Abstract
The previous lecture traced the evolution of diplomacy from the ‘Old’ to the ‘New’, during the course of the twentieth century, in response to a series of interdependent ‘invasions’ of the political foreground by ‘non-political’ phenomena, driven by the interaction of public interest and awareness and the revolution in communications. What diplomats face today is vastly different from what their predecessors faced a century ago. Policy-making has to take account of a far wider and more rapidly changing range of phenomena, and to operate in the full glare of publicity. It is incumbent on us to be as clear as we can about the nature of international society today.
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Notes
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759. This work preceded Wealth of Nations by 17 years. It has regained a measure of prominence, after years of neglect, at the time of the bicentenary of the famous treatise in 1976. The earlier work is essential to a full understanding of the later.
The Rt Hon. David Howell, MP, Easternisation, Demos, 1995.
A phrase made famous by Mr Francis Fukuyama, State Department official and political scientist. His book The End of History and the Last Man (Hamish Hamilton) was published in 1992. The ‘End of Geography’ seems a more apposite phrase to describe a world where distances have shrunk and communications are instantaneous. See Richard O’Brien, Global Financial Integration: The End of Geography, Chatham House Papers, Pinter, 1992, p. 7.
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© 1997 Sir Peter Marshall
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Marshall, P. (1997). The Nature of International Society Today. In: Positive Diplomacy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25728-7_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25728-7_3
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