Importance Of Bilateral Diplomacy

BILATERAL DIPLOMACY

The word ‘bilateral’ means involving two groups of people or two countries and the word (Oxford Compact Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2007). Bilateral diplomacy is one of the basic and oldest modes of diplomacy covers relations between two countries. This mode of diplomacy allows countries to create a network and relationship with other country of external relations. In the other word, bilateral diplomacy also can be defined as the diplomatic relationship in which involving two countries only that meet to discuss particular matter with the aim of cooperation, placement ambassador, entered into an agreement or merely a state visit. Besides, one of the significant functions of bilateral negotiation is to resolve and find

The British scholar-diplomat Harold Nicolson called such bilateral diplomacy the ‘French system of diplomacy’ because of the dominant influence of France on its evolution and the gradual replacement of Latin by French at it working language. Bilateral diplomacy is conducted mainly through formal written communications, meetings with embassy staff, visits by missions and ministers, side meetings held on the fringes of regional or multilateral conferences, telephone and email. For instance, bilateral diplomacy is also conducted via international forums and centers like the New York. New York act as a place where the headquarters of the United Nation (UN) is located, for both UN-related work as well as for bilateral contacts with countries where they do not have permanent representations. In bilateral diplomacy, missions are usually based abroad thus an ambassador or resident mission is well informed to the local environment such as language and culture of which he or she can easily integrate into that society and build

Regarding to the complexity, the conduct of bilateral diplomacy is much simpler than other mode of diplomacy. This is because the bilateral negotiation process consists of only two main parties involve in the cooperation. The bilateral diplomacy is also highly efficient in time matter because it is time-saving. The small numbers of negotiator involved in bilateral diplomacy caused the time taken to reach a decision or consensus is shorter because there no voting process needed to be carrying out. In addition, the bilateral diplomacy also cost-saving in term of expenditure in security, accommodation, facilities and transportation. Besides of its strength and effectiveness, bilateral diplomacy also has its weaknesses likes the domination of one single state over another. There will be higher possibilities that relations between those states involved in the bilateral negotiation will result to a domination of one single state over their negotiating partner. In other words, in a bilateral negotiation the more powerful and intelligent country most likely to naturally preside or dominate the negotiation based on their excellent performance in the negotiation. This will caused imbalance between the two sides relations and impacting the weaker states or the less power one become the loser in the negotiation. For