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GUERRILLA DIPLOMACY Rethinking International Relations Daryl Copeland BRITISH LIBRARV DOCUMENT SUPPLY CEN 2 8 AUG 2009 m09/. «••aBnilflilindMa» 29987 LYNNE RIENNER PUBLISHERS BOULDER LON DON Responsibility for the contents of this book is the author's alone. The author does not claim to represent the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the government of Canada, or any other organization. Published in the United States of America in 2009 by Lynne Rienner Publishers. Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder. Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. London WC2E 8LU © 2009 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Copeland. Daryl, 1954— Guerrilla diplomacy : rethinking international relations / by Daryl Copeland, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58826-679-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-58826-655-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Diplomacy. 2. International relations. 3. World politics—21 st century. I. Title. JZ1305.C67 2009 327.2—dc22 2009002507 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library'. Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements @ of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5 4 3 2 1 For Glyn Berry; a colleague and Foreign Service officer, who was killed on January 15, 2006, by an improvised explosive device while on duty as political director with Canada’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar, Afghanistan and for all my colleagues, of any nationality\ who have given their lives practicing diplomacy. * * * In honor of Glyn, all royalties from the sale of this book will go to the Glyn Berry Memorial Scholarship in Inter national Policy Studies, which has been established by Dalhousie University, Glyn’s alma mater. Details may be found at www.alumniandfriends.dal.ca/giving/glynbeny. Contents Preface jx 1 Diplomacy, Development, and Security in the Age of Globalization \ Part 1 The Evolving Context of Diplomacy 2 Cold War Comfort: The World We Knew 19 3 Globalization and Empire: The World We’ve Got 37 4 Understanding World Order: The March of History 55 Part 2 Drivers of Change 5 Persistent Insecurity: Lessons Unlearned 75 6 Development Revisited: No Justice, No Peace 91 7 Science and Technology: Black Hole or Silver Bullet? 111 Part 3 Diplomacy Unbound 8 The Global Political Economy of Knowledge: Working Smarter 129 9 The Foreign Ministry: Relic or Renaissance? 143 10 Public Diplomacy and Foreign Service: The Front Lines 161 vii viii Contents Part 4 The Way Ahead 11 International Policy Instruments: Relevant, Effective, Transformed 187 12 Guerrilla Diplomacy: Sharper, Faster, Lighter 205 13 Conclusions: None Foregone 237 Bibliography 263 Index 293 About the Book 311 Preface The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding. —Albeit Camus It was the early 1980s and the world was a very different place. The cataclysms in Southeast Asia had subsided, and the Cold War was on: the So viets were in Afghanistan, the Cubans in Africa, and the Vietnamese in Cam bodia—and the United States was most everywhere else. But in Bangkok— where I was working as a junior political and consular officer at the Canadian Embassy—life seemed mainly, well, exotic. Except for the faint echoes of re cent violence in the border refugee camps; a low-level, vaguely Islamic insur gency along the Malaysian frontier to the south; and occasional accusations re garding the use of chemical and bacteriological weapons against minority tribes in neighboring countries, Thailand seemed tranquil, very much the “land of smiles.” I had actively sought my assignment, and if there was to be the oc casional ripple in the sea of calm, I was confident in my capacity to smooth it out. I had enough worldly experience on the one hand and formal education on the other to help me think my way through whatever challenges might ensue. Or so I thought. My first full day in country w'as a hazy, super-hot Sunday. The night be fore, colleagues had taken me out to the Foreign Correspondents Club, which at the time was habituated mainly by diplomats, expatriates, and journalists— including a slightly forlorn if not dissolute group of correspondents who just couldn’t leave Indochina behind. Upon walking into the club for the first time, X Preface I was reminded of the intergalactic bar in Star Wars, where creatures from across the cosmos gather to mix and mingle. When it closed for the night, we flagged a three-wheeled tuk tuk with vet eran Australian cameraman Neil Davis. (He became a friend, but a year after I left he was caught in a crossfire and killed while covering an abortive palace coup.) Through the flashing lights and heavy night air we traveled past the throngs still streaming out of the legendarily sin-soaked Patpong Road and crossed town to arrive at an after-hours bar called The Thermae. Because the front doors of the putative barbershop and beauty salon were locked, we en tered through a dank and dingy back alley to find ourselves in a cavernous space filled with dense smoke and pulsating music. By three in the morning it was crammed with everyone in Bangkok who either hadn’t yet found what he or she was looking for—from pleasant