Information Technology Reshaping Method of Diplomatic Relations by Nickolas Theros From e-mail to the Internet, cellular phones to satellite television, instantaneous communication is revolutionizing the way people view the world around them and redefining the way international relations are conducted. In embassies across Washington and around the world, diplomats taking note of the considerable impact that information technology is having on the conduct of diplomacy. One area of immediate impact in some of Washingtonís embassies is the secretarial pool. "There are no more secretaries," Rodney Moore of the Canadian Embassy half-jokingly claimed. "You no longer need secretaries taking dictation, typing up a letter and then giving it to the communicator to send off," he said, recalling the laborious process for communicating between embassies and their respective foreign ministries that has now been replaced by e-mail. The advent of e-mail at embassies may not be so welcome for all diplomats who must now learn to type. "Thirty years ago senior officers were not drafting their own letters. Now it is not uncommon to find the most senior officers typing away," said Moore. Yet Moore and other diplomats welcome the arrival of e-mail. They believe it to be an effective tool for internal communication. "E-mail has allowed for greater exchange between foreign service officers. Senior officials [in the ministries] have greater access to experts in the country.ÖThe exchange of information has become more elastic, less structured," Moore said. Jerry Kelly of the Irish Embassy in Washington echoes the same sentiments, saying "e-mail helps cut through the hierarchical bureaucracy" that used to characterize ministry-to-post communications. He further noted that with e-mail, time differences are effectively overcome. "Between Dublin and Washington, you have a five-hour window to pick up the phone and contact [the Foreign Ministry]. In some places like the Philippines, there is no window at all.... With e-mail, you can send a message and have a reply waiting for you in the morning." It can be said with certainty that more embassies in Washington are increasingly using the new technologies of e-mail, the Internet and other sophisticated software. In 1995, for example, only the Australian and Canadian embassies in Washington had Web sites. Today, approximately 106 of the 175 missions in Washington are on the Net, offering everything from information on their respective countryís history and culture to immigration policy and visa requirements. For embassies, the advantages of the Internet and e-mail are readily apparent: swifter communication between foreign ministries and their posts, greater coordination during crisis management, quicker response times, automated consular and cultural services via the Internet, and new opportunities for embassies to promote their national interests through the electronic media. Jarmo Makela, press counselor at the Embassy of Finland, extols the virtues of the Internet and said that "Internet-based solutions" are now central to his job. "[With the Internet,] you have a reach that you could not dream of a couple years ago.... 15,000 visitors physically visit our embassy each year. On the Web, we have 25,000 visitors each month." The adaptation of information technology in diplomacy goes beyond Internet and e-mail. Diplomats such as Robert Bratke, who currently serves as executive secretary of the National Security Council (NSC), believe that information technology is increasingly becoming a critical tool in high-level diplomacy and negotiations. He recalled that in February 2000 President Clinton was invited to attend a regional summit in Africa to find a solution to the crisis in Rwanda and Burundi. Because of logistical reasons, the president could not attend in person. So instead, "[the NSC] set up the first secure video conference at the presidential level ... and we enabled the president to spend an hour with [the heads of state] discussing the conflict," Bratke said. Along with the many advantages provided by information technology, diplomats are quick to caution that there are problems and challenges. The most prevalent problem cited by diplomats was "information overload" or "chaos"óthe proliferation of vast, and often irrelevant, information that must be sorted for value. "We certainly get too much information," said Makela. "It is sometimes difficult to make distinctions between what is important and what isnít." One former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be named, found the problem of information overload particularly acute in the American foreign service. "Since the adoption of [e-mail] cables," he said," the volume of messages at [diplomatic] posts has increased ten-fold, and the size of each message many times over that.... Our system has not adapted to those increases very well because fundamentally you still a have a very small number of responsible officers who have to read through every piece of mail." The ensuing result, the former U.S. diplomat said, was that officers would often "simply miss whole messages ... or fail to read them in their context or fail to reply in a timely manner." Another even greater challenge is the risk to classified and sensitive information that Internet access poses to government and diplomatic computer systems. "With information technology, you are dancing along with a lot of risk," said Ross Stapleton-Gray, a former CIA analyst who now runs an Internet consultant business called Telediplomacy. He believes that the State Departmentís fear of "information vandalism" by hackers or other hostile agents has created a piece-meal, inconsistent approach to new information technologies. "State Department is handling information technology very poorly.... There is a certain amount of chaos. You have four different [computer] systems," he said. Stapleton-Gray recalled, somewhat humorously, how American missions overseas were told by Washington not to get on the Internet because of security fears. "We are still a long way from being information-age ready," he added. "If we were to rebuild the State Department from the ground up, we should make the Internet the basis for all communication." George Filippides, founder and chief executive officer of the Internet services company GlobalNet Technologies of McLean, Va., understands why diplomats and embassies are circumspect about using the Internet. "It is fundamentally an issue of trust," he said. "There is a lot of sensitive data at stake, and to most of us, the Internet is really only five years old." Beyond the conventional adaptations of information technology to the routine functions of an embassy, many experts are pondering the effect of the communications revolution on the nature and conduct of diplomacy. Two of Washingtonís most respected think tanks, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and the United States Institute for Peace (USIP), have programs devoted to this subject called Reinventing Diplomacy in the Information Age and Virtual Diplomacy, respectively. The CSIS and USIP programs study