Using foreign affairs for gaining extra political mileage in domestic politics is not a new norm in Pakistan but now it has become quite lethal and I have been regularly writing about this dangerous phenomenon because I firmly believe our diplomatic cadre make bridges and our politicians break bridges. This practice is now moving us to a very shaky ground, and getting political advances in the domestic arena at the cost of international gains may not be workable for a long time without some serious diplomatic disaster we can face.
Avoiding going into details about what piece of paper Prime Minister Imran Khan has in his pocket that he calls a threatening letter from a western country, I believe that it must be a letter as claimed by PM Imran Khan instead of a transcription of any diplomatic demarche sent by any country to any embassy of Pakistan. There is a great difference between the sending of a threatening letter to any State from another state and a regular diplomatic demarche which is usually a formal diplomatic representation (diplomatic correspondence) of the official position, views, or wishes on a subject from one government to another governmental or intergovernmental organization.
Diplomatic démarches are delivered to the appropriate official of a government or organization. Démarches generally seek to persuade, inform or gather information from a foreign government. Governments may also use a démarche to protest or object to actions by a foreign government. Ethically, sharing démarches with the public and using it at the diplomatic level is not only diplomatic indecency, but can send a signal to the entire world that correspondence with Pakistan can be dangerous.
It is not Prime Minister Imran Khan only, rather many from his cabinet are famous for accusing foreign countries and then withdrawing their statements and deleting their Twitter messages. There is a long list of this and out of this list, some examples can be cited as references to forthcoming academic books of “Art of Diplomacy” for students of international affairs and public diplomacy. The most dangerous part of taunting or criticizing a foreign country or its politicians or head of state is that it creates an unpleasant feeling among the population of the targeted country that erodes all work done in the field of “public diplomacy”.
Jan Melissen who compiled an excellent book The New Public Diplomacy—– Soft Power in International Relations indicates that official communication aimed at foreign publics is not a new phenomenon in international relations but a very important tool for image cultivation, propaganda, and activities beyond the formal diplomatic assignments.
Can I tell my colleagues abroad that we don’t care about consequences when we start discussing external issues with the same insensitive approach we use domestically and our diplomatic cadre suffers an immense amount of pressure and at times humiliation?
We remember that in ancient times, prestige-conscious princes and their representatives never completely ignored the potential and pitfalls of public opinion in foreign lands, and references to the nation and its image go as far back as the Bible, and international relations in ancient Greece and Rome, Byzantium and the Italian Renaissance we are familiar with.
The diplomatic cadre of Pakistan has to work hard in the sphere of diplomacy because Pakistan has been a target of negative propaganda from the western media that always portrays Pakistan as a country, which is loosely associated with military tensions and skirmishes along the border with India, assisting the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and Islamic extremism, and our enemies paint us as a country that is structurally handicapped in its diplomatic relations with other states. I believe that blaming foreign countries for meddling with our domestic issues without providing proof would support Pakistan’s enemies that we are really structurally handicapped in having cordial diplomatic relations with other states.
As a Pakistani student studying in Europe since 2013, I had been facing a situation where I had no face to contest and justify news and statements coming from my motherland but this situation has surely aggravated now, leaving almost no justifications for me to challenge those who try to make a mockery of my country. How can I contest when one of my federal ministers is saying that roads are not so important and Hungary, Albania, and Yugoslavia (former) had excellent road networks but no jobs for people?
What did I have to guard myself when another minister gave a statement about the French government and then had to delete her Twitter statement after receiving an extraordinary reaction from the French Embassy? How can I promote China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a game-changer in the region when my Federal Minister for Communications and Federal Minister for Postal Services kept mentioning that there was large-scale corruption involved in CPEC projects during PML(N) rule?
I still remember an exercise I did almost a decade ago when my class reviewed a speech of US President George Bush Senior as an assignment class of semiotics. I came to know out fr60 this exercise how a well-written discourse can be studied on multiple layers. I was amazed to figure out the implication of the forthcoming war for peace by George Bush Senior. There were no direct commentary/indications but between the lines and beyond the line analysis extracted how statesmen narrate certain agendas with prescribed diction, time, space, and pace.
The obvious question surfaced in the class who does that for statesmen? Our teacher told us then that world politicians and officeholders take advice from a team of experts, like linguists, semioticians, and communication experts. The process is simple. First, an agenda has been set by a different group of people who set that agenda by gathering information from yet another group of experts and when everything is designed, then comes the group of semioticians and cognitivists to engineer that given agenda in different modes of communication.
My studies of semiotic cognitive and communication *hilosophy teach me that statesmen are not ordinary people and their statements are not taken as statements of ordinary people. Expert diplomats take their words very seriously and students of communications abroad also try to find meanings about their country within the statements of our statesmen and I cannot give them a justification that our politicians give their statements for gaining deomrdtic political mileage by forgetting their consequences on international relations.
This cannot be a justification to face the diplomatic blunders our politicians make. The world does not understand our internal inability to hold an important office, and cannot grasp the magnitude of incompetence our so-called democratic governments possess. Can I say that our cabinets are composed of individuals who are unable to think beyond their businesses?
Can I tell my colleagues abroad that we don’t care about consequences when we start discussing external issues with the same insensitive approach we use domestically and our diplomatic cadre suffers an immense amount of pressure and at times humiliation?