conversation to every conceivable vice—or just couldn’t sleep. The scene made the earlier part of that evening appear tepid by compari son. Murray Head’s huge hit “One Night in Bangkok” wasn’t released until a year or two later, but the setting in The Thermae inspired the lyrics to the song. This was underground Bangkok, a superstore for footloose and lonely insom niacs, a kind of wonderland for aficionados of the bizarre—a place where, when the going got weird, the weird turned professional. Not unlike Lewis Carroll’s Alice, I found myself unsure which side of the looking glass I was on. We finally left just before dawn. The next morning, while 1 remained discombobulated, my predecessor Marius, who would be leaving in a few days, called to invite me on a trip to the former Thai capital of Ayutthaya, which lies about fifty kilometers up the Chao Praya River from Bangkok. An hour later we were en route to the site, accompanied by the locally engaged consular and administrative assistants, Nipha and Saranya. This was prior to the real estate bubble of the 1990s, and Bangkok, home to about 7 million, was still predominantly low-rise. With the exception of soot-belching buses, beat-up taxis, and the long-tailed boats that plied the river and the few remaining canals, or klongs, modern public transit was then non existent. The density of the crowds, the extent of the gridlock, and the sever ity of the air pollution, which my colleagues seemed not to notice, dumb founded me. I was especially surprised whenever we stopped at an intersection, which for the people of Bangkok meant commercial opportunity. Children would clean the grime from your windshield for a few baht or hawk snacks, garlands, and newspapers. In some neighborhoods, the kids them selves were for sale. As we cleared the sprawling suburbs, I remember thinking about the haz ards of trying to eke out a living in the grinding traffic and noxious fumes. I recall reflecting on my good fortune to have been bom in a place where the standards of public health and social service were such that I would never see Preface XI our children working the streets. I never imagined that “squeegee kids” would soon enough become a prominent feature in Western cities, too. In about an hour we arrived. Sacked by the Burmese in the eighteenth cen tury, the ruined emerald city with its palm-fringed vistas remains a visual feast, the immense Buddhas and giant, bell-like chedis providing strikingly serene contrast to the vitality and chaos of Bangkok. We parked near our first stop, a magnificent temple featuring a giant reclining Buddha. As we walked along a shaded path by the riverside, I noticed a small crowd of Thais clustered around a vendor’s stall that featured a large cage full of small birds. Somewhat to my surprise, Nipha walked over to the hut and came back w ith one of the little birds in a portable bamboo cage. She then walked down to the riverbank, turned a simple clasp that opened the gate on the front of the cage, and freed the bird, which flew off across the water. What was this amazingly graceful gesture all about? 1 thought that some thing so poetic must surely have symbolic or religious meaning. When I in quired, Nipha looked at me with a gentle blend of understanding and pity and offered a brief explanation of the Buddhist practice of making merit through token good works. We were about to move on when a tall, blonde, slightly disheveled young male visitor—perhaps German or Dutch or North American—approached the vendor and also bought a caged bird. He, too, had apparently been struck by the proceedings. He made his way down to the bank of the river and waited in line for his turn to join in the ritual, seemingly wanting to fit in and to do the right thing. But the clasp on his cage appeared to be jammed. Fumbling with the gate, he was beginning to draw an amused crowd. The attention only made him try harder, and the episode was beginning to take on the quality of a minor spec tacle. In embarrassed desperation, the young fellow grabbed the comers of the cage and torqued it mightily in a final attempt to force the latch. Instead the entire edifice exploded into a cloud of bamboo shards. A murmur of disbelief passed through those gathered on the bank. All eyes then moved to the bird, which had escaped the wreckage unscathed. It cir cled in a wide arc over the water, crossed the tree line on the far shore, and then, incredibly, flew back to the vendor and landed on his outstretched arm. A knowing smile passed fleetingly over the face of the savvy small business man as he casually returned the fortunate flutterer to the larger cage for resale. * * * What to make of it all? This was shock and awe of a cross-cultural kind. On that saffron-tinged, frangipani-scentcd morning, I began to realize that my own perceptions would have to change fundamentally. I was indeed in a very distant place in all respects—where missteps could be made, where not everything was XII Preface as it seemed, and where much of what was important occurred at levels other than the obvious. Clearly, for all the fragments of insight 1 may have picked up in my years of backpack travel and studies in international affairs, I was still far from where I wanted—or needed—to be. Living on the other side of the