The Diplomatic Disposition
The simplest explanation for why diplomats became representatives of a transformative conception of peace, and one to which they are surprisingly willing to subscribe when the heat is on, is that they are a pretty over determined crowd. It may be that the vices of diplomacy appear to be in general…those of the surrounding society and of the time' and that diplomats spend most of their time simply trying to carry out the instructions of their governments. If the prevailing assumption among governments and people is that a stronger world order is needed, then it should come as no surprise that diplomats will be engaged in its construction. But this begs the question of where the prevailing assumptions about diplomacy come from in a way which is unflattering to the profession, and it sits uneasily with the sense diplomats have of themselves as an elite.
Two other explanations for this professional passivity might be explored. The first is that it is not a function of their professional self-image as public servants but arises from a pessimism about the human condition which resides in the bosom of the best diplomats and is confirmed by their experience. In Ernest Satow’s study, the Austrian diplomatist, Hubner , was compelled to contend for a bad cause' and the author concludes that the most one can attain by "prudence and love of peace is the postponement of the evil day. This might be a reasonable conclusion if one had spent one’s professional life in service of the Ballhausplatz, but it is a remarkable one for a Briton lecturing in the midst of his own country’s greatness. In a similar vein, the Englishman, Harold Nicolson, noted that diplomats tend to develop certain ‘functional defects’ because of the ‘human folly or egotism' they are forced to witness during careers in which they know the facts and others do not. As a result, they may mistakenly regard serious passions as transitory emotions and ‘thus underestimate the profound emotion by which whole nations may be swayed'. The danger is that the diplomat ‘often becomes denationalized, internationalized, and therefore dehydrated an elegant, empty husk'. Yet Nicolson also notes that a profession should not be judged by its failures’ and elegant, empty, diplomatic husks are rare outside the world of fiction and popular imagination.
Secondly, the experiences which feed world-weariness may also give rise to cynicism, laying diplomats open to the charge that they simply seek power or, worse, to be close to it without responsibility. In accounting for his own success, the British Foreign Office permanent under secretary, Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, declared in the early 1900s that his ‘theory in the service was that "power" is the first aim’ Diplomats have served some fairly odious regimes. The Nazi seizure of power provoked only one ambassadorial resignation. Dobrynin, for all his efforts to present himself as a civilizing influence on Soviet power, remains remarkably glib about the activities of his colleagues. Indeed, the Russian experience from Tsarist empire to Bolshevik state and from USSR to Russian republic provides remarkable examples of shifts in the allegiances of professional diplomats It can be argued that the evolution of the European Union (EU) is providing us with others.
However, the most one can conclude from this is that diplomats are neither more nor less virtuous than the rest of the population. For every quote about power, there are many more about restraining and tempering its use. Nor have diplomats played the passive and pessimistic parts assigned to them by some commentators in which they simply go with the flow or, to put it more professionally, do their best to execute the will of their political masters without making things worse. More research is needed on the role of diplomats in policy formulation, but it is clear that some have taken the lead in advocating peace through the construction o an order which circumscribed the autonomy of their sovereigns. They did so because they thought it was a good idea. They continue to do so, however, not as cosmopolitans in the pejorative sense used by critics to call into question their patriotism.
More typical than Nicolson's elegant husks is what might be called the practical-or even unreflective cosmopolitanism exhibited by Frank Roberts when he recalls his role as Britain's ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the 1950s. He suggests that his position was unusual because he was "like any Ambassador, the representative of his country, but at the same time share a collective responsibility as a member of the Council'. As a consequence, it was his duty not only to represent British views on the Council but also to press upon London, when required, the collective views of the Council in addition to reporting those of Spaak, Norstaad and individual national representatives'. It is pressing rather than reporting which is im