John W. Holmes and the Diplomacy of Lesser Powers

Do his guidelines still apply?It is necessary to bear in mind.. .that the diplomacy of lesser powers is a diplomacy not of pressure but of influence, with certain rules:You need negotiators of first-class personal stature.You can achieve more by quiet influence in the corridors than by loud language.It seldom pays to stick out your tongue to prove your virility.You should be committed to your friends but not to any blocs, Eastern, Western, or Neutral.There are advantages in being hard to get, i.e., not being a docile satellite of anyone, even of those who are neutralists.Respect for you will not last long unless in your proposals you indicate concern for world order, the delicate balance of power, [and] precedents rather than for your country's narrow interests or your own glorification.John W Holmes, 19631Such, in part, was John Holmes's advice to 30 West Indian diplomats attending a UN training course in Barbados nearly half a century ago. It was vintage Holmes, and its substance can come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his thought.Holmes saw political activity - in whatever form, and whether international or domestic - as the perpetual and inevitable manifestation of conflict. It expressed the pluralism of the human condition. Neither an aberration to be done away with nor a disease to be cured, it was a permanent reality - an unending process that called for careful and attentive management. In the international context, if wisely, honourably, and responsibly conducted, it was often capable of producing impressively constructive results, even if the highest attainable aspirations were frequently confined to damage control or damage avoidance (the prevention of nuclear war, for example).In this managerial enterprise, the most competent and helpful of the performers would be realists - not in the sense of being hard-nosed and routinely drawn to displays of military muscle (although there were times when muscularity was required, too),2 but in the sense of having a perceptive feel for what was feasible and what was not, along with a willingness to be guided by what was likely to work and what was not. Such skills and dispositions lend encouragement to moderation, to flexible habits of mind, to knowing when to give and when to take. They are the prerequisites, in short, of an instrumental pragmatism that in the Holmes view was essential even (and perhaps especially) to the serious conduct of a foreign policy of principle. Above all, they would lead the wisest of policymakers and diplomats to subordinate the facile indulgence of their passions to the restrained and disciplined exercise of their reason.These were intellectual orientations particularly well suited to the peaceful resolution of differences, and the moral case for them, along with the moderate version of the realism they embodied, was that they usually led to a lot less killing in the end. In Holmes's view, the middle and smaller powers should think particularly highly of them, for such states are poorly placed to do well (on their own, at least) if they rely primarily on the flexing of their muscles in pursuing their interests.In sum, and in the political philosopher's sense of the term, Holmes was a liberal. Diversities of interest and perspective were for him endemic, and conflicts were their consequence. Knowing, therefore, how to settle differences (or at least to live and cope with them), and how to promote peaceful processes and mechanisms for doing the job, were among the prerequisites of international civility. At the most fundamental level, they were indispensable to the avoidance of unnecessary death and destruction. For Canada, as Fen Osier Hampson reminds us in his analysis of Holmes's views on how Ottawa should negotiate with Uncle Sam, the coping function was particularly pertinent in the context of the all-important bilateral relationship with the United States. …

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