Guerrilla Diplomacy: Rethinking International Relations.

AuthorBeckman, Peter R.
PositionBook review

Guerrilla Diplomacy: Rethinking International Relations

Daryl Copeland, Guerrilla Diplomacy: Rethinking International Relations, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009; 311 pages, ISBN 978-58826-955-2 paperback, $26.50

Guerrilla Diplomacy promises much. Its basic premise is that the changed conditions of the world need to be met by fundamental changes in our understanding of diplomacy, in the work of the foreign ministry, and in our expectations of the diplomatic service. Daryl Copeland served in the Canadian diplomatic service for nearly thirty years, with postings in Thailand, Ethiopia, New Zealand, and Malaysia, and in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in Ottawa, working particularly on communications and policy planning. He thus brings a practitioner's eye to his topic and the passion of an individual who believes that there has to be--and that there is--a better way.

For Copeland, globalization is the central challenge facing the world, posing a particularly severe challenge in the underdeveloped world because the past imposition of neoliberal reforms such as "welfare reductions, program cuts, privatization, [and] marketization" now collide with wrenching structural adjustments, contributing to "the desperate circumstances that, in combination with population pressure and resource scarcity, give rise to currents of extremism" [p. 48].

In his view, the old but discouragingly common militarized responses (particularly by the United States) are not only wrong-headed but also dangerous. Rather, the goal should be one of development. And in the pursuit of that goal, "diplomacy, the foreign ministry, and the foreign service ... remain the most efficient tools with which to identify, and ultimately address the daunting range of economic, social and political needs worldwide, and in so doing, make the planet a more secure place."

Copeland underpins his argument for making development central to foreign policy by reaching back some forty years to dependency theory and its central tenet that the wealthy in the developed nations create a necessary under-development in the periphery. From this perspective, he argues that we should abandon the "first world" and "third world" concepts. (History fortuitously melted the second or communist world.) Rather, we should think in terms of four grouping that he collectively calls the ACTE worlds. (Copeland, incidentally, is fond of initials.)

The A (or advancing) world, for...

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