Diplomats Without Diplomacy

Have you ever had the chance to watch the Chinese series Wolf Warriors? The one that inspired new theories and policies of Chinese diplomacy? If not, look it up. Not for the plot, but to understand how fiction can give birth to a bold, aggressive, coherent diplomatic doctrine. A combative, nationalist, assertive diplomacy, now dubbed Wolf Warrior Diplomacy. What this series embodies on screen, China strives to translate into its international relations: defending its interests tooth and nail, everywhere, without inhibition.

It is precisely this articulation between culture, strategy, and political vision that prompts me to question our own relationship with diplomacy. Too often, we believe that having embassies is enough to exist on the international stage. However, diplomacy is neither a social dance nor a mere well-paid assignment. It is the external expression of a strong internal policy, of a sovereign and structured national will. It is the invisible thread that connects a people's ambitions to the reality of global power dynamics. When a state fails to define a foreign policy faithful to its internal priorities, it merely sends representatives abroad who are disconnected from any real diplomatic project.

I state unequivocally that one can have diplomats in all the world's capitals without having diplomacy. It is not diplomacy, nor studies, that makes a diplomat, but an accreditation card granted by a chancellery. What makes diplomacy is neither protocol nor receptions. It is the project. It is the alignment between the image one wishes to project and the levers one activates to serve our interests. In a globalized and constantly reconfiguring world, not having diplomacy means choosing to endure the international order instead of participating in it. It means giving up existing as an actor in important negotiations.

In diplomatic missions meant to carry the voice of Haiti, friends, brothers, and dependents are appointed — not to serve the homeland, but to escape insecurity, flee the daily turmoil, or avoid the inquisitive gaze of the people. One finds comfort, travel, and protocol there; but rarely commitment. And that's where the illusion cracks: without a national project, without an overall strategy, without a political backbone, diplomacy is just an empty theater, a staging without a script or true actors.

Therefore, I have only this truth to tell: where the State is absent, diplomacy is silent. And a State with a colony of diplomats without diplomacy is merely an extra on the stage of a world that waits for no one.