Photo credit: Giff Johnson.
Your work addresses a vital shortcoming in global diplomacy, giving a voice to political groups marginalised within an overly statist system which is ill equipped to deal with the challenges of contemporary global politics. What changes are needed to address this issue without it falling to NGOs to fill in the gaps in international relations? It requires the states which dominate the diplomatic process to accept that those processes will not be effective unless they make a very deliberate effort to include those who are most affected by those processes. That is a deficit that can be fixed tomorrow at any number of diplomatic forums. It isn’t difficult or complicated. But many diplomats are in thrall to the orthodoxy, thinking that, like a religion, it can never be changed. We need a Reformation!
It sounds as though the diplomatic process is very hierarchical, with a select number of states setting the agenda. Is that the case? Yes, it is very hierarchical. All politics is about who has power and who hasn’t. There is a more fundamental shift, which is the long-term decline in the authority of states and the unwillingness of states to recognise this inevitability. This is demonstrated in the fact that 80% of the agenda at the UN Security Council is about conflict within states but in a body engineered 70 years ago to manage conflict between states – yet only states are allowed to speak there. They behave as if no one else matters. They’re wrong.
Have you got any advice for those looking to start a career in foreign affairs? You have to hustle. Go abroad and get involved, working in the places that interest you. You’ll learn a lot more in a week working in Gaza or Myanmar than you will in months reading about it in books. That’s what I did. I went to work in Africa after leaving school – inspired by a teacher at Dulwich who is now one of the trustees at Independent Diplomat. If you liked this article, you can find out more about Carne’s journey by watching the biographical film, Accidental Anarchist , (prod. Hopscotch Films), which can be downloaded at AccidentalAnarchist.net.
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