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a result,
political leaders who have made it to the highest office,whether or not they
have previous experience in international affairs,know that their agenda will
be packed with bilateral and multilateral meetings with their counterparts.
Old hands and newcomers generally indulge in the practice of diplomacy at
the highest level,and in 2002 Jan-Peter Balkenende was no exception.During
his first meetings with the other‘political princes’on the European stage,the
new Dutch Prime Minister,although inexperienced in international affairs
and with little experience in the field of public administration,was beaming
with confidence and satisfaction.Balkenende’s first summit experiences were
part of his education in the realities of international relations,and at home the
newcomer’s political star rose as a result of his meetings with his European
peers.As long as politicians in highest office enjoy climbing to the summit,
and as long as they feel that there is sufficient political merit in doing so,it
can indeed be ruled out that this practice will make place for international
dialogue at lower levels of representation.Most leaders are bestowed with
egos that befit their office and show an almost instinctive reluctance to play
second fiddle.They are like medieval kings or members of the same exclusive
club,but it is important to bear in mind that their constitutional position may
vary considerably.Some Prime Ministers are little more than primus inter pares
in their cabinets,whereas others have fairly unlimited powers in their external
relations.
The word‘summit’did not have any political or diplomatic meaning
until Winston Churchill introduced it into international parlance.It was in
1950,four years after he employed the now immortal metaphor of the‘Iron
Curtain’to refer to the frontier between capitalism and communism in
Europe,that Britain’s former war hero started calling meetings between the
leaders of the great powers‘summit meetings’.During and after the war such
meetings of minds at the highest level were his preferred medium,even2
though few of them could be labelled as a diplomatic success.The archetype
of the British political leader continued to believe that‘it is not easy to see
how things could be worsened by a parley at the summit’.
1
Churchill’s public
advocacy of the summit was far from unprecedented.Some 30 years earlier
Lloyd George had stated firmly:‘If you want to settle a thing,you see your
opponent and talk it over with him.The last thing to do is write him a letter’.
2
The comments by these two political leaders are backed up by many others
and seem to be substantiated by a modus operandi among political leaders
that differs from the working methods of professional diplomats.The men
and women in the highest circles of international politics are people readers
rather than paper readers,and therefore place more faith in their own direct
personal impressions than in more traditional,written forms of diplomatic
communication.Against this background,it should come as no surprise that
after 1945 the summit quickly gained in popularity among political leaders in
the West and in the East and,as soon as circumstances permitted,also in the
Global South.
If politicians’www.51lunwen.orgmemoirs are a reliable guide,the majority of them believe
strongly in the advantages of personal contact with their f