Külügyi Szemle - A Teleki László Intézet Külpolitikai Tanulmányok Központja folyóirata - 2002 (1. évfolyam)
2002 / 1. szám - RÉSUMÉ - Nagy Péter: Virtual Diplomacy - Myth or Reality?
Résumé international system including the dangers and advantages of globalization. Huntington is wrong basically because the main fault lines will be in the first place not betweeen various civilizations but between civilization in the singular and civilizations. Existing civilizations are opposed to civilization in the singular, which many call "global civilization". The paper comes to the conclusion that the emergence of a global economy or, in a broader sense, globality caused by globalization does not mean "global civilization", rather, it means a kind of "global technostructure". All civilizations are based on a worldview as its central element, usually legitimized by a religion. However globality ("global civilization") has no worldview, while all the existing civilizations, including the American, have. Even if somebody calls it "global civilization", it is not the same as Western civilization, not even with its North American subsystem. Péter Nagy: Virtual Diplomacy - Myth or Reality? States have traditionally conducted their foreign policy in the context of a world marked by the practice of "classic" diplomacy. We have come to the end of the Newtonian model of international politics, today the international environment is more like quantum mechanics where physical things are created from free energy. There are: new issues and objectives - finance, trade, terrorism, drugs, environment, technological issues - that go beyond the traditional political-military concerns that once defined international relations; new international actors - NGOs, IGOs, corporations, regional, supranational - who interact directly and apart from foreign ministries and traditional channels of diplomatic communication; new national security challenges that are less physical and more ideational having to do with ideas, ideals, and identity. Traditional diplomatic tools, shaped to deal with physical interactions, are not well suited to dealing with these challenges. The tools made available by the information revolution should be used substantially modify diplomatic representation, negotiations, facilities, information gathering, analysis, reporting, and coordination. Globalization and the information-communication revolution are empowering decentralized networks that challenge state-centered hierarchies. Networks distribute influence and power across traditional boundaries of states, allowing powerful interest groups to form and re-form rapidly; they are flexible and agile, constantly able to reconfigure itself to address new challenges; they allow ideas to compete and confers a competitive advantage on those most able to share, trade, and receive the most relevant foreign policy information. Virtual (network) diplomacy for the information age emphasizes the shaping and sharing of ideas, values, norms, laws, and ethics through soft power by means of modern information and communication technology. National interests will still play a role, but should be defined more in societywide than state-centric terms and be fused with broader, even global, interests 222 Külügyi Szemle
