 I think we are ready. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to this webinar, this launch event of the book, New Perspectives on Diplomacy. My name is Flavia Gasparri. I am lecturer in the Department of Work Studies. And I am a member of the Center for Ground Strategy, which is organizing this event today. And today I have the privilege to chair this book launch. I have to say I am particularly happy to chair this event, firstly, because I'm one of the contributors to the book. So I have seen the birth and the development of these projects. So I'm very happy to be here today to celebrate this publication. And then I'm very happy because I am here with the editors of the book who happen to be old friends of mine. So I'm going to now introduce the speakers to you, starting, of course, with the legendary Professor Jack Spence, who is a true legend in the Department of Work Studies, is professor in the department. And he has been one of the leading figures in international relations for several decades. I don't even know where to start to mention all the achievements of his incredible careers. He has worked in many different universities in the UK, in the United States, and in South Africa. From 1991 to 1997, he was the director of studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House. He has extensively researched and published in the field of diplomacy, nationalism, and Africa. He has been awarded three honorary doctorates and four honorary fellowship, one from King's College, London, of course. I think Professor Spence has tried to get his retirement like three times in the past, but we really do not want to let him go up to the point that in 2014, the Department of Work Studies has established the Jack Spence BA Prize for International Relations, which is awarded to students who achieve exceptionally academic work in the international relations. So thank you very much, Professor Spence, for being here today and for continuing to be such an inspiration to all of us. Of course, this book would have not been possible without the hard work of the other two editors, Dr. Claire York, first of all, who is a visiting fellow at the Center for Ground Strategy at King's College. Between 2018 and 2020, Dr. York was a Henry Kissinger post-doctorate fellow at Yale University. Her writing and research explores the role and limitation of empathy and emotions in international affairs and diplomacy. And then last but not least, Dr. Alasdair Masser who is a visiting fellow at the Africa Research Group at King's College. His research focuses on conflict, security, and development in sub-Saharan Africa. He's a former UK government special advisor and he has published a number of reports on issues, including the drivers of development, post-conflict reconciliations, immigration, and trafficking. He's currently working on his new book based on his PhD. They got at King's College on UK-Nigerian Security Cooperation. So thank you to the three editors for being here with us. I think the order is Professor Spence first, then Dr. Masser, and then Dr. York. So the speakers will, of course, introduce the book, speak about this great publication. And then, of course, we will open the floor for comments and questions from the public. I would kindly ask you to post your question on the Q&A session, on the Q&A section that you can find at the bottom of your screen. And I will read the questions to the speakers. OK, so thank you very much. Professor Spence, please. The floor is yours. Thank you very much. Claudia, thank you very much for those very kind words. Words of welcome. I did appreciate them. And may I add your general welcome to everyone else who has zoomed in to participate in this particular launch. I never done this before. So it's a learning experience, but so far, so good. We're all delighted. My two editors, my two co-editors, and my chairperson, Flavia, we're all delighted that over 100 people have, in fact, signed up to take part in this launch. And we do express our thanks and gratitude to everyone who has shown such considerable interest. I personally have a profound debt of gratitude to a number of individuals. First of all, my wife Sue, without whom none of this would ever be possible. She's been a source of enormous encouragement, kindness, and love to me in all these years. And indeed, my daughter Rachel, who similarly has been a major help and assistant, particularly today, because without her, we wouldn't be able to zoom in as we have done, because she is much more of an authority than I can ever be on matters that are logical. So I'm profoundly grateful to them. I also like to express my thanks to Sir Lawrence Friedman and Professor Miles Wickstead, both of whom were kind enough to write forwards to each of the volumes, the two volumes that we have produced on diplomacy, theory, and practice. Again, it was good of them to take time out of very busy schedules. And what they've had to say is much appreciated, certainly by me and by my two editors. I must obviously thank, very warmly and sincerely, my two co-editors, Claire York and Alistair Massa, they both born of the heat and burden, the major share of the work required to get in both these volumes into print. It was certainly a great pleasure to work with them. They were wonderfully patient with me. They were always acute in discussion, always perceptive in judgment. I do hold them both in high regard. It was a pleasure to do academic business with them. And I do hope you may have another opportunity in due course. I must also thank Jessica Cardin, who has helped to plan and arrange this particular launch. It was probably a learning experience for her as much as me. But I am indeed, as I'm sure I speak with both my editors, really very, very grateful to her for her efforts in getting this underway. And of course, I must thank the editorial team at Bloomsbury, Olivia Dello and Tomas Hoskins. They were enormously efficient, competent, and indeed a pleasure to work with. And I'm sure I speak both for my co-editors and everyone else involved. And finally, I must thank my colleagues in the Department of All Studies. It's an enormous department. It's nearly 100 strong, leaving inside the department. It's an enormous department. It's nearly 100 strong, leaving inside those who teach at the Star College and all. But I was made welcome, have spent 20 years there, have just in fact retired. And I owe a special debt to James Gough and the head of the department at the time who appointed me, Chris Dandica, and indeed all their successors. I've had a happy, very happy 20 years there. Though I still have a foothold in the sense that I still have two or three PhDs to finish off before they finish me off. As for the provenance of this particular text, I think most of you who know me know that I live in Ludlow in deepest Shropshire. We have the great lung, the great benefit of the Mortimer Forest. And in that forest, most days I walk my two terrier dogs and brood about matters academic. And this project, the two volumes on diplomacy, which we've used in effect, were thought about and decided upon on one of my many walks through the forest. The whole idea took shape in my mind because I realize that the Department of War Studies has several hundred doctoral students. Several of whom have been doing their doctorates, completed them, doctorates on some aspects, some dimension of diplomacy. And we've tried to reflect that particular group of young colleagues, young academics in the two volumes of diplomacy that are being launched today. And all these young men and women, all of whom are represented, well represented in these two volumes, are at the cutting edge of the subject as their PhDs so clearly demonstrate. And I did have the thought that it would be a great idea to get them to at least give us a summary of their basic findings from their doctorates as chapters in these two volumes. I've called them superbly, and