world would be quite different from passing through it. To come to terms with my new surroundings—and certainly to operate effectively as a diplomat—Fd have to do more than just look. I would have to learn to see. Twenty-five years have passed between my arrival in Bangkok and the start of this project. Some things are the same, but much more is different. This book is mainly concerned with what has changed and what those changes might mean for diplomacy, security, and international relations in the era of global ization. More than anything else, though, it is about seeing, above all seeing the world in new ways. In publishing it, I hope to advance our understanding of what is going on, why, and what might be done about it. I began this enterprise in the late spring of 2006, motivated by the convic tion that the moment was ripe for a holistic, synoptic treatment of the topic. After so many years of diplomatic practice, I thought it time to stand back, to reflect, to research, and to analyze. I was certain that, by fusing grand strategy and multidisciplinary analysis, I could find a better way forward and break new ground. This book is the result. I advance the case that diplomats must be empowered to manage global ization—which can occur only with the reinvention of diplomacy itself. In that respect, diplomacy’s inherent dedication to dialogue, whether through open communication or more discreet channels, has great appeal, especially as an alternative to the threat or use of force. I argue that diplomacy, reimagined and linked integrally to development, can and should displace defense at the cen ter of international policy and global relations. In the course of my research, and somewhat to my surprise, I found the near-complete absence of a user-friendly guide to the conceptual geography and the operations of the international system as we know it. Without such a framework, I would have difficulty articulating my analysis. I have tried to close that lacuna and to map the insecure present by building a model of the new world order, interpreting the recent Cold War past, assessing the meaning of development and the role of science and technology therein, and, finally, of fering some thoughts on the future of diplomacy, the foreign ministry, and the foreign sendee. The task, as it happened, was somewhat larger and more complicated than 1 had anticipated. Preface xiii While I have a couple of degrees and over the years have kept in close touch with colleagues in the scholarly community, I am at heart a practitioner, not an academic. In order to cover all of the ground necessary to make my case, I have had in places to draw on personal experience, to rely on instinct, and to traverse great chunks of entire disciplines, often at high altitude and sometimes cursorily. Meanwhile, 1 have barely touched upon international or ganizations, multilateral financial institutions, or many other aspects of inter national policy and relations, including trade and immigration, that might use fully have been considered. I have doubtless missed important authors and sources. The nature of academic publishing, moreover, means that some cir cumstances may have changed since the book was written. Perhaps I can cor rect these shortcomings, and countless more, another day. Whether or not I have done it well, I have done something unusual in the study of international relations—namely, explore relationships between sub jects rarely considered in tandem, let alone all together: the Cold War and globalization; development and security; science, technology, and interna tional policy; and the constituent elements of the diplomatic ecosystem (which I define as the mutual habitat of foreign ministries, diplomacy, and foreign service). In my efforts to reveal the relationships between and among these components to produce a synthesis at the level of grand strategy, I have also drawn on the full spectrum of sources, from academic to popular and conser vative to radical, from literature and film to conversations and interviews. While this is essentially a book about diplomacy, it is intended for a broad au dience, both specialists and those with more general interests. As a result, the argumentation is, of necessity, heavily research-based in some cases and more intuitive in others. This differentiation reflects the sprawl and uneven surface of the intellectual terrain traversed. I recognize that the synoptic approach may have created occasional mo ments of analytical tension or chasms between pieces of the argument. I have tried to ease the transitions and lay at least token bridges across the greater di vides, but the scaffolding may still appear a bit shaky in places. While I have done my best, I don’t doubt that it could be improved. For this; for any errors of omission, fact, or interpretation; and for any other failings, I apologize in advance and ask but a small measure of forbear ance. I am certainly open to all suggestions for reconsideration. This book would not have been possible without the generous support of the following organizations: Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, Ecole Nationale d’Administration Publique at the Université du Québec, the Cana dian Centre for International Governance Innovation, the Canadian institute of