Diplomatic Theory of International Relations

This paper summarizes a larger work that recovers a diplomatic tradition of international thought and explores possibilities for developing diplomatic theory from it. It argues that diplomacy exists because people live in groups and that relations between groups are different from relations within them in several important ways.

Inter-group relations are characterized by a sense of less emotional, moral and legal commitment than intra-group relations, and are more prone to misunderstandings and hence to tensions and conflicts, both wanted and unwanted.

They require special handling by diplomats who occupy the spaces between human groups and who, as a consequence, have a distinctive view of what is going on. The hallmark of this distinctive view is distance from the content of international relations as this is conventionally understood by the rest of us.

The paper then explores what a diplomatic understanding of international societies can tell us about how they come into being, develop and disappear, and what diplomatic thinking can impart about some of the pressing issues of our time and the terms in which they are usually presented, namely: rogue states; greedy companies; crazy religions; and dumb publics.