His Ex or Telex?

Abstract

The diplomat is yet another worker in the overcrowded vineyard of communications and the question of whether he consumes more than he produces is a pertinent one. It has been suggested that at best he supplements commercial telegraph, television, radio, the press, and the travelling public; at worst he gets in their way. Heaven help the diplomat who stands on his dignity to make the claim that his job is different from lesser practitioners of the art because he deals in governments and with issues that can determine the fate of a country or even of mankind itself. Such a diplomat is likely to be reminded of the present state of the world and asked to choose between being responsible for the mess or admitting that it all happened in spite of him. The fact is that the diplomat is not in control of the process of international intercourse but is a part of it. Once it may have been possible to distinguish between a foreign policy and the diplomacy by which it was carried out but in an age when the medium is the message the distinction, if possible, is hardly worth making for any practical purpose. In any event, the involvement of the diplomat in international communications is such that it is best not to think of him in terms of powers and functions, but in terms of the position he occupies in an elaborate near-universal system of multidimensional communication. There was a time when all that governments knew about other governments and their motives was what they heard from diplomats, their own and the other fellow's, supplemented from time to time by reports from travellers and journalists whose standards of accuracy left just about everything to be desired. Consequently diplomats were in a position to exercise a great deal of influence through their reports home and through their foreign contacts. They naturally became persons of power and