I am personally very grateful to the efforts they put in. There are some gray beards, I remember I mentioned names including myself in the volume, and they too have made a significant contribution. Why think about diplomacy? Why study it? Why write about it? My own personal view is that diplomacy is a liberal construct. That it's values, the values that underpin good diplomacy, powerful negotiation, agreement between states. The good diplomacy is like the oil or the grease in the machinery of international politics. It's crucial to hold states together to keep them collaborating where and when they can. And that's always been its fascination for me. Again, let me offer you a tiny autobiographical fragment. When I was very young, I'm a brink of going to university in Johannesburg, South Africa, leaving school. I was knobbled, as the phrase goes, by the Department of Foreign Affairs they had heard about me from my godfather and school teachers and so forth. And they were trying to persuade me to apply for the diplomatic service in South Africa as a junior cadet. And at the time, I was intrigued and really fascinated by the idea of becoming a diplomat, hence my interest developed from those very early days. But I declined their invitation as politely as I could, as diplomatically as I could, even at 17, because I didn't want to spend my life wandering around capitals as a diplomat, justifying apartheid. I had two other choices of the career. One was to be a parish priest in the Church of England, but that's another story for another time. And the other was ultimately to become an academic, which I did and have enjoyed enormously. Again, let me just make one last point. It seems to me that what diplomacy does is make for a degree of cooperation between states. No state is entirely self-sufficient. All states have to deal with each other, but diplomacy is one of the great institutions of international relations in so far as it makes that cooperation possible. I've described it elsewhere as the oil or the grease that holds or tends to keep the machinery of international politics running. And that's always been its great fascination for me. And I've been very fortunate at King's with successive heads of department, including Professor Mike Goodman, who's been very encouraging about this project, who always allowed me to teach diplomacy in the Department of War Studies as a liberal enterprise. And it's given me enormous pleasure to spend all those years at King's, unexpectedly brought into the department, as I say, by James Gow, who is a contributor to one of our volumes and by Chris Dantica, who is in head. I believe it at that, ladies and gentlemen, and wish you well. My two colleagues will give you some indication of the substance of these two volumes. Here they are, if you haven't seen them already. But I'm delighted to have been part of this enterprise, and I'll now turn you over to my two co-editors. Claire, you might care to begin and then follow us, follow, follow with others. Thank you very much. It's been a great pleasure talking to you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Professor Spence, for introducing the book. I think Dr. Maser, you go second, right? Okay. The floor is yours. Thank you. And thanks, Jack, for kicking us off with your normal mixture of great anecdotes and humor and wisdom. And thanks for showing me up by wearing a jacket and tie. I knew I should have dressed up a little bit smarter than this. I'm sorry. I think I also just want to start off with a quick note of thanks to both Flavio and to the Department of War Studies. Not only for hosting us this afternoon, but for providing such a wonderful and enriching intellectual home for us over the last number of years for each and every one of us. And I think that's important in terms of the relevance to this project simply because it's that interdisciplinary nature of the department, which is a genuine strength and a strength from which we've drawn upon for the basis of this project. So we've been able to, without too much work, get our hands on specialists who focus on history, who focus on politics, who focus on diplomacy, who focus on conflicts, conflict resolution, and all of the other things that King's is renowned for around the world. And actually having that level of expertise all under one roof has been a real resource for us to draw on for this project. Also, I just want to say to sound a quick note of thanks for our fantastic contributors, Flavio, amongst them. I'm delighted to say I think quite a few of them are on the call with us today, even though we can't see you and we can't be doing this launch event probably in quite the way we all anticipated when the project got underway. I think we've all been indebted to you all. You've been fantastic to work with. And I think the real richness of these two volumes is a result of your expertise and your energy. So thank you for that. I'm just going to sort of get us underway with a brief overview just of the genesis of this project so you can probably help contextualize it in your own minds. Before going on to just to discuss in a little bit more detail one or two of the themes which have emerged. And I think, for Claire and I, this is in large part, Jack gave his own explanation as to the provenance of this project. But for Claire and I, as often is the case with all good ideas, it was conceived in a pub in the days where we could all get together and share a beer. And I remember we'd taken Jack for a beer in the pub we always frequented around the corner from King's College. And we were just sort of reflecting on a whole range of issues, mostly contemporary. But then the more you start putting on the thread of Jack's experience and memory, you realize that the thread is a long one. And it wasn't too long. I don't think Jack's ever actually given away his real age. But it was interesting to see that we realized that Jack's career in international relations had, you know, was I think 60 years long and had born witness to some really quite fantastic events and shifts and trends. And within that was a lot of wisdom and insight which we could draw on. And we realized actually that it was a career that spanned the Cuban missile crisis to coronavirus, which I think when you pause and reflect, you know, it is quite a span and there's been a lot of interesting, interesting events in between. So on top of wanting to draw on that expertise, we always wanted to, I think, collectively explore some of the shifts which we all are familiar with to some extent and also to explore and examine some of the shifts and trends which we're perhaps not so familiar with. And I think that was born of a desire to try, you know, I think many international scholars attempt to do just to make sense of the world that we're living in. It's fair to say that at the moment it is, it feels as complex and as insecure, certainly at any point in my lifetime. And, you know, even in the last few years, we've just seen such significant fluctuations in the international relations seen in the international order. I think concepts around the balance of power, whether we are in now and a, we've moved from a biopolarity to a stage of multi-polarity and are we again with the growing Sino-U.S. rivalry soon going to be back in a state of biopolarity and what that means for our collective security and prosperity. I also think it's probably just worth touching on, as Jack did to some extent, just the context of this project. The idea was really conceived around the time of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit vote in the UK, which again, you know, felt, you know, it doesn't feel like it was long ago, but it also, you know, the scars are probably on all of our backs to some extent. And, you know, at least for me, I don't remember a time in international politics where things have felt quite so turbulent and uncertain as that year in particular. And I