lly indulge in the practice of diplomacy atthe highest level,and in 2002 Jan-Peter Balkenende was no exception.Duringhis first meetings with the other‘political princes’on the European stage,thenew Dutch Prime Minister,although inexperienced in international affairs
and with little experience in the field of public administration,was beamingwith confidence and satisfaction.Balkenende’s first summit experiences werepart of his education in the realities of international relations,and at home thenewcomer’s political star rose as a result of his meetings with his Europeanpeers.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,itcan 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 playsecond fiddle.They are like medieval kings or members of the same exclusiveclub,but it is important to bear in mind that their
constitutional position mayvary considerably.Some Prime Ministers are little more than primus inter paresin their cabinets,whereas others have fairly unlimited powers in their externalrelations.
The word‘summit’did not have any political or diplomatic meaning
until Winston Churchill introduced it into international parlance.It was in1950,four years after he employed the now immortal metaphor of the‘IronCurtain’to refer to the frontier between capitalism and communism inEurope,that Britain’s former war hero started calling meetings between theleaders of the great powers‘summit meetings’.During and after the war suchmeetings of minds at the highest level were his preferred medium,even2though few of them could be labelled as a diplomatic success.The archetypeof the British political leader continued to believe that‘it is not easy to seehow things could be worsened by a parley at the summit’.
Churchill’s publicadvocacy 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 youropponent 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 readersrather than paper readers,and therefore place more faith in their own directpersonal impressions than in more traditional,written forms of diplomaticcommunication.Against this background,it should come as no surprise thatafter 1945 the summit quickly gained in popularity among political leaders inthe West and in the East and,as soon as circumstances permitted,also in theGlobal South.
If politicians’memoirs are a reliable guide,the majority of them believe
strongly in the advantages of personal contact with their foreign peers.
President Reagan only started to believe that he could come to an
understanding with the Soviet Union when he first met Gorbachev in Geneva
in 1985.Loneliness at the top,one can deduce from the writings of political
leaders,is understood and can be shared with people in the same position.In
such an atmosphere,good personal relations can have a distinctly beneficial
effect on the b
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