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Hello, and welcome to Humanities Matter, brought to you by Brill. I am Emily Tankin, and this week we will be looking at key issues in the field of humanities. I'm speaking today with Yudit Kuchnitski for Peace Navigating Disression, a diplomatic practice in Moments of Sociopolitical Repture, who is published in The Hague Journal of Diplomacy. Yudit, thank you so much for being with me today.
Thank you, Emily. Thanks for having me. First, I, you know, for our listeners, the picture is super interesting. But I was sort of interested in how you decided to write this piece.
Yeah. Well, I wrote the article navigating this question during my PhD in Cambridge, which means that it covers some of the aspects I addressed in my doctoral research. So in my PhD, very simply put, and I have to summarize this a bit, but I examined the change and continuity inside the Yemeni and, to a lesser extent, also the Egyptian and Tunisian diplomatic services during and after the 2011 uprising. And I admit that this is a pretty niche subject, so you're right in asking what sparked my interest in it, what sparked my curiosity and to answer that question, I have to go back a bit because the answer lies in the fact that I began following events in Yemen quite closely in 2012 when I did research on the politicization of the Yemeni Salafim Usmond at the time as a master student.
I then worked with the local newspaper, the Yemen Times in Sana'an in 2014, 2015, early 15, and generally followed Yemeni politics quite closely. So read whatever newspaper article in Yemen I came across at the time. And one of those articles, which I read in 2013, I think, triggered my curiosity and ultimately led to my PhD project and the article, navigating discretion. It was a very short article, but an interesting one, which reported that Afmat Saleh, so the son of the former Yemeni president, who had an influential military position in Yemen, was appointed ambassador to the UAE by the new president, and that two other family members of the former president, who also held important military positions, were appointed military attaché abroad.
So it seemed that the new president got rid of important members of the old regime by pointing them to the diplomatic service. And reading this, I began to ask myself, hmm, yeah, I wonder what that means for the diplomatic service as an institution. I mean, how loyal and credible is the son of the former president and his representation of the new government, which basically kicked him out. What role do personal emotions play in the diplomatic service at a very emotional time?
And I know how to diplomats who represented one and the same president all their life feel about the uprising and political change. And does the diplomatic service change because of changed appointments, for example, does it become some sort of platform for the recycling of political leads abroad? So yes, these and other questions motivated me to write my research proposal by the PhD, which as I just said, then led to the writing of this article. Yeah.
So because you're talking about moments of sociocolitical rupture, so could you point to maybe one or two moments of what you consider to be moments of rupture? You consider particularly significant. Yes, I think that one important rupture was definitely the 2011 uprising when you had a large number of people in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, among other places, pouring to the street, demonstrating against presidents who have been in power for up to 33 years in the case of Yemen, and whose protests were, at least to some extent, successful to the surprise of many, if not most commentators and participants at the time. And that subsequent regime change and the political transition that followed, that was a moment of rupture, which was also a moment of opportunity, a moment of emotion, and I think importantly, a moment of doubt.
And I'm saying this because many diplomats began to question existing internal practices that have maybe been unpopular, but that were not openly questioned before. So in a moment of doubt, diplomats reflected upon existing institutional structures and practices, and some instances called for change or successfully implemented change, although that was no simple process and was tied to a certain amount of internal conflict and power struggles. So definitely 2011, the 2011 uprisings as an important rupture, and a second important moment of rupture, specifically, I'm referring here to Yemen, was the outbreak of civil war, it became very quickly, very international. So at a time at which major political forces inside the country violently compete for power, the question of diplomatic representation is no longer a straightforward one, because yeah, when the civil war in Yemen broke out, you had two political actors or parties who both claimed to run legitimate Yemeni governments.
So if you are a Yemeni diplomat abroad at that time, and you say, I'm representing the Yemeni government, or just I'm representing Yemen, you might be asked what government and from when Yemen attacked you. So again, I would describe the outbreak of civil war as an important rupture that did have an impact on Yemeni diplomats and the Yemeni diplomatic service. Zooming out just a little bit, you just spoke about diplomats themselves or questioning practices within diplomatic institutions. But I think something that we've seen a lot of has been people from outside these international institutions questioning them, right?
So you have people questioning the use of diplomacy or questioning international law or these institutions that kind of have gone along for the past however many years, even while these reforms are made inside. Do you think that makes these institutions more or less relevant? That's a good question. I would say with regards to diplomatic institutions, there's a lot of talk or questions being raised asking to what extent state diplomacy nowadays is still relevant.
At the time of which we face so many problems that are inherently transnational, that involve actors that are often different from state governments, so transnational subnational actors. So the question, can state diplomats still solve, are they still relevant in solving contemporary global problems? I would say that the answer to that question is yes, state diplomacy is still relevant, but I would say that state diplomacy is changing. And that change has to do with an increasing, with increasing importance of non-state actors that are involved in international affairs.
Can you say anything more about this? Yes, and I think that change also has to do with the rising importance of technology, communications technology. So what's up, Facebook, social media, etc. That changes diplomatic practice and yes, changes changes how state diplomacy works inherently.
Now you also mentioned international institutions, international justice institutions, and increasing criticism, specifically coming from the US. Yes. I think that the, so I know expert on international institutions as such, and international justice. But I think that the withdrawal of the US from the US Human Rights Council and the fact that the US has never ratified the treaty that set up the ICC, and is becoming increasingly critical of the ICC, so the International Criminal Court, does not necessarily make these institutions irrelevant.
I would say actually that at a time of which nationalism is on the rise, and you hear more and more politicians in Europe and the US emphasizing state sovereignty, the existence of international institutions that uphold the idea of international justice gains and relevance, which is not to say that they gain directly in power, but in a way they become more relevant because they offer a counterbalance to these nationalist political trends, so they offer a counter narrative if you want, that I think should not be forgotten. So what matters here, I would say, is the idea that these institutions represent and the fact that these institutions do still exist, are still operational, and are supported by many different states, which means that the idea of international justice still carries some weight. So to sum up both in international institutions of international justice, but also institutions of state diplomacy, I would say, did not lose in relevance. Yeah, they've been ruptured, better known as realms.
Yes, yeah, exactly. OK, so that was Yudid Kuchnitski. Her piece is navigating discretion, a diplomatic practice in moments of socio-political rupture. It's published in the Hague Journal of Diplomacy.
Yudid, thank you again for taking time. Thank you so much, Emily, for this opportunity. Thank you.