Table Of ContentThe Contemporary Embassy
DOI: 10.1057/9781137340832
Also by Kishan S. Rana
INSIDE DIPLOMACY (2000 & 2002)
MANAGING CORPORATE CULTURE: Leveraging Diversity to Give India a Global
Competitive Edge (co-author, 2000)
BILATERAL DIPLOMACY (2002)
THE 21ST CENTURY AMBASSADOR: Plenipotentiary to Chief Executive (2004)
ASIAN DIPLOMACY: The Foreign Ministries of China, India, Japan, Singapore and
Thailand (2007)
FOREIGN MINISTRIES: Managing Diplomatic Networks and Delivering Value (co-editor,
2007)
DIPLOMACY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: A Practitioner Guide (2011)
ECONOMIC DIPLOMACY: India’s Experience (co-editor, 2011)
INDIA’S NORTH-EAST STATES, THE BCIM FORUM AND REGIONAL INTEGRATION
(co-author, 2012)
DOI: 10.1057/9781137340832
The Contemporary
Embassy: Paths to
Diplomatic Excellence
Kishan S. Rana
Former Ambassador of India,
Professor Emeritus, DiploFoundation,
Malta and Geneva
DOI: 10.1057/9781137340832
© Kishan S. Rana 2013
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First published 2013 by
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www.palgrave.com/pivot
doi: 10.1057/9781137340832
Dedicated to
Jugraj Ji Kahai, Lt. Colonel (Retired)
On his 80th Birthday
and
To his wife Tripat Ji
Samdhi to Mimi & I
and parents of Deepika, our ‘other’ daughter
DOI: 10.1057/9781137340832
Contents
Preface viii
List of Abbreviations x
Introduction 1
1 The Context 11
Purpose of diplomacy 13
Bilateral embassy 21
Multilateral missions 22
Political appointments 24
Evolving ritual 28
Concluding thoughts 29
2 The New and the Old 32
What’s new? 33
Work categories 37
Technology 44
Beyond the capital 48
Concluding thoughts 49
3 The Domestic Arena 53
Diplomacy domestication 54
Impact on embassies 56
Public diplomacy 59
Practical experience 61
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Contents vii
Ethical dilemma, dissent, transformative events 64
Concluding thoughts 68
4 Operation: Managing amidst Complexity 71
Diversity and variety 72
Interagency cooperation 74
Intelligence officers 75
Managing home personnel 77
Local staff 79
Work methods 82
1961 Vienna convention stretched 87
Embassy management 89
Concluding thoughts 93
5 Representation Formats 98
Consulates 100
Honorary consuls 102
Changing needs and options 105
Reciprocity 110
Outsourcing 111
Concluding thoughts 113
6 The Future 117
Work-in-progress 118
MFA–embassy relations 119
Diplomatic network capacity 120
Gender issues 123
An ideal embassy 130
Open diplomatic infrastructure 133
Possible trends 135
The future 137
Selected Readings 142
Index 145
DOI: 10.1057/9781137340832
Preface
It is useful to examine, in a holistic fashion, how embas-
sies currently function. They engage in their classic tasks
of representation, protection and the rest, as laid out in
the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations
(VCDR), but in reality, the work they perform has changed
to meet the needs of our age of globalized diplomacy.
Indirectly, this book is a companion to my earlier book The
21st Century Ambassador: Plenipotentiary to Chief Executive
(2004). Written almost a decade later, it takes into account
further evolution in the workings of diplomatic missions.
One hardly needs to re-argue the story of rapid transfor-
mation in international affairs, given the pace of change
we witness in all fields of contemporary national and
international life.
In order to obtain material and ideas from as wide a
range of practitioners, scholars, and others as possible,
I utilized a short questionnaire, and also profited from
planned as well as opportunistic encounters with officials
of different foreign ministries and with individual dip-
lomats; this has kept me current, and provided valuable
inputs for this book. Happily, 38 generous individuals, from
21 countries, responded to my questionnaire; most were
also interviewed. In addition, I discussed the theme of this
book with several others. On 4 May 2013, a group of nine
serving foreign and Indian diplomats from eight countries,
plus two retired Indian Foreign Service colleagues and a
friend with business experience, joined an informal two-
hour discussion that I organized in New Delhi. I discussed
my tentative conclusions from this study with them; their
viii DOI: 10.1057/9781137340832
Preface ix
advice and reactions were very valuable. Without naming anyone, I con-
vey profound thanks to them all for their deep insights and guidance.
An equally valuable resource has been the participants in the distance
learning courses I teach at the small international nongovernmental
organization, DiploFoundation (www.diplomacy.edu). In the past
14 years, nearly 600 diplomats, international officials and others, drawn
from about 90 countries, have joined the four courses that I teach. They
have kept me current with practices and the concerns of different diplo-
matic systems, and helped in understanding contemporary trends in the
international affairs engagement of their countries. My sincere thanks to
them for all they have taught me.
I have worked on diplomacy-related themes as a practitioner–student
since 1998. My writing commenced with Inside Diplomacy (2000), which
was followed by other books and articles. Some readers may regard as
unsupported a few broad statements in this book, because I have not
provided chapter and verse citations as a good academic might have
done. For the most part, my observations are rooted in my personal
experience during my service career, besides discussions with repre-
sentatives of more than two dozen foreign ministries and research I con-
ducted since 1999 when I embarked on writing and distance teaching.
In particular, writing Asian Diplomacy (2007) involved conducting about
160 interviews, over a period of nearly eight years, because very little
published material on the foreign ministries of China, Japan, Singapore,
and Thailand was then available.
My deep thanks to several practitioners, scholars, and friends who
read different versions of these chapters, and provided unstinted advice,
as well as ideas for improvements. I add special thanks to Prof. Geoff
Berridge, guru and mentor. I remain responsible for this book’s errors
and shortcomings.
Last and most important, my gratitude to Mimi and the family, for
providing the anchor that all authors need during the lonely writing
task. Their love and expectations set the standards against which this
writer finds measure and challenge. Priya, as always, my writing advisor,
is sometimes miffed that I do not always take her sound counsel; fathers
tend to be like that with daughters. Ajit is a solid rock, immersed in a
travel industry venture and his photography; Deepika juggles her corpo-
rate and family roles in model fashion. The young adult grandchildren,
Suneira and Karnavir, wise beyond their age, are now good friends to us.
Labrador Enzo is our shared pal. This is our close-knit Rana tribe.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137340832
