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"Weisbrode, Kenneth"
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Old diplomacy revisited : a study in the modern history of diplomatic transformations
\"In historical terms, the so-called \"old diplomacy\" is not really that old - most of its concepts and methods date to the mid-19th century - while the practices of \"new diplomacy\" emerged only about a generation later. Moreover, \"Diplomacy 2.0\" and other variants of the post-Cold War era do not actually depart significantly from their twentieth-century predecessor: their forms, particularly in terms of technology, have changed, but their substance has not. In this succinct overview, historian Kenneth Weisbrode reminds us that to understand diplomatic transformations and their relevance to international affairs is to see diplomacy is an art - and that, like most arts, it is adapted and re-adapted with reference to earlier forms. Paradoxically, diplomatic practice is always changing, and always continuous\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Benjamin Franklin and the Poetics of the New Diplomacy
This essay interprets the literary means Benjamin Franklin used in establishing a novel style of diplomatic representation. This style dispensed with much, but not all, of the ritual of what was then regarded as the old, European diplomacy in which diplomatic actors performed the dual role of representation, being both representative and representational; that is, as both spokespeople for, and emblems of, their national cause. Through them one is able to detect the interweaving of existing diplomatic standards and protocols in a self-consciously New World vocation with its own demands for recognition from the imperial center.
Journal Article
European Integration and the Atlantic Community in the 1980s
This unique collection of essays lays the groundwork for the study of the intersection of European integration and transatlantic relations in the 1980s. With archives for this period only recently being opened, scholars are beginning to analyse and understand what some have called a peak moment in the European project and others have called the Second Cold War. How do these moments intersect and relate to one another? These essays, by prominent scholars from Europe and the United States, examine these and related questions while challenging the '1980s' itself as a useful demarcation for historical analysis.
eBook
On Ambivalence
Why is it so hard to make up our minds? Adam and Eve set the template: Do we or don't we eat the apple? They chose, half-heartedly, and nothing was ever the same again. With this book, Kenneth Weisbrode offers a crisp, literate, and provocative introduction to the age-old struggle with ambivalence. Ambivalence results from a basic desire to have it both ways. This is only natural--although insisting upon it against all reason often results not in \"both\" but in the disappointing \"neither.\" Ambivalence has insinuated itself into our culture as a kind of obligatory reflex, or default position, before practically every choice we make. It affects not only individuals; organizations, societies, and cultures can also be ambivalent. How often have we asked the scornful question, \"Are we the Hamlet of nations\"? How often have we demanded that our leaders appear decisive, judicious, and stalwart? And how eager have we been to censure them when they hesitate or waver?Weisbrode traces the concept of ambivalence, from the Garden of Eden to Freud and beyond. The Obama era, he says, may be America's own era of ambivalence: neither red nor blue but a multicolored kaleidoscope. Ambivalence, he argues, need not be destructive. We must learn to distinguish it from its symptoms--selfishness, ambiguity, and indecision--and accept that frustration, guilt, and paralysis felt by individuals need not lead automatically to a collective pathology. Drawing upon examples from philosophy, history, literature, and the social sciences, On Ambivalence is a pocket-sized portrait of a complex human condition. It should be read by anyone who has ever grappled with making the right choice.
eBook
ROOSEVELT'S MAN IN EUROPE
Lewis Einstein (1877–1967) was a little-known diplomat who became one of Theodore Roosevelt's closest advisers on European affairs. Roosevelt's attraction to Einstein derived not only from a keen writing style and considerable fluency in European history, literature and politics, but also from his instinct for anticipating the future of European rivalries and for the important role the United States could play there in preserving peace. The two men shared a perspective on the twentieth century that saw the United States as a central arbiter and enforcer of international order—a position the majority of Americans would accept and promote only after the Second World War. The relationship between Roosevelt and Einstein sheds light on the rising status of American diplomacy and diplomats and their self-image vis-à-vis Europe at the turn of the twentieth century.
Journal Article
Coda: Ten Questions for a Diplomat
Thomas Niles served as a United States foreign service officer from 1962 to 1998. His service included three terms as ambassador: to Canada, the European Community, and Greece. He reflects here on the continuities in the diplomatic profession, and, in particular, on embassies, during a period of notable historic change. While many of the protocols and responsibilities of embassies remained more or less the same as they had been for over a century, there were hints that those, too, were about to change in unforeseen ways, even calling into question the central role of embassies as representing and serving the nation-state, as the other articles in this issue discuss. Nevertheless, to this ambassador, at least, even dramatic changes in technology, politics, and culture rarely happen all at once; and the institutions and the people adapting to them may be more cautious or durable than they sometimes appear in retrospect.
Journal Article
The Master, the Maverick, and the Machine: Three Wartime Promoters of Peace
Disentangling the sources of Franklin D. Roosevelt's foreign policies has saddled historians with the impossible task of entering the president's subtle and opaque mind. Some have looked to the ideological influences--Wilsonian, Jeffersonian, liberal, navalist, and so forth--at play on the younger Roosevelt as a means of interpreting his decisions.
Journal Article
On Ambivalence
It began with Adam and Eve. Do we or don’t we eat the apple? “Why not?” says Eve. “Why?” wonders Adam. They chose, half-heartedly, and nothing was ever the same again.
This is a guide to thinking about the condition of ambivalence in the present moment. It is a condition worse than most because it can lead to catastrophe. It is so ubiquitous that many people accept it as normal, and blur the difference between “yes” and “no.” Making a choice gives one a fifty percent chance of being right. Ambivalence would seem to give one a one hundred percent
Book Chapter
Redirecting US Diplomacy
The international system of nation-states is evolving into something more complex and indeterminate. One important development has been the creation of regional communities. If these are to thrive in their own distinctive way, national governments, including the United States, will need to support creative policies that harmonize interests, not only within such communities but also among them. Policy planners, therefore, must think globally and act regionally. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
Journal Article