I TAKE exception to those who claim that diplomacy has failed in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Diplomacy has not failed. It is the negotiations to stop the tanks from rolling, to cease causing the loss of lives, and to pit brother against brother, that has failed.
We often confuse negotiations with diplomacy, thinking that if the talks stall and war has begun, then diplomacy has failed.
Diplomacy is so much more than the clustering of stodgy old men around a round table to put forth each other's demands. "Diplomacy" is the big umbrella under which "negotiations" sit, negotiations being a tool by which diplomacy is practised.
Why would I paint so grim a picture of negotiations: stodgy old men, round table, demands? More often than not this is how negotiations take place.
First of all, negotiators are by and large middle-aged men and older. A 2019 report by the US-based Council on Foreign Relations found that women only made up 14 per cent of the negotiators in peace processes between 2015 and 2019.
Yet, this double digit figure is a giant step up from a UN Women report in 2012 that stated that only nine per cent of negotiation team members from 1992 to 2012 were women.
Despite numerous findings, and insistence, that women's participation in peace negotiations can lead to a more durable peace, the world of negotiation, and those who sit around that negotiation table, is almost surely all-male, or predominantly male.
The negotiators would almost always be aged 45 and above, and of a very comfortable background (read: privileged). There would rarely be an activist, or a ground-level expert among them. It would be administrators, politicians, diplomats and professional mediators.
Second: round table. Why does the table have to be round? Of course the obvious answer is that there is no "head of the table" when the table is thus shaped, so every negotiator is an equal participant regardless of the strength of his backing, support, or his own position in world affairs. But more importantly, the word connotes any kind of setting in which a discussion may take place. Round table = a table that is round. Round-table = setting of a discussion.
Third, the choice of the word "demands". Negotiators are not always mandated to find a solution to a problem but to ensure the side they represent gets the maximum benefit possible. This is why many peace processes are brokered by mediators who make it their goal to find a settlement, solution or amicable agreement to the problem.
Negotiators will put their cards on the table, albeit not all at once. They will twist and turn to ensure a "win" for their side. In every negotiation course I attended, the trainer will coach you in how to get the other side to give in to your demands.
Only in one spectacularly brilliant negotiation course did the trainer take us through steps that would lead to an amicable solution, allowing both sides to walk away from the table happy.
This is why, while negotiators demand, mediators solve. Coming back to the argument of negotiations vs diplomacy, diplomacy is not always about being "nice".
Sometimes the hard and decisive actions that are taken are also part of the diplomatic process.
For example, the sanctions that are imposed on an entity is also a diplomatic tool, no matter how harsh the repercussions might be. Diplomacy, therefore, refers to any action, word or even inaction meant to circumvent or change the course of international events. It covers that broad spectrum of whispering sweet nothings in the right (and influential) ears to refusing to meet for discussions, and from providing humanitarian assistance to mounting a propaganda against another state.
To say that diplomacy has failed in the case of Palestine-Israel, and in Russia-Ukraine, for example, would be a disservice and a fallacy. In both, diplomacy is very much alive, evident in the continuous talks, public diplomacy exercises, and most of all, the will to get to the light at the end of the tunnel.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is clear in his understanding of diplomacy vs negotiations, saying that the war will end only through diplomacy. What kind of diplomacy he was referring to, remains to be seen. As long as diplomacy still lives, then all is not lost.
The writer is a foreign service officer who has served in bilateral and multilateral posts. These days she often finds herself between idealism and realism, between reality and the academic