Twitter diplomacy is a doubleedged sword
The fine art of statecraft has clearly been given short shrift by many world leaders
On an average day, US president Donald Trump would have fired off at least four tweets before the business of the day begins. Typically, they will rail against his own senators, followed by a savaging of fake news, a rant against political correctness and a pat on his own back. He has now found an ally in North Korea’s Kim Jong Un who has, throwing all diplomacy to the winds, called Mr Trump’s speech in South Korea the reckless remarks by an old lunatic. This has led to a characteristically insulting riposte from the leader of the free world. Mr Trump wondered why the dictator would call him old when he would never refer to the portly Mr Kim as short and fat.
The fine art of diplomacy with its subtle nuances has clearly been given short shrift by many world leaders today and not all of this is bad news. Prime minister Narendra Modi, for example, uses Twitter to effectively reach out to people with his messages on development and cleanliness among other things. In a way, Twitter has cut through official red tape and people can speak directly to their leaders. But the downside is that the medium of Twitter is such that it encourages instant responses which can be a double-edged weapon. In the case of Mr Trump, the world’s Twitter-in-chief, it has almost always been negative. Twitter cuts through the political verbosity that many leaders favour. This again often results in tasteless, harmful one liners which do more damage than good. Mr Trump’s tweet about how a dead soldier knew what he had signed up for when he joined the army is an example of how careless tweets can wound people deeply. In this instance, the soldier’s widow was deeply hurt.
However, nothing can take the place of in-depth diplomacy in which personal equations and what is often not said makes all the difference. A dumbed down diplomatic route may be attractive with its instant public responses, but the old fashioned method still wins the day in India, at least for now.