by Charles Ray
Different people define diplomacy in slightly different ways, but a generally accepted definition from Britannica is ‘the established method of influencing the decisions and behavior of foreign governments and peoples through dialogue, negotiation, and other measures short of war or violence.’ Many people confuse diplomacy with foreign policy, but the terms are quite different. Foreign policy establishes the goals in relationships (bilateral or multilateral) and prescribes strategies and broad tactics to achieve those goals, and it is set by a country’s political leadership. Diplomacy, on the other hand, encompasses the methods used by assigned envoys to establish or strengthen the relationships necessary to carry out the determined policy.
Traditionally, diplomats, in carrying out their country’s foreign policy, have mostly communicated with their host country’s leaders or ruling elites. Currently, though, with the rise in prominence of non-governmental organizations and citizens’ groups, effective diplomacy has required that diplomats communicate with these audiences as well as with a host country’s leaders. This can present a problem, especially in authoritarian countries.
You Have to Talk to the Government
The sine qua non of diplomatic activity for the envoy in carrying out basic functions is interaction with the host government, regardless of whether the bilateral relationship is cordial or not. From presentation of credentials to the head of state to contact with police and security authorities, being able to provide services to your nationals present in the country or having access to areas outside the capital city or beyond the immediate environs of a consular post means having regular (even frequent) and effective contact with the officials of the host government.
In many authoritarian countries, the government requires prior notification and sometimes even must grant permission for foreign diplomats to travel outside the capital or the consular city. During my overseas tours, the People’s Republic of China (1983 – 1987), Vietnam (1988 – 2001), and Zimbabwe (2009 – 2012) required prior permission.

In other countries, no permission is required, but as a matter of courtesy diplomats notify the government when they travel about the country. When I served as ambassador to Cambodia (2002 – 2005), for example, the authoritarian government did not require permission, or even notification, but notifying the government of my plans often facilitated travel to remote or isolated areas.
Regardless of the country or its form of government, as a diplomat, you’re there at the sufferance of the government. Establishing effective working relationships, even with a less than friendly government, is essential if you’re to be able to do your job.
. . . but Don’t Forget the People
Some governments restrict their population’s contact with foreigners, especially diplomats. When I served in China, American diplomats were required to be escorted by Chinese government officials whenever we visited villages, factories, or other Chinese organizations. We had to notify the government when we wanted to travel outside our cities, and to wait for approval before starting travel. Once, when I was control officer for the US secretary of state’s visit to Dalian, China, and was ready to travel back to my consulate general in Shenyang a day early, I created a major stir at the Dalian train station when I showed up a day early and asked to have my ticket stamped so that I could board the train. I was held up in the station for over an hour until an official from the local ‘foreign affairs’ office, or wai ban, showed up and announced that I was approved to travel. I caused a further stir when I insisted that I be allowed to travel in the ‘hard seat’ cars where everyday Chinese rode, rather than the ‘soft seat’ cars that were reserved for officials and foreigners. The wai ban official, an officer that I’d come to know and had a good relationship with, approved it, and I had a great three-hour ride in a car with several midlevel People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officers who I’m pretty sure were moved from a ‘soft seat’ car to keep an eye on me. I didn’t mind, though, because it was an opportunity for an unsupervised conversation with some midlevel PLA types who had previously been off limits to us at the consulate.
Notwithstanding a government’s desire to manage foreigners’ communication with their population, we do it by our mere presence. This does not apply just to the consular officers who have to have contact with anyone who is authorized to apply for a visa to leave the country. Every diplomat in a country communicates nonverbally to the local population every time he or she is in public.

There are also rare instances even in tightly controlled countries for a foreign diplomat to interact verbally with the local population. As a young consular officer in Guangzhou with rudimentary Mandarin, I was assigned to accompany an American refugee official and Chinese officials from Beijing on visits to refugee camps that had been set up in southern China near the Vietnamese border for ethnic Chinese who had fled from Vietnam after 1975. As a foreigner, an African American, and someone who spoke a little Mandarin (and even less Cantonese, but more than the American or the officials from Beijing), I was often the center of attention in meetings with local officials, some of whom had to have interpreters to speak to the Beijing officials. Needless to say, a lot of unmonitored conversation took place during that trip.
Other countries have fewer formal controls on foreign diplomatic contact with their citizens but are still sensitive to it. As American ambassador to Zimbabwe, for example, I had to notify the government when I traveled outside Harare but needed no permission to talk to people.

Their method was to pressure locals not to talk to me when they didn’t want conversations to happen. My embassy staff and I developed several innovative work arounds to deal with this indirect effort at censorship. One was to hold occasional social media chat sessions. Because young people in Zimbabwe had access to the internet via South African satellites, and just about everyone over the age of 15 had a smart phone, they were all over Facebook and Twitter when I was there, and there was no way the government could prevent it. They did endeavor to monitor, and their propaganda machine would go into high gear after one of my ‘Facebook’ chat sessions, which only served to further amplify my message. Another technique my embassy used to good effect was our embassy blog, which had thousands of local readers. I wrote occasional articles, mostly on the importance of representative government, honesty, and hard work, which were frequently copied by opposition newspapers and published as op-eds by the American ambassador. The government didn’t like it, but because I never criticized the government, or even mentioned it for that matter, there was little they could do about it but complain. My public diplomacy section even came up with the idea of taking some of the more popular of my essays and publishing them in a small book for distribution to youth groups throughout the country. The book was published in English and the two main local languages, Shona and Ndebele, and was in such demand it went through three or four printings before my tour ended in 2012, and I’ve even received feedback about it on my Facebook and LinkedIn pages as recently as early 2024.

A Diplomatic Juggling Act
The challenge for diplomats, especially in authoritarian countries, is how to balance these dual communications. If more attention is given to communication with the government, the population can feel that its needs are ignored and goodwill toward the United States can suffer. If, on the other hand, communication with the government is given short shrift, impediments can be thrown in the way of a diplomat accomplishing the embassy’s primary mission.
The approach I used during my 30-year career was to be evenhanded. I acknowledged the government’s authority but insisted that I, as an accredited diplomat, had the right to communicate as long as I was not doing anything that was in direct violation of local law. It’s surprising, by the way, that even in those countries that try to manage contacts, it’s the contact not the message that they focus on. In Zimbabwe, for example, Facebook chats and articles printed in media over which I had no control or authority, were not considered contact under their law. Furthermore, since nothing said in either place was against the government in power, nor was it even mentioned, there was no legal basis for action.
In addition to actively managing what was said to the population and having a consistent message to the governing elite, I also made it a point to include all parties in my outreach, further undermining the government’s ability to complain. For example, in Zimbabwe, whenever I went to the countryside and visited a village or organization that was associated with the opposition, I made it a point to also visit one that was allied with the ruling party. This achieved a number of goals. It undermined hardliner claims that the US was anti-Zimbabwe, or was intent on overthrowing the government, and at the same time it emphasized the principle of people with opposing views looking for ways to cooperate to solve mutual problems.
Trying to be evenhanded will not always work, but it will work more effectively than choosing sides. At the end of the day, it will enable a diplomat to be a more effective envoy.

About the Author: During 30 years in the Foreign Service (1982-2012) Charles Ray served as the first US consul general to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; deputy chief of mission in Freetown, Sierra Leone; deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs; and ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Republic of Zimbabwe.