25 April 2024, Ricardo Arredondo
On Friday, April 5, the Ecuadorian police stormed the Mexican Embassy in Quito to arrest former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas Espinel. Glas was removed from office in 2017 and subsequently convicted in two cases - one for bribery and another related to the so-called "Odebrecht scandal" - and released from prison in November 2023. However, Ecuador continued its investigations... continue reading...
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22 March 2024, Andre Barrinha
Three decades ago, cyber-diplomacy did not exist. The interest in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a vector of change in international relations was limited to a few mostly technical organisations, and a restricted number of states... continue reading...
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19 January 2024, Kim B. Olsen
Faced with warfare on the European continent and growing Sino-American geopolitical disputes, the EU’s rising use of sanctions and attention to economic security call for a better diplomatic understanding of how state-market actor-networks are assets of modern foreign and security policy... continue reading...
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6 October 2023, Anna-Lena Rüland, Nicolas Rüffin, Katharina Cramer, Prosper Ngabonziza, Manoj Saxena & Stefan Skupien
Science diplomacy, broadly defined as all activities at the intersection of science and foreign policy, has become a buzzword during the past ten years. Mainstreamed by US policymakers in the early 2000s, the concept has since found its way into national policy documents and the scholarly literature. So far, much of this literature has focused onthe science diplomacy practices of the Global North while treating the Global South as a science diplomacy target rather than a science diplomacy actor... continue reading...
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11 September 2023, Arjan Uilenreef
In March 2022, a considerable number of non-Western countries abstained (35) or voted against (5) a resolution deploring Russia’s aggression, its violation of the UN Charter and demanding the withdrawal of its forces from the territory of Ukraine. Even fewer countries subsequently actively supported sanctions against Russia. It was a geopolitical reality-check for the West that should not have come as a surprise, but highlights the need for new diplomatic partnerships... continue reading...
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16 June 2023, Marianne Riddervold
Space diplomacy, defined as ‘processed of dialogue that result in outcomes of cooperation or conflict on a given space issue’ [1], has shielded space from great power conflicts playing out elsewhere – both during the Cold War and in the decades that followed... continue reading...
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2 March 2023, Sophie Vériter
Disinformation has become a popular subject of study and debate. A plethora of publications and policies have emerged, aiming to analyse and curb the negative consequences of unwanted communication... continue reading...
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5 December 2022, Ian Thomas
Heritage protection is increasingly understood by nations and other actors as playing a critical intersectoral role in supporting wider development and diplomacy outcomes through soft power and cultural relations... continue reading...
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1 November 2022, Jan Melissen & HwaJung Kim
‘Foreign policy’ may seem to the general public to be merely an official response to problems entering the nation from across the border. Yet the political reach of diplomacy has extended, and diplomats will have to find ways to engage more with home citizens, including those who feel sidelined and unrepresented, appear unreachable, who are unpredictable in their political loyalties, outright disillusioned or defiant. In this way, diplomatic practitioners have a role to fulfil at home, in that they can contribute to democratic renewal... continue reading...
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29 August 2022, Rosa Stienstra
When former Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström announced in 2014 that Sweden would become the first state to implement a feminist approach to its foreign policy, her idea was met with giggles. But the concept quickly spread around the world... continue reading...
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6 April 2022, Dr. Molly Krasnodębska
Russia’s premeditated attack on Ukraine in February 2022 changed not only the security landscape of Europe. It also altered – at least for now – the structures of leadership and influence within the West... continue reading...
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12 January 2022, Yoav J. Tenembaum
The ongoing conflicts between the United States and its allies and Russia and between the United States and its allies and China reflect both the anarchical nature of the international system and the uncertainty with which decision-makers and diplomats have to deal with in attempting to solve the conflicts peacefully... continue reading...
