Hi Guys,I was just perusing the internet when I stumbled upon the galleries section of the White House website. They have a collection of photo's taken at the Copenhagen climate change summit, and I thought this was a particularly interesting one showing some of the aspects of diplomacy that we've been talking about in seminars and lectures over the past few weeks. Here, we see President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev having a bi-lateral meeting at a very much multilateral conference! This can also be used as an example of 'summit diplomacy', in which it is not ambassadors that are involved in negotiations, but heads of state themselves (although I guess you can argue that the U.S. President is the 'chief diplomat').
This image highlights to me that there is arguably some relevance to the more 'traditional' methods of diplomacy even today. Let me know what you guys think!
Chris
p.s. I hope the image downloads properly, incase it hasn't, and you wonder what on earth I'm banging on about, here's the link: http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/photogallery/a-breakthrough-copenhagen
Hi Chris,
ReplyDeleteI think that this "caught on the spot" picture really illustrates how negotiations and agreements in reality are reached and in what format they take place: "informal talks" outside of the actual meetings between major powers and of course in secrecy. and I also like your emphasis on bilateral meeting taking place at a multilateral conference, which proves that the "new" diplomacy is not so much "new" after all, since so much of the "new" diplomacy is still the "good" old traditional diplomacy.
Best,
Leyla