ABSTRACT
Diplomacy is ‘the application of intelligence and tact to the conduct of official relations between the governments of independent states’ (Otte 2001: 129). It aims to deal with the outside world through dialogue rather than use of force (Watson 1982: 2). Diplomacy hence constitutes ‘the infrastructure of world politics’, facilitating representation and governing relations among recognized polities through reason and dialogue (Sending et al. 2011: 530). The conduct of diplomacy is conventionally based on the logic of raison d’état, that is, ‘the elevation of the needs of the state above personal morality’ (Berridge 2001: 24). Raison d’état suggests that national interests supplant universal morality and thus ‘the well-being of the state justifie[s] whatever means [a]re employed to further it’ (Kissinger 1994: 58).
