On normal and reasonable conduct of diplomacy

Diplomacy is delicate business. Tempers get in the way. Histories. Historical animosities. Suspicion too, warranted and unwarranted. Especially in the case of nations that are located in underprivileged and malnourished sections of the world order. Thugs, one notes, are by nature crude. And they don’t need to be delicate anyway.

Human beings are sensitive creatures. A wrong word at the wrong time and wrong place can cause unnecessary unpleasantness. Even a wrong glance can produce similar results.

Or looking the other way when straight-in-the-eye gaze was expected. Tough being a diplomat. On the other hand, it is also tough to be a surgeon. Delicate jobs both. Require training and the alertness to pick up things that could prove useful even while on the job.

Diplomatic business

Ban Ki-moon is the Secretary General of the United Nations. He should know about this. This is why he speaks of the difficulties associated with the normal and reasonable conduct of diplomatic business.

He’s upset. He’s couched his anger, naturally, in diplomatic terms, and tiptoes with word and phrase to say the following about publication of US diplomatic exchanges by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks: ‘It is unfortunate that these confidential documents have been leaked; the motivation on the part of the leakers will make it more difficult for the normal and reasonable conduct of the diplomatic business.’

My heart bleeds, honestly, for those who have to suffer additional job-tension on account of ‘leaks’. It means they will have to devise some mechanisms to be able to carry out their work in a ‘normal’ and ‘reasonable’ manner. This means either developing new mechanisms of protecting correspondence or redefining what ‘normal’ and ‘reasonable’ means. Let’s discuss the latter option.

Foreign policy

What has been ‘normal’, going by the leaks is unadulterated thug-intent, a perverse foreign policy requirement to interfere in the normal and reasonable conduct of affairs in host countries. ‘Leaks’ indicate that political machinations, even those seeking regime-change, is ‘reasonable business’ in the job description of a US diplomat. We didn’t need WikiLeaks to tell us that of course.

The history of Latin America for example can be read as one of people in the relevant countries having to deal with US aggression, political interference, funding and orchestrating military coups, supporting tyrants and being thick-as-thieves with perpetrators of crimes against humanity.

Closer home, US diplomacy has been characterized by the most repugnant kind of interference in domestic affairs including (as ‘leaks’ indicate) active involvement in operations against elected governments. US diplomacy has a face and it is ugly as hell. Nothing delicate about it.

That’s ‘normal business’ and as such one can’t help wondering if diplomatic delicacy even matters. Ki-moon thinks it does and one wonders whether it is because he privileges appearance more than substance. He’s feeding the perception that the UN is but a creature of the US and corporate capital interests, but let’s give that a pass.

Investigate allegations

Ki-moon has more things to worry about than looking after the behinds of US diplomats all over the world, poor man. He has ‘normal’ and ‘reasonable’ issues of his own to deal with.

Even as he struts around demanding accountability and transparency from (some) member states (that selectivity is telling and telling of sycophancy, complicity in global thuggery and lack of spine) and appointing panels to investigate allegations mouthed by supporters of terrorism, he has had to deal with the lack of accountability and transparency at home and a marked aversion to investigation. Poor man.

Inga-Britt Ahlenius, the former UN chief of internal oversight, in an end-of-term report last July that accused Ban Ki-moon of undermining her efforts to rein in corruption and leading the UN into an era of decline.

Ki-moon has not been very diplomatic in his response. Instead of responding in a sane and objective manner, he’s chosen to question Ahlenius’ character.

Now if that is ‘normal’ and ‘reasonable’ for the UN, then he should replace the panel he’s appointed (illegally, one must note) to investigate Sri Lanka, given their horrendous track records and ample evidence of being partial to anti-Sri Lanka drives. No one needs to question Ki-moon’s ‘basic integrity and professionalism’. He never had such virtues and that conclusion does not require any missives from WikiLeaks.

Ki-moon ‘normally’ and ‘reasonably’ dropped cases where fraud to the tune of US $ 1,000,000 was being perpetrated (that’s out of a safe in a UN project office in Kabul). That, friends, is iceberg-tip when it comes to normal and reasonable operations in the outfit that Ki-moon heads.

Diplomacy is a delicate job, yes. Very. Funds don’t get stolen in stick-ups. They tiptoe away. Regimes are not changed by gunpoint always. They are nudged out of business. Normally and reasonably. That’s what diplomacy is about. And that’s what the UN is about. Normal. Reasonable.

My foot.

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