Protocol

With this issue, we begin an extended series of articles and interviews dealing with diplomatic protocol and the protocol professionals who work behind-the-scenes of diplomatic conferences and social events. Their job is to orchestrate physical arrangements, shape the ambience, review the participants and anticipate their encounters, strategize the desired outcomes and coordinate all the moving pieces of the actual event to ensure it unfolds smoothly, while simultaneously making it appear effortless.

Blending Style With Substance

That prescription, however, is merely the tip of the iceberg for the job description that protocol professionals are expected to fulfill.

Protocol is often defi ned as the etiquette of diplomacy, the expectations of good manners between nation-states and their offi cial representatives. In reality, protocol is both more complex and more vital to the work of diplomacy than the terms "etiquette" and "good manners" alone imply. Protocol is less stylized pomp and circumstance (though there is a measure of that) than it is (admittedly somewhat formalized) politeness, procedure and possibilities.

In its training material Protocol for the Modern Diplomat (2013), the United States Department of State and its Foreign Service Institute note that, "Protocol can sound both stuffy and mysterious at the same time. In fact, the rules and processes of diplomatic protocol are based in pragmatic thinking, common sense and good manners." Protocol, the trainers suggest, is important precisely because it "makes the job of representing our nation easier by facilitating our work as a mission team, making our relationships and interactions within the diplomatic and host country communities more predictable, and by providing a basic social framework and hierarchy to follow."

"Striped Pants Cookie Pushers"

Nevertheless, the etiquette of diplomacy is easily satirized and often sardonically disparaged. Diplomats have been derided as the "striped pants" set, allegedly more concerned with style than substance, conducting negotiations behind closed doors, preoccupied with not giving offense and encapsulated in a mannered refl exive world that is too often isolated from the ugly realities of political maneuvering and coercive, even deadly, facts on the ground.

The image comes from the European tradition of wearing morning coats with striped pants for formal occasions, a form of dress that has been largely, but not entirely, supplanted by business suits. But the stereotype of diplomats as drawn from traditional elites, royal families and wealthy business classes that remain aloof from ordinary people persists. So, too, the even more derisive image of diplomats as "cookie pushers," drawn pejoratively from the realities of diplomatic entertaining.

Not Just Cocktail Parties

Harvard Professor of Diplomacy and International Relations and former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns notes that as part of this "unfortunate caricature" of the Foreign Service, "[People] think that we go to cocktail parties and that we negotiate grand treaties. We do both of those things. But we also, in the modern Foreign Service, spend a lot of time trying to stop drugs from coming into the United States; trying to combat terrorist groups around the world; trying to deal with the global problems, environmental problems that are increasingly at the forefront of our diplomatic agenda."

President of the Middle East Institute and former Ambassador to Laos and to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain has termed diplomats "the newest gladiators in the international crime arena." Far from the stilted formalism of striped pants, one nameless State Department blogger notes that during his time in Baghdad, embassy dress ran to cargo pants and jeans. "Diplomatic couture," the blogger notes, "topped out around the L.L. Bean level."

None of this changing image of diplomatic life, however, negates the role of protocol. To the contrary, the expectations of protocol have continued to expand to take into account the realities of cross-cultural communication, the growing role of non-state actors in international relations, changing social norms for career diplomats and the ever-expanding range of diplomatic negotiations. And still the traditional expectations of protocol remain and play a critical role.

Highly respected British diplomat Lord Murray MacLehose, former Ambassador to Vietnam and Denmark and the longest serving Governor General and Commanderin- Chief in Hong Kong, recalls the importance of diplomats building contacts. Thinking back on his days as a young diplomat, MacLehose learned that, "On any matter within our province we were expected to give an immediate explanation of what it was all about, or say whom we knew who could tell us, or whom we knew who would not tell us but might tell him, the ambassador. Not to have the facts by 9:30 was bad; but not to have the contacts that would have them was a cardinal sin. The ambassador knew that without those contacts the embassy could not function." These days that process of building contacts is called "networking," and catalyzing that networking is still the business of protocol.

Despite the fact that diplomats' careful use of language is often criticized as falling prey to political correctness, language does matter and words do carry political meaning. For instance, the Foreign Service Institute Training Manual for fledgling diplomats is careful to point out that, "When referring to a U.S. post, 'the Embassy of the United States of America' is preferred over 'the American Embassy.' As references to America can be ambiguous, especially in the Western Hemisphere, avoid using terms such as 'American ambassador' or 'American citizen.' Similarly, to be clear and to avoid offending others by suggesting that the U.S. constitutes the [entirety of both American continents — North and South], use 'United States' in all references to this country." This bit of linguistic guidance is one small but singularly important, bit of diplomatic protocol.

