Diplomacy Needs Commander Not Spokesperson

Diplomacy Needs Commander Not Spokesperson

Abdenour Toumi

http://www.nournews.net/

Diplomacy is an art of comportment and words, without letting accusations swamp the country’s prestige. In the light of the Arab Winter that is whipping the region; Algeria’s regional foreign policy faces serious allegations, and to some extent a crisis. Recently, the representative of the Libyan National Council in a press conference accused Algeria explicitly for offering support to the el-Gadhafi clan. Algiers immediately denied the allegations and the Algerian foreign minister simply responded that: “Algerians respect people’s choice...” It is still an ambiguous reaction to these grave accusations; officially, Algiers prefers not to get in this ugliness; it had applied the same strategy during the diplomatic soap opera with Cairo in the fall of 2009 over a world cup soccer game qualification. Then, the Algerian diplomacy “entitled” its mission to the national media to become the spokesperson of the Algerian diplomacy.

However, these days, Algerian media is outraged by the silence of the Algerian diplomacy toward the Libyan accusations; globally, it is disappointed. The media’s nostalgia about Algeria’s very active diplomacy of the 1970s and the 1980s gave Algeria a solid role among the nation’s concert and a recognized seat. In the Arab world, the 77 groups of the U.N. were the voices of Tiers-Mondistes, a defending champion of the Palestinian, Namibian and Western Saharan causes. Anyhow, the country’s domestic political turmoil of 1990s cost the country its prestige, internationally and regionally. Whereas, the struggle against terrorism progressively placed the country back on the international stage -- dealing with local terrorist groups and the franchise of el-Qae’eda in the Maghreb and the Sahel Islamic (AQMI); the arrival of President Bouteflika in the head of the Algerian regime; therefore, the Diplomat in Chief, who had restored a certain image of Algeria.

A President who ran the Algerian diplomacy in its golden age  - yet, was timid during his two terms - despite his diplomatic skills in his first term to solve the Ethiopian-Eretherian boundaries trouble. Bouteflika is in his third term, his administration’s diplomacy remains in uncertainty, a cold relation with France, a push back for the construction of the Maghreb Arab Union, because of tensions with Rabat over the thorny issue of Western Sahara and a lack of interest for Mediterranean Union; only the shameful Arab League left to perform just to embarrass Cairo. Though, the message of the media is directed to the President who orients and commands the country’s foreign policy according to the Constitution, everyone knows that the foreign minister is only a high diplomat who is useful only in nice weather. Alas, these days the region’s weather is not getting any better; no one is afraid to see Algerian diplomacy drown. The signs of decline are tarnishing the Algerian diplomacy -- the country’s foreign policy is ambiguous, appearing to the West as a moderate one that assures stability in the region, even though Libyans fall into civil war because of the paranoia instilled by el-Gadhafi.

In fact, the role of the regional context could create an assumption of dualism that allows for foreign policy deciders to choose their objectives. Both observers and the observed have no role in this, because it is the President’s role to determine the country’s foreign policy objectives, in accordance to the regional context. It is considered as another observable factor in the President’s foreign policy decision making process. To the contrary, the context matters for the country’s new approach; it cannot be broken into variable events or into series of regional circumstantial, where the state of bipolarity has vanished, in order to prove the country’s foreign policy existence as an actor in a multi-polar system, it must protect its national interest and security, using the modern art and manner of diplomacy.

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