Constructing a means of escape so that international relations might be transformed is usually presented either as a social theory parable about the need for international reform or as a historical narrative of tragic proportions. In the former, sovereign state diplomacy, born in the simpler times of seventeenth-century Europe, failed to deal with the challenges of the increased application of science and technology to the satisfaction of a variety of human purposes. It could not prevent war when wars became too destructive. It could not secure prosperity when prosperity became dependent upon extensive cooperation across borders. And it ceased to be an authentic expression of the way human beings associated or ought to associate, either transnationally or subnationally. We find ourselves, therefore, inhabiting fading structures imposed by general principles and their particular political and territorial expressions, both of which were established to provide dubious solutions to long-forgotten or out-dated problems. In this view, the institution of diplomacy, whatever its members might say about the need for orderly and peaceful reform, is perpetually under suspicion and, indeed, may be fatally implicated in the resistance to change unless it can show itself to be in the vanguard of change.

The historical narrative is more forgiving. The twentieth century began with two defeats for diplomacy. The failure to prevent the First World War was more perceived than actual because policy, not diplomacy, was to blame. Perceived failure, however, contributed to a second defeat when the League of Nations was unable to prevent the Second World War. Facilitating the operations of conferences and congresses between the leaders of the great powers was one thing, but diplomats saw the democratic and egalitarian imperatives of the League as "the negation of their craft."(25)  However, their resistance, together with those features of the League system which they opposed, was eventually swept away by larger struggles, first with the Axis powers and then with the USSR. In these struggles, diplomats were subordinated to the requirements of grand strategy, geopolitics, and ideological "great contests" in which both revisionists and the principal status quo power could be described as anti-diplomats. Whether by world domination, world revolution, or world reform, they all sought peace by replacing differences with what they believed were superior, universal values.

It is interesting to consider the role of the sovereign people in each account. For the social scientist, the role is implied but important. It is the people who will no longer put up with an international institution – diplomacy - which never served them well but which was rendered ineffective by developments in science and technology. The role of popular sovereignty in helping to make possible some of the horrors which overwhelmed diplomacy is not considered, except as a mobilizing device cynically manipulated by diplomats and their masters. In the historical account, the possibility that the people, or some of them, contributed to the great international failures of the twentieth century is entertained, but the conclusions about what must happen to diplomacy are, by and large, unchanged. Its proper business must now be to construct international institutions to corral the state and, where those institutions fail, to construct better ones.

Under such pressures, diplomacy could not stand still. According to Adam Watson, its independent logic combined with external pressures to imbue raison de système with a more complex and ambitious significance as a "conscious sense that all states in an international society have an interest in preserving it and making it work." What emerged was something which "transcends the mere mechanics of dialogue." In an increasingly interdependent world, states seek agreements by which they surrender particular bits of their authority, and "this way forward is the way of diplomacy." International affairs are moving "towards a more collectively organized society of states." As diplomacy evolves, so too does the individual diplomat, from Barbaro’s instrument of the prince to Talleyrand’s servant of the state who recognizes that Napoleons come and go but that the interests of France are eternal. Such diplomats, aware of the long-term interests of states and their continuous contact with one another, begin to discern the interest they share in maintaining "the effective functioning of the system itself, and of their responsibilities towards it." The result is statesmen and diplomats who exhibit "prudential responsibility," pursuing interests with restraint, rather than "uncompromisingly, regardless of confrontation and clashes." They see "positive advantage in co-operating with other states and international bodies." The responsible statesman will be "willing to pay a price in state interests narrowly conceived, for the sake of the greater advantages which he sees that his state will obtain from the existence of an orderly society."(26) 

To be sure, a little self-abnegation goes a long way. Watson remains enough of a diplomat to emphasize the importance of well socialized great powers to the success of his version of raison de système. And I am aware that all his comments can be rendered consistent with the advice given down the years from Thucydides to Kissinger that a prince should be prepared to make concessions on matters which are not of vital interest to gain ground on those which are. However, it is clear that for Watson peaceful international change does not mean the "same old melodrama" of international politics in which all that happens are shifts in the balance of power.(27)  When he and others speak of the surrender of authority, particularly on the part of the great powers, they mean changes in the fundamental character of international politics and claim a major role for professional diplomacy in bringing it about.

The case can be made tentatively. While diplomacy may be "the art of resolving negotiations peacefully," it is also "the technique or skill which reigns over the development, in a harmonious manner, of international relations."(28)  It can be made in a balanced manner. American foreign service officers saw themselves at the turn of the century as "spokesmen for the Old Diplomacy" at home, "obliged to teach their countrymen a healthy skepticism about world politics," while their mission overseas was "to persuade other governments to subscribe to a meliorist vision of world politics."(29)  It can also be preached that a "diplomatic representative is preeminently a peacemaker" whose duty is to take a part "in the elevation and purification of diplomacy."(30)  Such preaching was not the preserve of American diplomats. In 1949 Britain’s wartime ambassador to Turkey declared that "enlightened countries" had long since realized the futility of manipulative diplomacy and that "much of our energy nowadays is directed to the wider and more honourable task of serving the international welfare and harmony by taking into account the legitimate interests of all."(31)  Given his own career as an ambassador, in which he was machine-gunned in China by Japanese aircraft and duped in Istanbul by a member of his own staff, and the circumstances of the time in which he expressed his views, one is tempted to conclude that Knatchhull-Hugessen was engaging in the Persian practice of "ketman," pious dissimulation for a good purpose. Rare though this candor (if such it is) may be for a diplomat, it does capture the rhetorical triumph of the transformational conception of peace which in this century came to dominate the environment in which diplomats operated and to which they were constrained to adjust. Representation - of sovereigns, interests, or ideas - was replaced by metaphors of constructing and building by which issues were to be managed and problems were to be solved.