Direct Diplomacy Rather Than Media-Diplomacy

By Brigitte L. Nacos 

“If you want to know what Democratic gains in this midterm election would mean for national security policy,”  David Broder of the Washington Post writes in today’s column, “[Senators] Levin and Reed can provide the answer.” While it is not surprising that Carl Levin and Jack Reed, Democrats and members of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, would push for direct negotiations between the U.S.and North Korea, there is no reason to believe that the administration would retreat from its long refusal to engage in bi-lateral talks with the communist government of North Korea. After all, President Bush and his team will still be in office and call the shots after the next congress constitutes itself in January. Still, by going public with their preference for U.S.-North Korean talks, Levin and Reed side with direct and traditional diplomacy that has been replaced largely by media diplomacy. Sebastian Mallaby of the Washington Post is wrong when he writes, "In North Korea and Iran, the United States has tried every diplomatic trick to prevent nuclear proliferation..." The U.S. administration did not try the most obvious "diplomatic trick," namely traditional diplomacy in form of person-to-person contacts.

Nether multilateral negotiations nor media diplomacy are substitutes. Even before the era of global television, radio, and Internet communications, print press and wire service reporters engaged in media diplomacy. During the Cuban Missile crisis, for example, newsmen conveyed messages back and forth between administration officials in Washington and the Kremlin. More commonly, simply by asking government officials in various countries questions and reporting the answers, correspondents allow governments to exchange messages without communicating directly with each other. This is particularly the case, when diplomatic relations have been severed. 

Thus, during the Iran Hostage Crisis, President Jimmy Carter and the Ayatollah Khomeini, the U.S. administration and the Iranian government, and U.S.officials in Washingtonand the hostage-holder in Tehran communicated constantly via the news media. The President or other administration officials would make mass-mediated comments and some Iranian actor would react via the media, which in turn would result in responses in Washington, and so on.Throughout the build-up phrase to the first Persian Gulf War and during the short hostilities, President George H.W. Bush and Saddam Hussein exchanged constantly hostile messages via the media as did President George W. Bush and other administration officials on the one hand and Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi government officials. In all of these cases, media-diplomacy increased the tensions, deepened the hostile feelings on the respective sides, and  did nothing to prevent war.

Media diplomacy is a bad substitute for old-fashioned diplomacy and personal meetings between the representatives of two governments away from cameras and microphones. Nothing constructive was achieved by the long and angry exchanges of mass-mediated messages between Washington and Pyongyang in the last several years. While we will never know, one wonders nevertheless whether traditional diplomacy could have eased the tensions and prevented North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.   

Comments

[Steven L]

Very interesting. Today's entry on my blog talks about direct diplomacy. I wonder what your thoughts are. Take a look.

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