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Abstract
Diplomats produce a great deal of geographical knowledge: By reporting on distant places to their governments, they create particular understandings of political space. Yet these professionals rarely link their work to geography: What a geographer might call a geographical sensibility is labeled cultural knowledge by a diplomat. This article clarifies the relationship between geographical knowledge and diplomatic practice. Empirically, it draws from nearly 100 interviews with foreign policy professionals to offer a more “peopled” or quasi-ethnographic account of diplomacy than is usually available in scholarly literature. Conceptually, the article contributes to our understanding of how geographical knowledge is created inside diplomatic and bureaucratic institutions.
外交官生产大量的地理知识：透过向其政府报告远距之地，他们创造了政治空间的特定理解。但这些外交官鲜少将其工作连结至地理学：地理学者所谓对地理的敏感度, 则被外交官标示为文化知识。本文阐明地理知识和外交实践之间的关联性。本文在经验上运用对将近一百位外交政策专家的访谈, 为外交提供一个较一般学术文献可得到的更具 “人性” 或半民族志的解释。本文在概念上对我们之于地理知识如何在外交与官僚机构中被创造的理解作出贡献。
Los diplomáticos producen una buena cantidad de conocimiento geográfico: Informando a su gobierno sobre lugares distantes, los diplomáticos crean entendimientos particulares del espacio político. Con todo, estos profesionales raramente relacionan su trabajo con la geografía: Lo que los geógrafos podrían identificar como una sensibilidad geográfica, un diplomático lo etiquetará como conocimiento cultural. Este artículo clarifica la relación entre conocimiento geográfico y práctica diplomática. Empíricamente, el artículo se apoya en cerca de 100 entrevistas con profesionales de política extranjera para ofrecer un recuento más “humanado” o casi etnográfico de la diplomacia que lo usualmente disponible en la literatura académica. Conceptualmente, el artículo contribuye a nuestro entendimiento de cómo se crea conocimiento geográfico al interior de las instituciones diplomáticas y burocráticas.
Acknowledgments
I am particularly grateful to the forty individuals who made the time in 2014–2015 to discuss diplomatic work with me. This article would not have been possible without their intellectual curiosity. Insights from many other foreign policy professionals, interviewed in 2007 to 2013, are likewise present in the analysis. Constructive feedback from two anonymous reviewers of this journal is genuinely appreciated. I thank Barney Warf for his professionalism in adjudicating the review process.
Funding
Research for this article was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. All mistakes and misinterpretations remain my responsibility.
Notes
1 Given the long-term nature of this work, the interviews traverse multiple themes; geographical knowledge production is only one part of the mix. The total number of interviews is 154 so far, conducted with more than ninety individuals (many persons have been interviewed several times) since 2007. The conservative phrase “nearly 100” is used simply to indicate the approximate number of interviews with individuals who are diplomats or move in diplomatic circles on a daily basis, as these interviews feed directly into this article. All EU settings are quasi-diplomatic, as all involve intergovernmental and transnational negotiation (Kuus Citation2014). The quotes in the article come from the forty-four loosely structured interviews with forty individuals that took place in 2014 and 2015, mostly in Brussels and five other capital cities. I do not list these capitals because the number of interviewees in any one capital is small—sometimes two to three persons involved in diplomatic training—and citing the location would jeopardize the anonymity of the speakers. Only the points that are valid beyond one setting (national or EU) are quoted in any event. The forty individuals behind the forty-four interviews in 2014 and 2015 come from fifteen EU member states. References to their nationality are omitted in the text, as such references would jeopardize anonymity and unduly nationalize the material, which is better conceptualized in terms of a transnational field (Kuus Citationforthcoming-b). The relatively high rank of many interviewees, commensurate with their long-term experience, accentuates the intellectual aspect of diplomatic work: High-ranking people have relatively more autonomy over their work. The individuals who agree to an interview with me might also be more curious about geographical knowledge from the start. These tendencies might rose-tint my view of diplomacy and the potential bias is considered throughout the article (see also Kuus Citationforthcoming-a). Although the quotes are derived from the 2014–2015 fieldwork, my overall claims are based on the larger body of interviews.
2 Kennan became more supportive of diplomatic engagement later on and criticized the use of the Long Telegram for the militaristic projects of the Cold War (Smith Citation2005).
3 See also the Cuban missile crisis Web site hosted by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University (Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Citation2015). The site stresses Thompson's extensive knowledge of Russian history, language, and culture, and it quotes Secretary of State (at the time) Dean Rusk's remark that Thompson functioned as “our in-house Russian” during the crisis.
4 What people say or think they do and what they actually do are often different things: Everyone's comments should be (and are here) interpreted with this in mind. For the purposes of this article, diplomat refers to a member of a diplomatic corps and diplomatic knowledge refers to the knowledge created by career diplomats. Far from all professionals who work at a foreign ministry or embassy are diplomats: In embassies, the majority of staff represent other agencies of the sending state or are hired locally. By the same token, most of the foreign policy knowledge that circulates in the public sphere is not developed by career diplomats. Although diplomacy is linked to the intelligence services of states, the two realms are distinct. The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the principal international treaty to regulate diplomatic relations today, defines diplomacy in terms of ascertaining conditions in the host states “by all lawful means.” Although the line between diplomacy and espionage might be fuzzy in theory, it is usually clear in practice: Career diplomats are offended when labeled as intelligence agents (Herman Citation2001, 33–35). This article acknowledges the role of intelligence gathering in the practice of international affairs but, following the specialist literature, distinguishes diplomatic work from professional intelligence. According to Herman (Citation2001, 35), about 50 percent of diplomatic knowledge comes from open sources, 10 to 20 percent is acquired through the confidential contacts of diplomats, another 20 to 25 percent comes from “leaks and indiscretions of one kind and another” (presumably by citizens of the host country), and 10 percent is drawn from professional covert intelligence work. The specific shares of these components might have changed in the last fifteen years, but the working distinction between diplomacy and espionage holds. Wealthy states typically spend more on intelligence than diplomacy (Herman Citation2001, 31–32).
5 The question was about a relatively noninstrumentalist reading more broadly: things like history, geography, and literature rather than formal documents and major newspapers.
6 The potential for exchange between critical intellectuals and foreign policy professionals is beyond the scope of this article. The article focuses on what Foucault (Citation1984) termed the “specific intellectual”, a practitioner concerned with specific struggles rather than universal ideas.
7 Even in the systems where political science backgrounds are not in majority, their growing prominence is noticed (and in some cases welcomed as an antidote to other monocultures).
8 The mismatch between model and practice cuts in two ways. On the one hand, beneath smooth narratives of understanding, cooperation, and contingency there is often a rigid national line. This mismatch is easy to see: A skilled diplomat almost never departs from the official governmental line in his or her public utterances. On the other hand, beneath the national line is sometimes a nuanced knowledge of political and cultural difference and interdependence. That mismatch is less visible in speeches and interviews. Rhetoric about geographical knowledge does not mean that the knowledge is there, but the reverse is true as well: The absence of such rhetoric does not mean that the knowledge is absent.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Merje Kuus
MERJE KUUS is Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver V6T1Z2, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research focuses on geopolitics, diplomacy, and transnational policy processes, especially in Europe.