the final decisions but they would generally not have met face to face with their adversaries. Their ambassadors were charged with the nuts and bolts of negotiating, a task deemed too important to leave to the ruler, the vicissitudes of whose psychological and physical health could affect his negotiating performance or else be exploited by his adversaries. Diplomats today maintain that in spite of the rise of summit diplomacy they continue to play a crucial role. They prepare the reports and background papers for the high level meetings that are held to prepare for the summits. They take part in preparing the agendas, drafting the position papers and advising key participants on the points they should adhere to or the subjects they should avoid in the course of summit-level negotiations. Then, after the summit meetings, the diplomats set about implementing whatever resolutions were taken or else dousing the flames the summit participants fanned.. Arab diplomats have become particularly adept at the latter, having been forced to develop many methods for smoothing over the tensions and fissures the summit participants inadvertently sparked or exposed. Many well-known diplomats, in speeches or in memoirs, have related the lengths to which they had to go in order to rectify blunders committed behind closed doors in summit sessions or openly, during press conferences and speeches, before and after the sessions. Many diplomatic figures have proven highly adept at keeping heads of state from speaking extemporaneously on the air, persuading them instead to read from prepared scripts. In the US, senior State Department officials equip American presidents with small index cards on which are written the positions the president must adhere to during talks with counterparts from other nations. But on the whole diplomats have had an uphill battle convincing political leaders -- in whose hands crucial political decisions ultimately rest -- that tough negotiations with allies or enemies are better left to the experts, regardless of how clever, experienced and in touch with the facts the politicians are. Indeed, heads of state who think they can do the job better than diplomats constitute the biggest headache of many foreign ministries. In order to keep pace with the boom in summit diplomacy and advances in communications and transport technologies, new styles of diplomacy have had to be invented. Traditionally, ambassadors would present themselves to a foreign court and deliver their missives to court officials, and sometimes to the king himself. In the Hellenic period, and in certain phases of the Roman Empire, foreign ambassadors could even deliver their messages directly to the people, sometimes without obtaining permission from the ruler. That practice fell out of use in the Middle Ages, a development that was perhaps only natural since diplomats were recruited mostly from the aristocracy whose members were expected to associate only with other members of the same class. Such diplomatic luminaries as Dante, Boccaccio, Vittori and Machiavelli were not in a position, or even expected, to address the public, with which they had nothing to do and whose interests probably conflicted with their own. Yet it would seem America's Condoleezza Rice has stepped in to perform contemporary diplomacy an enormous favour. Her initiative is founded upon the largely American presumption that these days national sovereignty is a very hazy concept and therefore provides plenty of scope, theoretically at least, to leap over the barriers that would have impeded the actions of a diplomat accredited to a foreign state in the not so distant past. Accordingly, today's diplomat -- or at least today's American diplomat -- has the right to address the people of a foreign nation directly, bypassing all that tedious protocol, and even the need to obtain official permission, in order to convey his or her message, even when that message to the people is to overturn their government because it is not democratic. Some politicians, diplomats and others, hold that this latest development in the art of diplomacy is fraught with unpredictable dangers. Throughout history trans-national and trans- cultural messages have always been of two sorts. One was generally political, conveyed via diplomatic envoys from one ruler to another and rarely directly to another people. The other was of a religious or ideological nature and conveyed directly to the people, in ancient times via prophets and their apostles and evangelizers or, in the case of secular messages such as Marxism and the various brands of socialism, ideologues and their disciples. Among the latter are America's hell-and-brimstone proselytisers for American-style democracy and free market economy. It spent a stimulating day with the diplomatic cadets, who happened to be from the Emirates. I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to respond to some of the stories that have tainted the reputation of diplomacy. I felt this was important since it is not just the general public, but also many political officials, including a few Arab heads of state, that hold the profession in disdain. Like many of the young men and women I met, they think the life of a diplomat is one long round of cocktail parties, banquets, receptions and balls at which, as one of my interlocutors put it, "hands touch arms or at best other hands". I took a stab at dispelling this superficial and very widespread impression. More than once I had to bring my audience's attention to the fact that diplomatic life, even in its formalities, embraces many cultural differences. The Indians, Japanese and Sudanese, among others, do not shake hands or make physical contact in any way. We Arabs, in contrast, are much more effusive; we don't simply shake hands, we embrace and kiss one another's cheeks, and yet some of us complain of diplomatic formalities where no more than a handshake is involved. I have often heard Westerners expressing their amazement, sometimes critically, at other times in jest, at the way Arab officials wrap their foreign guests in a warm embrace and cover them with kisses. Our conversation also turned to the question of gifts and the role they play in diplomacy and international relations. Few are aware of the importance of the exchange of gifts within the art of diplomacy. Since the dawn of history gifts have served as tokens of sincerity and seals of commitment, often taking the place of the written word. The Tel Amarna stelae, discovered in Upper Egypt, depict how the gift expressed both the status of the giver and the status of the receiver and the relations between them. One stele relates that the Assyrian king sent a message to the Pharaoh reminding him of the presents of gold the king's father had sent to the pharaoh's father and complaining of how little the pharaoh had sent in return. "They barely cover the travel expenses of the diplomats between our countries," the Assyrian king remarked. Another stele relates that the king of the Methanines wrote to the Pharaoh complaining that the statues the Pharaoh had sent him as a gift were not even made of gold. He went on to ask, "Is this intended to signal the beginning of a phase of poor relations between us?" Translated into modern terms, we are reminded of the repeated complaints of a certain Arab government that the aid allocations it had been receiving from the US were threatened with cuts every time Washington had a disagreement with this government's policies. Yet it is the diplomats that remain core to the practice of diplomacy. They must project the image of their country abroad just as, in the past, the ambassador projected the image of his ruler in foreign courts. In addition, consciously or unconsciously, we still gauge the degree of respect in which one country holds another by the status of its diplomatic representatives. Governments still express their disapproval by dispatching their greenest and least polished envoys. Not much has changed since the days when the King of Babylon transmitted a message to the Pharaoh of Egypt via a delegation one of whose members was a donkey driver. What more did the pharaoh need to tell him that Egyptian-Babylonian relations were in decline? On another occasion, the King of Babylon conveyed his displeasure by dispatching an envoy with no message to convey whatsoever! In the course of our discussion of diplomatic signs and symbols, one of my young interlocutors came up with a very astute observation. She pointed out that most of Washington's envoys to the Middle East are Zionists or supporters of Zionist policies. Their visits to the region tend to be preceded or accompanied by statements that are anti- Palestinian and anti-Arab, or at best deliberately provocative. And there have been occasions when these envoys had no message to bare at all, just like the Babylonian ambassador to Egypt 3,000 years ago. Yet the proof of what really was intended, so to speak, is in the pudding: the current deterioration in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the current direction of American policy towards the Middle East. The substance might change, the pace might vary from energetic to sluggish, but diplomacy, which is the oldest -- or at least the second oldest -- profession in history, remains a solid and vital career even in this age of summit conferences. * The writer is director of the Arab Centre for Development and Futuristic Research.