think it's interesting that we've brought this project into land, as Jack said, with the help of our wonderful team at Bloomsbury, around, you know, as we are hopefully lifting ourselves out of lockdown, having spent a year in the midst of a global pandemic. And I just think, yeah, for me at least, if you wanted to, I guess, an illustration of how turbulent and unpredictable the international scene can be, you'd be hard pushed to find a better example of what we've seen in the last five years in which we've been doing this book. Just in terms of the concept, I think we, as I mentioned, we're very keen to be trying to explore some of these issues and what they mean and whether diplomacy is still able, as Jeffrey Berridge suggested too, whether it still reasonably reflects and reinforces international politics and international relations, whether diplomacy itself is now being required to evolve at a faster rate than perhaps we've seen in some time. And also, as I said, to draw upon the really quite extraordinary experience and expertise that we have within the war studies department. So I think, you know, as some of my colleagues have already mentioned, we had people that have worked in government, people who are obviously academics, people who have worked in the field of diplomacy themselves, and people that have served in the military in the intelligence services. And I think all of those insights and all of our experiences is something that we've really drawn on for the purpose of this book. And not only that, you know, I think we are conscious that this is a UK-centered project and a lot of these perspectives are largely Western, but we've also tried to make sure they are as much as humanly possible, somewhat intergenerational. And also, we've got a mix of genders and nationalities and so on, which we hope has really added some strength and different perspectives to this book. I think, you know, I'm very conscious that we, in conceiving this piece of work, I think it's worth saying almost as a disclaimer, we were never trying to, you know, to write the last word on diplomacy, and I think we certainly were very conscious that we weren't going to be able to produce an exhaustive list of new perspectives, but we've tried to certainly touch on some of the major trends that have emerged. And I just want to raise the fact that I think in the two volumes in the 20 chapters, which we've produced as part of this work, it's very clear that there are a number of what I would term sort of golden threads working their way through the various volumes. And I think a lot of the chapters touch in different ways using different evidence and different perspectives on some of those, on some of the same issues. So there was just, given that we, you know, I certainly don't want to be held accountable for misrepresenting any of our wonderful contributors' work, but I just wanted to touch on kind of one theme which I thought was particularly salient across the two volumes, and perhaps we can, that can tee up some conversation in the Q&A session just before handing over to Claire. And that is around what I'm provocatively perhaps calling the democratization of diplomacy. And I think to put that in some kind of context, what we're really saying, and I think what we've been seeing in recent years, is that there are, put very simply, more actors involved in the process of diplomacy and probably in international relations than we've ever seen before. And I think you can see that in whether it's corporations and the movement around commercial diplomacy and the ever increasing involvement of governments in trade promotion efforts, as we've seen in the commercial diplomacy program, the coalition government in the UK unleashed after 2010 as part of the anti-austerity, sorry, not anti-austerity, trying to deal with the global financial crisis and its aftermath to some of the social movements that we've seen really taking root. And also not only that, the increasing relevance of identity politics within international relations and the way that diplomacy is impacted. But we've also seen, what I think has been a surprising, but at the same time sounds paradoxal, perhaps a predictable trend of individuals having increasing influence over the course of international relations and individuals that are specifically unofficial in that they are not attached in any official capacity to a government department or agency. And just some fun stats emerged during the research process for these books, this is always the case. And one that I really liked that I only discovered actually recently was that if you want an illustration of this, look no further than one 18-year-old Greta Thunberg, who is perhaps the most high-profile advocate on the issue of climate change around the world. She, at the touch of a button on her Twitter account, has access to an audience of nearly 5 million people on this issue, which is about one and a half million more than President Biden's new Special Envoy for Climate, John Kerry. So I think I'm not suggesting Twitter is how diplomacy is now the mainstream means of diplomacy, of course I'm not, but I think it just gives you an illustration of just how things have changed and how much of diplomacy and influence and those elements within international relations are not necessarily the purview simply of governments and foreign ministers anymore as they perhaps once were. I think another key issue around that has influenced this democratization, as I'm calling it, of diplomacy is the simple connectiveness of the world we live in today. So we now exist, as I think lots of us know it, in a world where 50%, or I think now more than 50% of the world's population has access to the internet and some two thirds of people around the world own a mobile device. We have in companies like Facebook, and bear in mind Facebook, the company only founded in 2006, we now have a company which has an estimated value greater than I think 164 of the 193 members of the United Nations. And not only does it have that kind of financial capital muscle behind it, importantly it has close to 3 billion monthly active users, which is at least a third of the global population. So if you're trying to imagine who is able to have, who is able to reach and access the world's biggest audience these days, I think it'd be fair to say it's not necessarily diplomats and foreign ministries. Just one other fact, just because I always think this is fun about Twitter, there was an average of about, I think there's an average of about 500 million tweets sent each and every day, which former President Donald Trump was responsible for about 20 or 25 of those each and every day. But I think again it's just interesting to see how much of the world, how the world is communicating increasingly across borders and across states, and what challenges that there for poses for diplomats trying to do their everyday job. So just before handing over to Claire, I just want to touch on some of the implications of this democratization of diplomacy and perhaps, as I said, stimulate some discussion when we get into the Q&A section. But I think it's very much worth us all considering what are the implications of these trends, not only for foreign policy makers, but also for the diplomats which are inevitably downstream trying to do their bidding on a day-to-day basis. And I think there is, we have to recognize the extent to which public opinion is now shaping international politics in a way that therefore inevitably has a knock-on implication for the practice of diplomacy and how it's conducted around the world. And I think that's a particular problem inevitably for countries where public opinion matters. So this is arguably more of an issue for democracies than it is autocracies around the world. And that is an interesting price, an interestingly high price to be paying for free and open societies, but I think it's an important point for us to