Most diplomats have at one time or another put their country’s interests before those of the world as a whole. For example, despite evidence of global warming and the harmful effects of greenhouse gasses, in 1998 the U.S. became a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol but has never ratified it. Due to this lack of ratification the U.S. is now one of eight countries that have not ratified the protocol, while 188 have capped their emissions. If we were to cap our emissions it would hurt our industry, so by signing but not ratifying the protocol our diplomats and our government put the interests of our country first. But the diplomats of our country have also focused on the interests of the world. Take WWII, our country was not being invaded and we might have been able to keep our soldiers from being killed, but we jumped in and helped our European brethren whose countries were being ravaged. In this instance we were looking at the world as a whole and seeing that it was in the worlds best interests that the Axis be stopped.
There are also times when a diplomat must choose whose interests to put first depending on the situation. This is because while a diplomat could put the interests of his country first in every situation, that is not how peace is maintained and much of a diplomat’s job is maintaining peace. To sustain order peace throughout the word diplomats must make compromises on behalf of their country. Say a certain resolution does not support all of a country’s interests but instead supports a select few that can be agreed upon by most states the diplomat should not reject, he should see that compromise has been made and that his country is still benefits from the resolution and support it.
If a compromise is made by states that does not support all of your countries interests but overall supports mutual interests of other states as well then this should be accepted. For example, the International Whaling Commission has proposed a compromise on whaling where the moratorium on whaling will be lifted but the nations who hunt whales have to abide by a quota concerning the amount of whales they kill in an attempt to reduce the numbers hunted in the years to come. In diplomacy you “win some and you lose some” in the way that there will be very few times where an agreement can be made that satisfactorily covers all issues between more than one state. With different economic and governmental structures, different states will obviously have varying concerns and objectives. This needs to be taken into consideration when trying to decide what a diplomat can achieve for their country. Partial success on an issue can be better than no success at all.
ReplyDeleteI am in total agreement and would also like to say that if a diplomat and his country are not willing to make compromises they will be fighting a losing battle and are more likely not to achieve certain goal than they would be by making compromises. When other countries see the diplomat lack of compromise he and his country will probably be seen as more of an obstacle on the road to global cooperation and would be likely to lose support in the U.N. and other global governing bodies.
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