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16 November 2021, Ilan Manor, César Jiménez-Martínez & Alina Dolea
It is undeniable that the public is central to the practice and study of public diplomacy. Indeed, this field is known as public diplomacy. Yet the role that the public plays in public diplomacy has dramatically altered throughout the years due to geo-political shifts, technological advancements, as well as broader sociocultural changes. The question that we seek to examine is whether a combination of these trends are leading to another change in the public’s role in public diplomacy, with diplomats and states increasingly viewing the public as a problem that needs to be managed... continue reading...
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18 October 2021, William Maley
The occupation of the Afghan capital Kabul by the radical Taliban movement on 15 August 2021 received enormous international attention, not least because of the crisis that soon enveloped Kabul airport as desperate Afghans sought to flee the country on evacuation flights mounted by the United States and its allies. Beyond these dramatic and tragic scenes, however, a range of complex questions about Afghanistan’s future remain unaddressed. One particularly troubling area relates to diplomatic engagement with Afghanistan and the various political actors that populate its territory... continue reading...
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14 July 2021, Taehwan Kim
The postwar Liberal International Order faces grave challenges today mostly in the form of geopolitical competitions among great powers and exclusionary identity politics unfolding across different countries. The retreat of democracy, combined with authoritarian rise, since the turn of the century has led to increasing “bloc-ization of values” between liberalism centering around the U.S. on the one hand, and counter-liberalism around China and Russia on the other... continue reading...
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15 June 2021, Markus Kornprobst
Today’s world faces various crises. Some protracted conflicts escalate again and again. Israel and Palestine as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan come to mind immediately. Relations between Russia and the Ukraine, too, have been badly strained for over seven years. There are many internal wars and proxy wars, ranging from Yemen and the South Sudan via Libya and Afghanistan to Syria and Ethiopia... continue reading...
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14 May 2021, Saskia Postema and Jan Melissen
In this blog post Saskia Postema and Jan Melissen claim that Chinese UN celebrities’ activism under Xi Jinping has become aligned with the Chinese leadership’s ambitions. There is growing concern about China’s influence in the UN system. More than 25 per cent of UN agencies are led by Chinese representatives. Beijing’s increasing activism in the organization is raising foreign eyebrows at a time of increasing Chinese geopolitical maneuvering... continue reading...
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29 April 2021, Ingrid d'Hooghe
Over the past year and a half, China’s diplomacy has attracted attention from media institutions, policy makers and scholars around the globe. New names for China’s diplomatic approaches, such as ‘Wolf Warrior Diplomacy’, ‘face mask’ or ‘vaccine diplomacy’ have become household terms. The days in which China’s diplomacy followed former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s guideline ‘to keep a low profile and bide our time’ lie far behind us... continue reading...
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24 March 2021, Linda Slapakova
In this blog post, Linda Slapakova discusses the various roles that AI plays in counter-disinformation efforts, the prevailing shortfalls of AI-based counter-disinformation tools and the technical, governance and regulatory barriers to their uptake, and how these could be addressed to foster the uptake of AI-based solutions for countering disinformation... continue reading...
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1 March 2021, Jorg Kustermans
In this blog, Jorg Kustermans asks the question whether diplomatic gifts matter - a subject covered in the latest HJD Forum on gift giving in diplomacy... continue reading...
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29 January 2021, Paweł Surowiec and Ilan Manor
Populisms, nationalisms, illiberalism and de-democratisation are trends that have fallen on a fertile ground of a culture of connectivity, and have been amplified thanks to the proliferation of digital media platforms. As world politics moves towards hetero-polarity, this shift is accompanied by rage and anxiety... continue reading...
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4 November 2020, Jorge Heine
In June 2020, the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) announced that it would close five of its embassies. The missions to be closed were a bit of a smorgasbord — three of them in Europe (Denmark, Greece and Romania), one in Africa (Algeria) and one in Asia (Syria) — and the precise justification for their closing was unclear... continue reading...