discuss. I also think it makes the issue of defining national interest increasingly difficult. It risks, I think that the influence of such a large influence from the public and from public opinion risks at times meaning that foreign policy, which is inevitably reactive and managerial to some extent because that's what diplomats and foreign policy makers are often trying to do. They're often trying to manage and mitigate risk as much as they are to reshape the world around them. But I think it means that it's difficult for nations to formulate foreign policy that is coherent and long-term because the politicians that can see foreign policy cannot be deaf to a lot of the public opinion and public concerns that are being raised ever more vocally on social media and other platforms. And I think for the UK, this is, for me, made it, made UK foreign policy making, not just the process but the output as well, increasingly muddled. It feels to me, I think the UK is a good example of the country which is trying to, to some extent, push at the ocean on many different fronts. And I think part of that is a result of, part of it is a result of that public opinion influence on politics and policymaking. I also think it's, the democratization of diplomacy as I'm calling it also risks, I think, to some extent, skewing foreign policy priorities. And I remember there was a US, I think it was a Pew opinion poll survey back in 2018 which asked average Americans what was there, what should be the number one priority for both the administration and for Congress. And the, what came out top of the list, rank number one was terrorism. Even though at the time, the risk of a US national being killed and a terrorist attack was something like one in 75,000. But it's very interesting to see if there is public demand for action at a political level on a particular issue which pertains to foreign policy, just how that filters its way down the food chain and suddenly that becomes very much part of the everyday diplomatic discourse. Just also want to touch on the issue of transparency and how that has been, how we've seen that evolve in recent decades. I think in many respects, as I touched on before, that the fact that we, many of us are fortunate to live in free and open societies means that we are able to hold not only our politicians to account, but inevitably the foreign policy makers of our nations to account. And I think foreign policy making as a result of the increase in transparency we've seen has made, I think it has made it more accountable even though there are clearly still clandestine elements around intelligence and so on, which will for good reasons stay secret. But it also, I think another interesting corollary of this is to see the way in which your nation's international reputations can ever flow very, very quickly based on just the sheer accessibility of information that we're able to clean. So I think two obvious examples we've all, we'll all be familiar with from just recent months will be just the extent to which the US, the opinion of US, of the US and the US administration plummeted around the world in the wake of the assault on the capital in January. But also to see how nations like China have been really wrestling with the fact that their reputation is consistently being battered as a result of their treatment of Uighur Muslims in that country. And I think it's interesting to see, you know, they're best to an example of two countries which are diametrically opposed in the sense that one is very open and transparent and one is clearly not. And actually they are still ultimately wrestling with the same challenges that whatever they are trying to do within their borders is ultimately visible. But the extent to which is visible is clearly different with the point being that they're both countries international reputations are able to take a real hit very quickly once these issues emerge. I think a couple of just a couple of other points. I think we've also seen the, and perhaps the coronavirus pandemic has been arguing the most opposite illustration of this, just the high stakes that are involved in multilateralism and getting multilateralism right. And I think if we are, I think sort of the three of us argue in the introduction and conclusions to this book that we are within some form of a new era of multi-polarity. And I think with a new era of multi-polarity requires a recommitment to multilateralism because I would argue that the two go hand in glove. And I think it's been very interesting to see some of the real genuine successes of multilateral cooperation when it comes to vaccine production, vaccine rollout and so on. But also some of the very clear sticking points we've seen over recent weeks and months in terms of which nations are prioritized, what happens to nations in the developing world and whether we really do take a global approach to global problems in the way that we perhaps should. Just realize I'm probably prattling on and I should proceed the floor to Claire at some point, but just one last point just to leave you all with. And I think that's just to sort of, I think one thing that came through very clearly in this work and the research we conducted and the contributors we talked to, and actually some of the practitioners we talked to as well is that I think we owe diplomats a very great debt. And I think they are increasingly being asked to do evermore, take on evermore roles and often in a context where the budget for diplomats and for foreign ministries and foreign affairs and state departments and so on are being cut. And I think just to give an illustration, I remember during my time in government was when the foreign office was trying to get long standing diplomats to take us a comment in business so that they could come back after six months to a year with all this shiny commercial experience which they would then help them in their efforts to promote UK business and trade overseas. And like lots of government initiatives, it made a lot of sense on paper but the reality was if you talk to people who are involved in it that they were simply being asked to do yet one more thing. And I think we need to remember that the diplomats are in many respects polymaths but there's only so much that they are able to do on a shoestring budget and I think we should bear that in mind and also as I said, I think we owe them a very great debt of gratitude. So with that, I'm going to hand over to Claire just to take us through some of the chapters and some of the insights from our contributors. Thanks. Thank you very much, Lester. I think it's incredibly interesting to hear how in such a multifaceted project with so many perspectives, so many people, so many different approaches, we can still identify some patterns and common points so I think that's certainly a point that we can discuss later on in the Q&A session. Thank you very much. Dr Joach, the floor is yours, please. Thank you so much and it's really lovely to be here and to see so many people, friends and colleagues who work in space and I'd like to echo my thanks as well for everybody who's been a part of this project. We've got such a rich and eclectic collection of chapters and it's been a real pleasure to work with so many brilliant colleagues, so thank you to all the contributors. Thank you also to Bloomsbury and all the publishing team, to all of our colleagues in the Department of War Studies and my colleagues in Yale and it's just been so wonderful to see these volumes come together and to be a part of a collection of people who really believe in the power of diplomacy. So in my comments, what I really want to do is walk you through what these two volumes do. I'm conscious you're not going to be able to get your hands on them until the 22nd of April and so I'm going to give you, this is the first volume and this is the second volume, so I'm going to give you a little bit of an overview about the core