COVID-19 is not a bioweapon and it is dangerous to claim that it is!
Diplo Wisdom Circle COVID-19 and Diplomacy, Diplomatic theory and practice Blogs
Disease grips humanity’s imagination with a chokehold. It distances people from each other and can create animosities between groups. The fear of disease trumps even war, since you can see guns and tanks. You cannot see the bubonic plague,…
What Diplomats Do: The Life and Work of Diplomats (Book review)
Diplo Wisdom Circle Diplomatic theory and practice Blogs
Referring to Prof. Geoff Berridge, we learn that ‘diplomacy is the most important institution of our society of states’. Further on, according to Sir Ivor Roberts, diplomacy is both ‘that funny old trade’ as well as a the ‘most rewarding…
‘Soft power’ is nothing more than influence
Diplo Wisdom Circle Diplomatic theory and practice Blogs
The term soft power (and its siblings hard power and smart power), employed to embrace a particular category of resources of potential power, originated in the stable of Joseph S Nye, Jr, a Harvard University distinguished service professor…
The opportunity costs of an arms race
Diplo Wisdom Circle Diplomatic theory and practice Blogs
What is the value of sustaining international peace in the age of new technologies with incredible disruptive potential, such as the combination of weapons and artificial intelligence (AI)?
The financial costs of multilateral forums where…
The hole in the fence
Diplo Wisdom Circle Blogs
I am a keen gardener, and during the Covid-19 lockdown I had the great good fortune to be allowed by our neighbour, Janet, to take over the care of her very large, tree-lined, and blissfully quiet garden. The weather was also unusually good,…
Q. Which London embassy needs 13 cultural attachés?
Diplo Wisdom Circle Blogs
Answer: The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia. Why?
The employment of the Saudi consulate-general and consul general’s residence in Istanbul in the horrifying murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in early October is now notorious. This…
An honorary consul in the pandemic
Diplo Wisdom Circle Consular and diaspora diplomacy, COVID-19 and Diplomacy, Diplomatic theory and practice, Honorary consuls Blogs
On 2 July 2020 I received an e-mail from Razvan Constantinescu, the energetic Romanian honorary-consul general for the south-west of England based in Bristol and president of the Bristol Consular Corps. This told me how the COVID-19 pandemic…
The Sacoolas affair: Diplomatic immunity or special immunity?
Diplo Wisdom Circle Blogs
When the abuse of diplomatic immunity is alleged to have occurred, it usually refers to diplomatic officers taking advantage of their special status under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (VCDR) to avoid penalties for misdemeanours, such…
EU-UK videoconferencing. All for show?
Diplo Wisdom Circle Blogs
The future relationship negotiations between Britain and the EU, which commenced on 3 March 2020, teach many lessons in the art of negotiation. Among these are the obvious value of certain kinds of deadline and the less obvious value of publicly…
An assessment of autonomous drones’ potential during the COVID-19 pandemic
Diplo Wisdom Circle COVID-19 and Diplomacy, Gender rights online, Internet governance and digital policy, Telecommunications infrastructure Blogs
The drone industry has the potential to make a substantial contribution in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Developments in the industry have been nascent so far, but there is the potential for exponential growth in this industry. Based…
Language in the time of the coronavirus crisis – UK case study
Diplo Wisdom Circle COVID-19 and Diplomacy, Diplomatic theory and practice, Language and diplomacy, Rhetoric Blogs
We all know that language changes over time, but we rarely have the chance to watch it mutate in real time...
We all know that language changes over time, but we rarely have the chance to watch it mutate in real time, and few of us could have…
Has the coronavirus deprived us of choice?
Diplo Wisdom Circle COVID-19 and Diplomacy, Digital diplomacy, Diplomatic theory and practice, Language and diplomacy, Online education, Rhetoric Blogs
The coronavirus has been credited with catalysing a shift from a self-centred ‘I’ society to another-centred ‘we’ society. The focus on individual well-being and material wealth that has shaped many people’s identity and aspirations…
