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WHO NEEDS
DIPLOMATS? THE PROBLEM OF DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATION - Paul Sharp
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 INTRODUCTION
Introduction
What or who does the post-cold war diplomat represent? Two trends are evident:
increasing institutionalized multilateralism aimed at a stronger international order,
either by improving cooperation between states or transcending the need for it; and the
tendency to see diplomats in terms of the skills they possess and the jobs they do, rather
than whom they represent. Because both developments seem to move diplomats further away
from the sovereign state, their traditional source of authority and raison d’être, a
number of writers have raised the possibility that diplomacy’s identity as a discrete
practice may be subsumed under broader notions of conflict resolution and bargaining.(2)
This neither is nor ought to be the case. Diplomats and the diplomatic system continue
to derive their authority from the claim that they represent sovereign states in their
relations with one another and not from some wider notion of international community, of
which states are but one expression. Failures of diplomacy in places as different as
Maastricht, Mostar, and Mogadishu involved over-ambitious attempts at international
management for which no consensus existed in the great powers expected to supply the
resources. Either this consensus has to be strengthened, a labour of Sisyphus given recent
disappointments, or the ambitions of those who wish to manage the international system
have to be scaled back. Otherwise we face more muddle, a further weakening of the frail
consensus for maintaining overseas commitments, and even, although this remains a remote
prospect as yet, a falling out among the great powers.
The paradox of our times is that in international politics, as in domestic politics,
there is a high expectation that governments can and should solve problems and a
widespread reluctance to pay the price. The result is a dangerous cycle in which
governments embark on difficult international projects with inadequate resources because a
major mobilization of them cannot be justified. To ease the resource problem, governments
collaborate with other governments, adding a host of complications and dangers to already
difficult tasks. Failure further weakens the potential for future consensus and
cooperation, but the expectations that someone ought to do something are not reduced.
To explain this disjuncture between champagne tastes and beer budgets, we must look in
part to the need for political leaders to sound optimistic above all else if they are to
be elected. They, however, are swift to retreat to mere appearances as soon as their
electorates chafe at the costs of an ill-founded international policy. A few dead rangers,
disgraced paratroopers, or negative percentage points on the stock market will quickly
pull them back. Not so the policy experts. One of the most striking features of the
present wave of internationalist ambition is the extent to which it is embraced by the
experts who advocate the policies of international order-building and by the professional
diplomats whose task it is to carry them out. While diplomats are not immune to the temper
of the times, they contribute to the present state of affairs because they have
temporarily lost sight of what they represent - sovereign states and the people who live
within them as independent political communities existing as ends in themselves. This is a
sweeping claim which I hope to substantiate in this article.
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