themes that we look at and what new perspectives they offer and for me personally, I began my academic career as an undergraduate shortly after 9-11 when a lot of the discipline was very focused on security and terrorism and on this new, far greater threat that had emerged and over the years, I think all of us in our conversations have reflected on the fact that diplomacy is sometimes being lost in our conversations and security of how we look after states, how we look after citizens, how we improve society and work with other societies and other countries for the collective good to find cooperation to solve global challenges that we all face and we're seeing that so much right now when we look at climate change, when we look at the pandemic, this need for diplomacy, this need for collaboration and in these books we have examples of both how they are integral to international relations and in the broadest sense of diplomacy to security, to defence, to climate change, to human rights, to well-being, to the protection of social movements and those basic rights that we hold dear but also new perspectives and the themes and the lenses that are emerging within the scholarship and within the practice of diplomacy and so the central tenets are very much reflected. Diplomacy at its essence remains the same. It's still very much about representation, communication, negotiation, the pursuit of interests and the development of relationships and so we have chapters on negotiation for example by Barbara Zanketa who's in the Department of Force Studies who looks at summit diplomacy. We also have Flavia's own chapter which is on negotiations and mediation among African states and kind of the role of individuals in that as well the importance of negotiation and of having good mediators. We have as well this fascinating account of former Ambassador Nigel Thorpe who really reflects on his life as a diplomat and it's great to be able to include the account of someone who's experienced it firsthand and especially during a fascinating period in British diplomacy and world politics where you had the Cold War, you had these shifts after the fall of the Berlin Wall in how Europe and the world thought about one another and then to see the kind of recent decision of the UK to leave the EU and to chart a new path in the international system and we've seen as well as part of this that as we consider these central tenets there's also real shifts that are taking place changes in the norms of diplomacy what is permissible. We've seen in the way that certain states conduct their politics and their diplomacy right now that they're often going around documenting some of the traditional norms that we've seen some of the codes of conduct that diplomats have hold dear that you will see in the work of people like Ernest Sato and Geoffrey Marriage and Hadley Bull the way that they're often causing provocations is a way to bounce people into decisions they're often not going through the traditional mediums and traditional channels of diplomacy and that poses new questions to what we're going to be dealing with in the future. One of the chapters that opens volume one is by Professor Mervyn Frost that looks at the kind of enduring relevance of ethics and what that really means in diplomacy which is something that we all consider very important what does it mean to have good conduct in diplomacy what is the role of ethics within this space and how does it help to shape the conduct of those involved and the kind of values and ideals that we hold at the centre of it we see throughout it as well the enduring relevance of alliances which I think as Alistair and Jack have both alluded to have seen a number of challenges in recent years I think if we look at America I've just spent two years there where it was very clear as a Brit in America that it was struggling with its international reputation it's very hard to view a state as the great power that it is considered to be when it is withdrawing from international alliances when it is challenging the kind of cooperation that's emphasised in organisations like NATO in NAFTA when it's criticising allies in ways that we've not really seen and as Alistair said on social media using forms of diplomacy and social interaction that seem quite new to the way that we operate within this space we've seen the challenges to institutions and international organisations which really poses questions about what do we do next how do we reinvigorate them how do we ensure that they are solid and strong and vibrant and able to respond to the threats in the future especially if we're looking at global health challenges and the need to have an international and collective response to prevent both future challenges and also ensure that people have the provisions and the solutions to coronavirus that we so need within diplomacy so much of it is also about the management of conflict and disagreements at the moment we're seeing an escalation of rhetoric between the US and the Western China which requires diplomacy to find solutions it provokes questions about how do you talk to people that you disagree with how do you find common ground on which to build a dialogue and find sources of cooperation, of collaboration in order to try to avoid the inevitable march to war which sometimes seems to be what certain people in certain quarters are expecting and as part of this we also see the centrality of nuclear weapons to how we think about diplomacy and the coercive dimensions of diplomacy the importance of having certain levers and hard power mechanisms in place in order to provide credible threats so people know that you mean it when you say this is my red line and we see in a chapter by Jean-François Belanger who is a colleague of mine from Yale the kind of enduring role and importance of nuclear weapons I think most recently we've also seen how important it is to conduct negotiations according to ideas of collegiality personally watching some of the Brexit negotiations seeing the way in which British rhetoric towards Europe has become increasingly hostile poses problems for future relationships future diplomatic alliances and the ability to work together and we're really seeing the dangers of problems in how we conduct diplomacy when we look at the kind of violence in Northern Ireland again and that's really posing a challenge for the good Friday agreement and for stability in the region another area that is really vital is intelligence which we don't always talk about when we talk about diplomacy but really has a central role and we've got a great chapter from Daniel Lomas on that where he looks not only at the significance of intelligence but also how it's adapting to greater transparency as we've seen through the exposure of cables on WikiLeaks and the kind of the ways in which people have to navigate this new information landscape and this new information landscape is something as well that Arthur Friedman also talks about when he's looking at information and the use of information as a source of power both for warfare and for diplomacy to exert on others and to really provoke other states to respond as we've seen for example with Russian interference the use of disinformation there and how it has been able to challenge domestic politics to kind of have an influence on the ways in which societies conduct themselves and what they value, what resonates and what information they're drawn to another aspect is the emergence as Alistair said of far greater groups within this space Alistair's own chapter looks at the importance of security and the kind of integration the kind of the ways in which people can cooperate to find mutual solutions based on security and we also see Samo Puri talk about proxy groups and the rise of non-state actors and the ways in which they are conducting diplomacy and what they have to say as well about how diplomacy is conducted in this space how states are