May 2018 \ News \ DIPLOMACY COMMENT
And now, days of disruptive diplomacy

For the first time, the world is experiencing ice-breaking events that are not attributable to global warming. But they are definitely related to warming of another kind. There has been a sudden surge of warming of bilateral and one-to-one interactions among nations. Multilateralism is on the back-burner, at least for now. The United Nations is resigned to the position of a passive bystander. Regional groupings are curious ringside onlookers

By Rajendra Shende

The Moon-Kim summit in the demilitarised border of South and North Korea, the Marcon-Trump bromance in the White House and the Modi-Xi riverside dialogue in Wuhan are cases in point.

All this warmth coming soon after the high tension between the US and China reminds us of what Otto von Bismarck, a former German Chancellor, once said: “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable--the art of the next best.” That was at the end of 19th century. Now, in the 21st century, not only are smart technologies disrupting the way the world lives but even the new-found smart diplomacy is disrupting the way resolutions are sought for long-standing conflicts.

The neoteric approaches, “start-ups” in terms of today’s technology, espoused by these leaders, almost instinctively, are setting the agenda of “no-agenda talks” and communicating with “no-communique methods”.




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