not only the possible applications of information technology in embassies, but perhaps more profoundly the effect of the information revolution on the traditional "state-to-state" model of diplomacy. That model is largely predicated on the belief that only governments have the authority to speak for the people. Today, many experts believe that communications systems such as the Internet have contributed to a dispersal of authority away from states and toward a diffuse set of "subnational" actors, such as corporations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), special interest groups, social movements and even private citizens ñ groups that are often loosely lumped into what is commonly known as "civil society." "There is no doubt the Internet is having a great, transformational impact on traditional state-to-state diplomacy," said Thomas Switzer, communications director for the American Foreign Service Association, the chief advocate for approximately 23,000 current and retired American foreign service officers. With the Internet, he said, many people with common interests can interact and share ideas, form advocacy groups and try to influence local or international politics. "[The Internet] is empowering civil society like never before." The observation is hard to dispute when one considers the astronomical rise in the number of international NGOs now, estimated between 20,000 and 25,000. The agendas of these diverse groups range from human rights monitoring and environmental activism to international trade advocacy. And unlike before, the availability of communications technology gr eatly enhances their ability to reach more people, irrespective of borders. For diplomats, the emerging power of NGOs is a mixed blessing. Often the organizations ally with governments and international bodies, such as the United Nations, to build support for specific foreign policy initiatives. At other times, they act as vocal and powerful critics capable of building considerable international opposition to a governmentís policies. Jonathan Clarke, a former British diplomat and currently president of the American Journalism Foundation agrees that today there is "a proliferation of [new] actors. You used to have a nice, cozy relationship [between states]. Now you have more figures on the stage.... This adds to the pace and complexity of diplomacy." Ambassador Ron Neumann, former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department, noted as an example that NGOs brought the U.N. comprehensive ban on land-mines treaty to the political forefront some years ago by using the many communications media available to them. Ultimately, the "U.S. did not join the treaty because we could not secure an exception for our troops in South Korea," Neumann said. He added that the United States paid a heavy price in public relations for not supporting the ban but maintains that Washingtonís objections had merit. Where the U.S. government failed, he said, was in working with the NGOs to build support for the American position. "We need to be engaging the NGOs at a much earlier point in our diplomacy." Another example of the power of NGOs that is unfolding is the popular protests to the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the cities of Seattle and Montreal, small and disparate groups from across the United States, Canada and Europe staged well-coordinated and often violent protests that all but halted the WTO negotiations. Currently, the government of Qatar, which will hold the next WTO round in November, is trying to reach a compromise with the protest leaders to avoid a repeat of the earlier violence. During a presentation by Francis Fukuyama at a conference on virtual diplomacy at the United States Institute for Peace almost three years ago, the renowned scholar offered the view that "it is very possible that there may be ëtoo muchí civil society. In fact, a lot of the discussion about the dysfunction of American democracy has been related to the fact that there are too many interest groups ... too able to respond at a momentís notice on a variety of issues." In short, Fukuyama worried that competing interests coupled with the greater impact special interest groups have on policy formulation can have a divisive effect on foreign policy. One former foreign service officer likened this to "Somalia Syndrome," in which the media and public outcry compelled the United States to send troops to stabilize Somalia in 1991, only to withdraw them when images of the first American casualties hit television networks. For many observers of international relations, the speed and pervasiveness with which images and information are beamed across continents means that governments and diplomats no longer have the control over information that they once did. In 1998, CSISís interviewed a number of foreign affairs specialists as part of a report on "Reinventing Diplomacy in the Information Age." One respondent said, "Whether one approves or disapproves of the fact that diplomacy is no longer in the hands of a small group of highly elite diplomats or not, that era is simply over." At a conference on "Information Technology and the Practice of Diplomacy" held on April 20 at the George Washington University, Richard Solomon, president of the United States Institute for Peace, commented on how "political power is being transformed as information technology is transferring information directly to the mass public." Solomon indicated that technology played a crucial role in the ouster last year of Philippine President Joseph Estrada on corruption charges. "They called it the ësecond cell-phone revolution,í" said Solomon, because of the role cellular phones and the Internet played in informing and mobilizing public opinion against Estrada. In Yugoslavia, Solomon indicated that IT also helped mobilize and coordinate the Oct. 5 demonstrations that provided the critical mass that forced President Slobodan Milosevic to step down. Clarke believes that the new challenges brought by the information revolution only reinforce the need for better diplomacy. He contends that "the role of embassies has changed because of the communications revolution" and that as a result embassies must engage "a more diffuse set of targets," from governments to various civic groups. Barry Fulton, who heads CSISís Reinventing Diplomacy in the Information Age project, believes that engagement is the most important thing. "Informed publics will build support for foreign policy initiatives," he told an audience at the April 20 conference on diplomacy and technology. But he added that with greater sources of information available, people are not as easily swayed by propaganda. He said that the new paradigm that diplomats should employ is "network diplomacy," not "megaphone diplomacy." "In the long run," said Makela of the Finnish Embassy, "the net effect [of the information revolution] is that it will make it imperative for diplomats to argue their case publicly, in a more convincing manner. Overall, that is for the good." Nickolas Theros is the assistant editor for The Washington Diplomat.