maybe using non-state actors and what they're doing in this space there's a huge amount to cover and I don't want to talk too long because I want to make sure we have time for questions but some of the new perspectives the themes that really stood out for me is the significance of ideas and discourses and identities and how diplomacy is informed and understood it's a constructivist and a critical theoretical lens we have a chapter for example by Pablo Dariana on identity and the way in which diplomacy is written through diplomatic discourses and cables and reporting we also have a chapter from Harris on the importance of identities and climate change and how people use identities associated with climate change and the environment to mobilize different support and different politics and this connects to another theme that is very close to my heart which is emotions and Philippe Beauregard has written a great chapter on emotional leadership and how leaders use emotions as a way to resonate with populations to move them, to encourage them to follow their lead and to connect with them and empower them and Francesca Grinnelli has also written about trust and the way in which trust binds people to certain movements and particularly social movements how that trust has a power to connect different people in this space and it's something that I think is incredibly important to consider what are the emotions that are dynamic and powerful in the diplomatic space how are they shaped and what role and influence do they exert another theme that emerged repeatedly was practice theory and a real focus on what is it that diplomats do in the everyday, what is the kind of the practice the conduct, the habits, the routines how is it constructed and constituted and that really emerges through a number of chapters that many of the authors are really looking at just the theoretical but the applied dimensions what this means to us in the foreign office in the State Department, in the various departments around the world and embassies around the world where diplomats are operating and another element that I think is really useful is how we look at history to teach us about the challenges that we are faced with today to provide lessons on what could be done differently what actually could be more effective from people from the past and Andrea Hart another colleague from the Department of Foreign Studies looks at the case of the fifth Marques of Lansdown and what his example can reveal about how we approach strategy today alongside this focus on the traditional tenets of diplomacy we have an increasing emergence of small states as actors that we need to be paying far more attention to and this is something that Professor James Gao talks about in his own chapter and it's something that I know is emerging in the War Studies Department itself that actually if we're going to be talking about an international system and an international arena we need to be looking at all the players within that of all sizes that actually different smaller states have other aspects and other levers of power that they use to great effect that we need to be able to understand more comprehensively and we also need to be able to understand those non-state actors and how they operate in this space how they use the power that they have the levers that they have in order to exert influence on others and there's a fascinating chapter as well by Garrett Kurtz on how people choose not to engage in diplomacy this idea of counter diplomacy and what that means a critical element that Alistair has touched on as well is that the public are increasingly involved in how diplomacy is conducted and in truth it was always the case that the public would have had an influence over the shape of international relations but it's increasingly so now and Thomas Colley provides a fascinating investigation of how the British public sees British foreign policy and often the disconnect that exists between the official rhetoric and the official policy and how people are interpreting it and what resonates with them at a more local level and this is something that is going to become increasingly important we saw its significance from Brexit the role of public narratives and shaping political policy and political direction and really one final point is this idea of increasing the number of voices that we have in this space making sure that both in the study and practice of diplomacy we have far more diversity, far more representation and more inclusion that it becomes a space where we're really able to listen and engage with people and find something that is far more representative and diverse to provide more long lasting and responsive solutions what I love from my own personal perspective given my work in empathy is that this is actually a theme that emerges throughout this importance of diverse voices and understanding and listening as being at the heart of empathy this move away from the great powers to a much more pluralistic international system made up of states, large and small, non-state actors organizations, the public and although we're seeing that America is now starting on this kind of effort to re-engage with the world and to reassert itself as a great power I think the very fact we've seen this decline we've seen its influence, Wayne there's a greater need to have far more collaboration far more working collectively to find common solutions and far more ability to really look at what different people can contribute to really provide the needs and the interest that we're all trying to meet within the space and the advent of multiplicity really demands new approaches so I'm going to leave it there, oh final one is technology I felt like Alistair really spoke about the power of technology and we also have a chapter by Inga and Nega on social media and its role in the Arab Spring and really what that means for how diplomats respond to public protest, how they respond to social media and influence and how vital that is to ensure that public communications and public diplomacy is not just being reactive but is able to get ahead so sorry that was Inga Trog and Nega Angar I didn't give their full names but what I think we've got here is such a rich and vibrant collection of chapters it's really wonderful to see it come together and I hope you will all enjoy them when they're released next week so thank you Thank you very much Claire for this overview of such a complex project actually you outlined basically all the hot topics we are all debating and discussing I teach several modules on diplomacy and foreign policy and all the topics that you have mentioned have come across in our teaching in our study in some way so this is certainly a very much needed contribution to the literature and it's going certainly to be the core textbook in our modules next year for sure so thank you very much to the three speakers I think we can open the floor for questions we already have a few questions I'm going to read them loudly and most of them are you know directed to the three panellists so it's up to you who wants to intervene first okay so first of all first question generally speaking how are you defining diplomacy in the volumes have you provided a definition some sort of definition of diplomacy in the two volumes how are you defining diplomacy in the different volumes is that to me yes please professor Spence if you want to how are you defining diplomacy in the two volumes good question that's a good question I think I define diplomacy and I think that comes through my preface and I think it comes through what Claire and others have had to say I think diplomacy is essentially a structure and process of negotiation while I grant you there are more actors emerging into the diplomatic world and I think what I would argue is that what's interesting about diplomacy is that it underpins and informs every day by day when it comes to people's lives let