DIPLOMACY WHICH for couple of millennia at least, was the exclusive preserve of the rulers and their chosen representatives – His / Her majesty’s Ambassadors can no longer be conducted in this unaccountable and rarified atmosphere today. Most governments if not all including the undemocratic ones, have to be sensitive to the public opinion not only in matters concerning their internal governance but their external relations as well.
So how do we see or perceive that cultural diplomacy is indeed significant? Diplomacy seeks to deploy peaceful methods, generally persuasive though at times coercive, but not amounting to use of force, to explain and expand a nation state’s objectives. Cultural diplomacy plays an important role in creating awareness of a nation state’s cultural achievements and thereby to create better understanding amongst the target nations and peoples. Logic is that this awareness would lead to empathy and understanding and in turn to appreciation of our legitimate objectives and induce a spirit of willing compromise in the other nation states. This in turn creates a fertile ground for diplomats who can then negotiate with other states and advance our political agenda.
Cultural diplomacy is not limited to merely fine arts or performing arts or literature or academia. The world has seen great advances in democratization and increasing empowerment of people, and of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), universal literary, global presence of mass media, over the past couple of hundred years but dramatically in the twentieth century. ‘Culture’ has, therefore, expanded its coverage and domain of influence. Public entertainers were on the fringe of culture and power circle throughout history except for the last two, three hundred years. Radio, television, print media, cinema and sports have revolutionized the public awareness and involvement. Framers and oracles of public opinion, have a very important role to us shaping the public psyche. Canadian thinker Marshall McLuhan went to the extent of saying that ‘medium is the message’.
Also the so-called entertainment culture has created a firm grip on the public psyche and imagination.
Information and communication technologies have acted as multipliers of the soft power. A follower of Real politic would argue that the achievement of national interests would have to be viewed in the perspective of a state’s power. In information age the distribution of this power is not so easily or clearly defined. For instance with the collapse of Warsaw Pact, disintegration of communist states in Eastern Europe, disintegration of the Soviet Union itself, the bipolarity in the world with the Soviet Union and the US as the two poles collapsed. In a strategic and military sense it left the US as the sole Super Power. In practice the US has now emerged, as a preponderant power but not the only dominant power. It is, therefore, difficult to see the world today as a unipolar world. It is also at the same time clear that the world is still far from being multi-polar; us remaining great powers are not in a position to act as independent poles.
With the ubiquity of mass media especially the telecast pictures of wars, famines, genocides, terrorism (most dramatic example being 9/11) of the sports, US landing on the moon beamed directly to homes have involved the people all over the world in these events with immediacy and urgency never experienced before in democracies. The impact of such a phenomenon confuses people’s perception of strategic and even vital interests of states. People get involved in decision-making, which traditionally was the sole preserve of the governments especially of its foreign policy.
One is not making the point that democracies are not suitable for exercise of power in the pursuit of a nation state’s vital and strategic interests. One is merely pointing out the enormous complexity that has arisen as a result of this phenomenon. It will be equally facile to think that non-democratic governments are necessarily better at this game than the democratic ones. The world has seen almost total collapse of the communist ideology and not only from non-communist states but from most communist states. One should also not underestimate the difficulties that Mao’s totalitarian China had to go through when from the US being the enemy No. 1 and being a paper tiger, China had to embrace not just the US at that time represented by Richard Nixon (well known for his anti-communist stand), but capitalism also. Inspite of being the most difficult form of government, democracy has many virtues, one of which being the articulation and representation of the national will and the willing cooperation of its people in exercise of power and implementation of government’s policies.
Till Vietnam War the conventional wisdom was that force was the ultimate arbiter in international relations, after all coercive and non-coercive measures including economic and trade sanctions had failed. Vietnam syndrome created a new paradigm, a new matrix of diplomatic factors and the biggest gainers were diplomacy and the so-called ‘Soft Power’. Gorbachov was able to state that there was a limit to the use of force in setting international disputes, that military power could no longer dictate the outcome of disputes and that it was time for the two Super Powers to agree to limit their strategic arms.
What are the cultural assets of a state? What institutions are required to preserve these assets, to strengthen them, and how to use them abroad to one’s advantage? What policy infrastructure is needed? How to train one’s diplomats and culture persons to that they can propagate their culture externally? These are important matters that need elaboration and analysis. I am merely alluding to them at this stage.
Fortunately for us, India is amongst the top few states in the world in terms of cultural endowment if not right at the top. Most important cultural endowment for India is the fact that India represents the only civilization continuum in the world. Previous great civilizations have either disappeared or changed beyond recognition. New ones are not ancient as us naturally. This factor of antiquity itself is a USP of immense diplomatic cache.
Second factor or importance to India is she is a large and diverse nation covering large and diverse area. Diversity engenders vitality, tolerance and creativity. Thirdly our religious and spiritual heritage has enabled us to make great intellectual, scientific and artistic progress. Mahatma Gandhi’s articulation that no religion is higher than truth is a very pithy statement of our heterodox tradition. Orthodoxy kills pursuit of truth, and buries new ideas and progress. The trait of tolerance of different religions and ideas has been fundamental to our survival as a civilization and to our renaissance over the millennia. This attitude of tolerance is the sine qua non for effective practice of diplomacy. There can be no diplomacy if one side or the other refuses to understand the legitimate rights and aspirations of the other side.
In the olden days, diplomacy was essentially backed up by force either the use of force or the threat of it. It may have been aided and abetted by cleverness and cunning occasionally but it was either the threat of use of force of the actual use of force, which made diplomacy either effective or ineffective.
Today, the picture is certainly not as grim though not simple either. Trade historically has been an important factor in the conduct of foreign relations. I would venture to say, however, that this factor is today of lesser importance than before, due to changed global circumstances. There are nearly two hundred countries in the world today, trading with each other under an international system governing trade. Trade is getting more open implying that arbitrariness and monopolistic / oligopolistic positions that great trading nations enjoyed in the past can no longer be deployed with the same effectiveness today. Inter-dependence in trade means that unilateral cancellation, or violation of trading agreements can lead to as much disruption within as without.
It would be a grave error to think that culture is used only as a tool of peaceful diplomacy. It can and has been used as a tool of war, of carrying out aggression and acts of belligerency against other states, and to undermine other states, to foment internal dissensions, even civil wars. The Crusades launched by West European States against Ottoman Empire and Muslim nations are a classical and historical example. Equally pernicious and more destructive has been the abuse of Islam by many Islamic nations in the recent past, leading to the formation of Al Qaida, the Taliban and Shiite insurgency to name only a few. Islamic fundamentalism of one kind or another has been a major historical phenomenon of the last quarter of the twentieth century unfortunately spawning global terror resulting in perhaps the greatest thereat to global peace by non-state players using terror causing enormous, and savage destruction of the lives of mostly innocent people.
This is the other side of the coin of cultural diplomacy – not a campaign to win the hearts and mind of other people but to bludgeon them into submission, to blackmail the societies and the government of democratic nations into surrendering their freedom and the right to pursue their democratic policies. The use of violence and total intolerance militate against the basic tenets of diplomacy.
By Mr. Yogesh Tiwari is a retired IFS officer
Source: http://www.merinews.com
Forget yourself for others, and others will never forget you.
No comments:
Post a Comment