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3 September 2020; Tim Flink
Scholars from the field of science, technology and innovation (STI) policy have often questioned whether there was substantive difference between international STI policy and science diplomacy. This is hard to answer, but at least we can observe that science diplomacy has had great appeal over the last years... continue reading...
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28 May 2020; Alisher Faizullaev
The previous blog post in this series discussed the role of international diplomacy during the coronavirus crisis. This post focuses on diplomacy and its challenges in post-corona times. Specifically, the blog post argues that diplomats will face a range of challenges following the Covid-19 pandemic including the need to strengthen the multilateral system, facilitate collaborations to find a vaccine and resolve diplomatic disputes arising from new travel restrictions... continue reading...
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18 May 2020; Alisher Faizullaev
The coronavirus outbreak has demonstrated the strengths and weaknesses of modern diplomacy. In this two-part series of blog posts, I will attempt to analyze how diplomats grappled with the coronavirus pandemic and how international diplomacy can best prepare to meet similar challenges in the future. This blog post focuses on the practice of diplomacy during the COVID-19 outbreak... continue reading...
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24 April 2020; Jan Melissen
All countries have turned into a global no-go zone and in the Covid-19 crisis flying citizens back home is an unprecedented logistical operation. More hidden from view is that helping people is one thing, but getting through to an elusive public with the objective of inducing behavioural change, is the hardest part of the consular challenge... continue reading...
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18 March 2020; Christian Lequesne
From the dawn of time, when groups of gatherers first encountered one another, communication and negotiation have been central to human existence. Yet, the practice of diplomacy is in constant flux. 17th century diplomacy, conducted by Ambassadors stationed in foreign courts, was radically different from 20th century diplomacy conducted by representatives to multilateral institutions. Diplomacy in the 21st century diplomacy will once again show great, and much faster, change... continue reading...
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5 February 2020; Pierre-Bruno Ruffini and Olga Krasnyak
On 21 January, 2020, the International Science Diplomacy Forum took place in Nicosia, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). The Forum brought together fifty academics from Turkish-Cypriot and Cypriot universities as well as local politicians including Mustafa Akıncı, President of the TRNC, and Tufan Erhürman, the former Prime Minister and leader of the opposition. The Forum sought to raise awareness to the importance of scientific collaborations and the role that science may play in facilitating closer diplomatic ties on this part of the island... continue reading...
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21 January 2020; Ilan Manor
In 2016, ‘The Economist’ magazine employed the term ‘post-truth’ to characterize contemporary politics. The magazine asserted that the Brexit referendum, the 2016 US Presidential elections and the rise of populism were all marked by politicians’ frequent use of half-truth, lies and fabrications. What was remarkable about 2016 was not that politicians lied; but that they no longer cared if they were caught lying. Narratives had thus supplanted truth as the basis of political communication... continue reading...
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2 December 2019; Michèle Bos and Jan Melissen
In the absence of access to privileged diplomatic channels, rebel groups engage in more public relations with foreign elites, international organizations and civil society groups. Digital tools, like social media, have given the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other terrorist organizations a much louder voice, and there is little doubt that they are also important for rebel groups engaged in civil wars... continue reading...
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7 November 2019; Andrew F. Cooper
The drama over Ukraine with respect to the Trump administration’s attempts to initiate an investigation into the affairs of Joe Biden’s son brings the central challenge facing diplomats to the fore. Looking back to the post-Cold War era, diplomatic practitioners in general – and American diplomats specifically – were held in high esteem. Individual high-profile US diplomats, from Richard Holbrooke through to Michael McFaul, were lauded for their robust promotion of democracy and liberal norms... continue reading...
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1 November 2019
Welcome to the newly launched The Hague Diplomacy Blog! It is our aim to publish 10 blogs per year and we are very pleased that Ilan Manor has now joined our online team as HJD Blog Editor. We will solicit blogs and we also invite authors to make their own pitch, addressing new themes and perspectives, and kicking off fresh debates... continue reading...
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