me give you some examples of what I mean every time we post a letter every time we board a plane to go on holiday or go somewhere on business whatever it is we simply take for granted we don't even think about it how that letter goes from country a to country b they're safely, as they do, nor do we really think very much when we get on a plane about how that plane is cared for when it's on the ground, where it's going, we know where it's going and we hope it gets there and they usually do, but what we forget and why should we remember, except people like me and academics are interested, is that that kind of activity which links states together at a host of different levels, social, economic, political, diplomatic, it's a kind of, it's all based on negotiation in highly specialized global agencies by people well trained in a particular area of social and political and economic life who might be described as technocratic diplomats. I mean, the IATA, the International Air Traffic Association, the Universal Postal Union, there are a host, a host of such organizations, but to make air transport, air travel, to make postal communications, to take two simple examples, to make all those work efficiently and possible, turns on day by day, month by month, continuous, almost continuous negotiation between specialists and experts trying to refine the process of air travel or the process of transferring goods, people and persons from one part of the world to another, trying to refine them and make them more efficient. But all that turns on the capacity of these so-called technocrats, these technocratic diplomats to negotiate in good faith with their counterparts from other countries. And that seems to me to be a diplomacy at its very best. We don't think about it if we take it for granted, but without it, the machinery of international communication at whatever level would come to a thottling halt, and we don't want that to happen. So negotiation is what is central to diplomacy, and it can take place on a number of levels in different areas involving different kinds of skills. And I called diplomacy a liberal enterprise, if you want my definition, a liberal enterprise, because good diplomacy, successful diplomacy, depends on there being present in the negotiation shared by all those who are taking part in the negotiation. It requires a demonstration that certain values, key values are operating. What are the key values that underpin good diplomacy? Restraint on the part of those who do the negotiation. You don't scream and shout at your opposite number. You listen patiently and try and meet him or her in argument in one way or another. Patience. You've got to be willing to sit there and listen. However difficult and boring the topic might be. Empathy, as Claire has demonstrated so well in all her work on the subject, you've got to be able to put yourself in the place of the other person. Despite the fact that you may be in profound disagreement with that person, you've got to have some capacity to understand why he or she is saying what he or she is saying. These are all civility, politeness. I mean, these values are not unique to diplomacy. They should, I suppose, operate successfully in private life as well, in business communication or whatever. But it does seem to me that taking all those values together, you can describe diplomacy as a liberal enterprise designed to negotiate outcomes which will make life, private life, public life, more tolerable than it has been in the past. And that process of negotiation seems to me is continuous. It never stops. We take it for granted, fair enough. But it's there, it goes on. And there's one of the great, how can I put it, one of the great symbols, practical examples of civilization as its best. The fact that you aren't trying to negotiate with people who don't always agree with you, who may have different, profoundly different ideologies to you. The fact is you are still entering into some kind of attempt to get a compromise, to get, that's another value, compromise, get a compromise, a settlement which will enhance life and make general life more tolerable than it has been in the past. So that's it all around about defining it what it's the best I can do at the moment. Yes, thank you very much actually for this insightful definition and for this analogy that really explains very well what you mean. And I guess as Clara said, we really need diplomacy more than ever. Let's move to other questions that are arriving. First of all, a couple of questions combined. Since diplomacy is a highly cross disciplinary studying field, which subjects do you think lay down the foundation of diplomacy study? And what is the relevance of diplomatic history to today's diplomatic analysis? Clara, you mentioned a section of the book is devoted to the role of history. So thank you. Yeah, so which subjects are best suited for the study of diplomacy? Is that correct, the first question? Yes, it's, yeah, what subjects do you think lay down the foundation of diplomacy study? I think it's fascinating that we have few courses that are specifically on diplomacy. I know there are some in the Department of War Studies. I taught alongside Jack on statecraft war and diplomacy when I was in the department. So I do know there are courses, but I think dedicated courses on diplomacy would be really interesting to really delve into both the principles of diplomacy, but also case studies and examples of where diplomacy has been so crucial. And to look at these practical dimensions that I spoke about that many of the contributors speak about, of what the role of a diplomat is, how they conduct themselves in the diplomatic space, both looking at the public and the private dimensions. And I think that's something that's especially important is that what goes on behind closed doors will often follow certain norms, but then diplomats then have to go into the public space and articulate and legitimize what has been agreed on. And that often means that there'll be a lot that cannot be shared. There might be ideas and discussions that have to remain private in order to advance interests, but understanding that intersection of how the public, the private, the political all interact and have an iterative and symbiotic influence on one another is I think really important. I'd love to see more courses that on specifically diplomacy that really give a lot of the richness and the depth that we've seen in these chapters from the case studies that really looked at different regions of the world really gave far greater attention to maybe underrepresented states in the study of international relations and different voices in that space. And history, the second part of the question really provides us access to a real wealth of resources from the archives. And I know both myself and many in the volumes have benefited from the archives at Q in the US and in France that reveal what takes place behind the scenes. And often you can't study that as accurately in the present day. If you look for example at what's going on with Brexit, the records of that are not going to be available for many years. The real kind of in the weeds, what was going on, where did that discussion come from, how was it that they were able to break through or not. We're not going to have access to that. But if we look at history, we can really understand some of the trends, some of the dynamics, the role of personalities, the role of political pressure of societal pressures in the socioeconomic cultural context and what that did. And history therefore gives us both lessons, but it also gives us a real wealth of resources. And so I think building in far more historical case studies to how we study international relations and international security and really looking at those diplomatic dimensions will only help with providing us with a greater understanding of diplomacy. Can I just jump in on that? I think what Claire