The New Diplomacy

__"Globalization and Diplomacy: A Practitioner’s Perspective" by Strobe Talbott, in Foreign Policy (Fall 1997), 2400 N St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037–1153.__

Growing global interdependence is making "the very word foreign . . . obsolete" in some realms of diplomacy, writes Deputy Secretary of State Talbott. "From the floor of the stock exchange in Singapore to the roof of the world over Patagonia where there is a hole in the ozone layer, what happens there matters here—and vice versa."

With trade and international investment now more economically important to the United States, the State Department has been collaborating more closely with the Commerce Department and other government agencies, not only to help "write the rules and build the institutions that govern the global economy" but to help American firms win contracts overseas, Talbott notes.

The new cooperative diplomacy—which also involves joint efforts with U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to fight international organized crime and drug trafficking—has changed the look of the 249 American embassies and consulates overseas. "In fact, 63 percent of those now under the authority of U.S. ambassadors and other chiefs of mission are not State Department employees," Talbott notes.

Ironically, even as the wider world has become more important economically and in certain other ways, public and media interest in world developments has waned.

U.S. spending on "foreign affairs" (including diplomatic operations, foreign aid, military assistance, humanitarian relief, contributions to international organizations, Voice of America, and programs to help fledgling democracies) was $18.4 billion in fiscal 1996—half the total (after adjusting for inflation) in fiscal 1985. Since the end of the Cold War, the State Department has opened 23 new embassies and consulates in the states of the former Soviet Union, Vietnam, and elsewhere, but it has been forced to close 34 others around the world.