DOCTRINE FOR DIPLOMACY

TO REMAIN RELEVANT, THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT NEEDS A NEW STATECRAFT

In this articule published by War on the Rocks, Dan Spokojny comments on the surprising lack of a generally accepted diplomatic manual or Standard Operational Procedures for the implementation of foreign policy, trusting vital negotiations to “good judgement” or to an ill-defined “Art of Diplomacy”.

But this art “requires technique and fundamentals. Good foreign policy must be more than simply a matter of taste. The military has doctrine. The intelligence community has tradecraft. But U.S. diplomacy has not kept pace. It is time to start treating the conduct of diplomacy as a profession with its own standards, methodologies, and skills. Let’s call it statecraft.”

You can find the full text here