raised about the points in particular about history are really opposite because of course diplomats need to have a very good understanding of the policy context of their own country and the policy that they're advocating on behalf of their government. But I always find it astounding just the extent to which diplomats and certainly a ministerial level, the understanding of historic context in particular is often really absent for huge ways of the world. And so looking from a British foreign policy lens at different reasons of the world in particular, you're finding that, yeah, I'm thinking in particular of South of sub-Saharan Africa, you'll see lots of British ministers and often diplomats looking at those countries and regions through a lens of perhaps UK imperial colonial history, but having a very limited understanding of tribal history within those regions and countries. And I think that's a real issue which needs to be addressed. So I think getting that really good historical grounding is crucial. I think we all learn plenty of British history when we're in school or university. I don't think we learn much about the history of other countries that we are then seeking to engage with. I also think there's become a seeming trend within, certainly within the UK foreign office whereby diplomats will be subject to two-year, three-year postings and then rotated and often rotated from one part of the world to somewhere that's very culturally and historically different. And I think I understand the logic about trying to avoid people going native and so on, but that approach also runs the risk that you end up with a cohort of diplomats that are in effect generalists in terms of the skill sets that they have, but their historical and cultural understanding of the countries that they are then posted to is relatively limited. And again to sort of lean on the example of sub-Saharan Africa, I think before the creation of the new FCDO, it was a well-known secret that all of Britain's Africa specialism had moved to DFID and therefore actually the UK's approach to that part of the world was very much looked at through the development lens rather than a foreign policy and diplomatic lens. So I think that's just something that we need to bear in mind as well. Yeah, thank you very much. I think this to some extent respond to one of the questions we have in the chat concerning the qualities that a good diplomat should have and I would argue also that good knowledge of history is one of the qualities that a good diplomat must have, as Alastair has just mentioned. Okay, so another two questions combined because you mentioned about, you talked about multilateralism and you talked about national interest. So on the one hand, how can foreign ministers reconcile national interests, which is the core, one of the core, diplomacy for foreign policy of course, with the advancement of human rights. And on the other hand, another question which talks about the nationalistic approaches that many countries are having towards the crisis of COVID. So what the future that you see in you concerning multilateralism. So the books, the two volumes reveal a contemporary crisis of multilateralism or there is some optimism about the future of multilateralism? I think if I could just jump in to take the first question about the human rights and national interest issue. I think it's fascinating and I think that tension has long been an issue of diplomatic relations. I think it varies so much from country to country and region to region. I think the issue I was talking about, the grace or influence of public opinion on foreign policy making, I think that has made sure that the human rights agenda is very much front and center in foreign policy making in nations like the UK and the US. But I also think that it's meant that, I guess we need to remember that a lot of times where countries like the US and the UK have been advocating human rights really forcefully. It's often been to nations of the world which are in some form or another developing, or what used to be classified as developing, and therefore countries over which we had a great amount of leverage and therefore we almost could afford to be advocating on behalf of human rights issues. I think what now is a real challenge is where what do we do when we are dealing with countries, obviously China is a great example where we simply don't have that kind of leverage and where if we are advocating forcefully for human rights issues, it's going to come, we know it's going to come at the expense of something else and that is potentially what we would deem more of a core inverted commerce national interest. So I think it's going to be fascinating to see how this plays out and I think it's going to be a real key theme of foreign policy making in the next year during this century. I think it would be interesting to see the extent to which the public can make their determination for human rights to form a key pillar of the agenda heard or whether, as we've seen a lot with China in recent years, those are conversations which take place behind closed doors, so as to avoid embarrassment, but the the bilateral announcements and so on are all about trade deals, security cooperation and those kind of things which we're more familiar with. Thank you very much. I'm afraid we have reached the end of the time of our disposals, so I would ask if Claire or Professor Spence, you have any final comments to add? That's very kind, thank you Flavia. Now I don't really have anything more to add, I think I've exhausted all my thoughts for the moment on on diplomacy. The only point I want to make is really the business point. I appreciate that many of you perhaps have had questions you wanted to raise, but we've, as our chairman or chairman says, we've run out of time, but there's no reason why you shouldn't raise those questions with us individually or collectively just through email and the ordinary way and we'll try our best to answer them. We can try and maintain some kind of continual dialogue, so if you have further questions or further arguments you want to advance, even if there are arguments against the the line that three of us have been taking, that's also the better. So let's leave it like that, that we're open to argument and would like to hear from you if you feel there's more to say. The other point to make and I think I'm right in saying this, this is not the only launch which will be taking place over the next few months. There are two or three more that I know of and again to find out where those are taking place, they will be advertised through Kings and again you can come in on the Zoom arrangement and take part. So this is not the end of the argument or the debate, it will be a continuous one through further launches in a variety of places at a variety of times. So I leave it with that. Thank you. Yes, thank you very much. Actually we are indeed receiving a lot of questions, a lot of interest on Claire's work on empathy, a lot of interest again on the role of the Diplomath questions from Alastair about the integrated review which has recently been published. So there are a lot of questions, I understand and I'm sorry we cannot take all of them but as Professor Spence said, please do get in touch with the editors individually by email. We're happy to share also their contacts and I'm sure they are more than happy to engage with you and to answer your questions in the future. Okay, well thank you very much everybody for attending this exceptional book launch. Thanks again to the three speakers. I'm sure you are hearing the virtual round of applause that everybody is attributing to youth. Congratulations for a great accomplishment. The video of this event will be available on YouTube because it is recorded so you will have the chance to watch it again if you want. Again thank you very much everybody for participating and see you soon to the next event. Bye bye.