From the 1815 Congress of Vienna to the 1961 Vienna Convention . . . and Beyond

Protocol is as old as the interactions between human communities and is born of the real and potential frictions between them. Among the most basic and consequential rules of protocol has been the guarantee of the personal safety of envoys, hence the aphorism, "Don't shoot the messenger." Until the principle that the person of an envoy between conflicting parties must be sacrosanct was accepted, it was impossible to settle quarrels or to negotiate the terms of a truce. International relations were literally impossible. Diplomacy cannot be effective without the guarantees that eventually became the international legal principles of diplomatic immunity.

In like manner, the matter of precedence of ambassadors remained a point of contention in international diplomacy for centuries. What should dictate the formal rankings of the diplomatic representatives: Victory or defeat? Their country's political, economic and military power? Size? Wealth? Geographic proximity? Sheer stubbornness? Monarchies before principalities before self-governing city states? Such a contest for primacy often resulted in renewed conflicts, ironically as part of the intended peacemaking process itself.

Diplomatic practice and customary international law began to work out these issues, but practice was inconsistent and remained contentious. It was only with the Congress of Vienna, following the Napoleonic Wars (1815), that these principles were clarified and detailed in a regulation. It specified the various classes of diplomatic missions and established the principle that precedence among heads of missions should be determined by date of arrival at post and the acceptance of diplomatic credentials by the Foreign Ministry and head of state. That principle remains operative today, and the title "Dean of the diplomatic corps" in any national capital is bestowed on the ambassador who has served longest in that country regardless of the size or power of the nation she or he represents.

These principles, at the very core of diplomatic protocol, were further codified in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which was signed in 1961 and entered into force in 1964. That Convention formalizes more than 200 years of diplomatic practice and provides a widely accepted framework for the establishment, maintenance and termination of diplomatic relations between sovereign states. Acceptance and compliance with these principles have become universal because of the basic principle of reciprocity in diplomatic relations and international law. Every state both sends and receives diplomats and for that reason every state accords protection to resident diplomats and missions in the expectation that the same protections will be accorded to their diplomats serving in foreign postings.

Rearranging the Diplomatic Furniture

Former Ambassador Molly Raiser, President Clinton's Chief of Protocol (1993 – 1997), recalls a protocol anecdote that U.S. Senator, United Nations Ambassador and Harvard Professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan enjoyed telling. The same Congress of Vienna, an early example of a multilateral peace conference designed to reestablish peace and stability in Europe following the Napoleonic Wars was, after long months of negotiation and diplomatic exchange, finally able to reach an agreement. But, when it came time for the representatives of the European countries to sign the agreement they had negotiated, they encountered a problem — who would enter the signing ceremony first? Solution: Twenty-five doors were cut into the room and all the ambassadors entered at the same time!

It's easy to see how seemingly small details can quickly become consequential. Something similar was encountered by U.S. Ambassador-at-Large Averill Harriman at the Paris Peace Negotiations in 1968. The negotiations' goal was to bring an end to the Vietnam War, but the animosities between the parties made that difficult, right down to the shape of the negotiating table itself.

North Vietnam and its revolutionary arm in South Vietnam, the National Liberation Front, refused to recognize the legitimacy of the South Vietnamese government. In turn, the South Vietnamese government adamantly refused to recognize the legitimacy of the National Liberation Front in the South.

North Vietnam insisted on a round table at which all parties would sit, implying equality between the parties. South Vietnam insisted on a rectangular table, which would clearly delineate the two sides to the conflict in Vietnam. The National Liberation Front, ostensibly an autonomous liberation movement in the South, would sit alongside its ally, North Vietnam; on the other side of the table would sit the South Vietnamese government representatives and its ally, the United States.

Neither arrangement, each with its none too subtle political implications, was satisfactory to the other parties and the talks remained deadlocked for weeks. Eventually the impasse was broken when agreement was reached to seat the governments of North and South Vietnam at a circular table with all other parties seated at individual square tables on the periphery. Here is protocol finding its place somewhere between spatial relations and furniture moving. The point, of course, is that a flexible approach to the problems of protocol fi nessed a critical diplomatic problem and got negotiations moving.

Curators of Diplomacy

Both stories demonstrate how protocol makes a difference, often enough a critical difference. Diplomacy does not operate effectively without protocol. As former Chief of Protocol, Ambassador Molly Raiser observed, "You have to tell people what is going on. It never occurs, I think, to the people who think and make policy that you have to provide a certain comfort and a certain sense of ease and security. Even with foreign ministers, you have to provide a certain sense of security so that they know what is going on."

The protocol professionals who serve behind the scenes to make the art and craft of diplomacy work are to the diplomatic world what art curators are to the museum world. These people are not merely responsible for the social arrangements and etiquette of diplomacy. They are a vital part of the diplomatic process responsible not only for organizing a wide variety of diplomatic encounters, ranging from formal conferences to discrete negotiations and from gala soirées to intimate working lunches, but for knowing the personalities involved and facilitating critical interactions. As protocol professionals, they are teachers, facilitators and enablers. And that role can make all the difference.

Over the next several editions of Diplomatic Connections, you will meet some of these people and learn about their work.