the individual interests of states and to promote global norms and values characterizing the growing sense of a community of states and international unity.”24 A state which only engages in diplomatic relations for the sake of its own geopolitical desires and whose moral universe exists antithetical to the presiding set of norms in a multilateral world fails to recognise the second aim of diplomatic relations, and will quickly lose its legitimacy in the eyes of the GCS. The maintenance of real political power requires the proliferation of both authority and legitimacy. Power without legitimacy can be reasonably opposed, and as such, the cultivation and maintenance of legitimacy remains a most vital task for state actors, who can ill afford to exist as normative pariahs for very long.25
VVFrost is also accurate in his portrayal of a globally-reaching hierarchy of norms, even though, from a legal-theoretical perspective, laws do not exist within a hierarchy, for they are held together through different sources of law.26 De facto, the existence of a hierarchy is perpetuated through the recognition of peremptory norms or jus cogens under Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which stresses the existence of normative absolutes in international law.27
VVThe infiltrative power of global norms can further be illustrated through the existence of diplomatic ritual and protocol, which exists at a level below that of international law.28 Although political rituals differ from state to state, the ritualization of diplomacy as a practice itself cannot be understated. Contrary to the suppositions of Boyd-Judson, real and lived diplomacy at the level of state actors is often far removed from academic speculations over differing
8824. Wilfried Bolewski, “Diplomatic Processes & Cultural Variations: The Relevance of Culture in Diplomacy” in The Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, 2008, Winter/Spring, p. 152.
8825. Wilfried Bolewski, “Session 2: Law and ethics in rule-based diplomacy,” Lecture, Sciences Po Paris, Paris, September 9, 2013.
8826. Ibid.
8827. Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, Article 53, May 23, 1969, 1155 U.N.T.S 331, 8 International Legal Materials 679 (1969), URL: http://www.worldtradelaw.net/misc/viennaconvention.pdf.
8828. Wilfried Bolewski, “Session 3: Essential elements of diplomacy: communication, negotiation and representation (Art. 3 VCDR),” Lecture, Sciences Po Paris, Paris, September 16, 2013.
8830. Boyd-Judson, Strategic Moral Diplomacy: Understanding the Enemy’s Moral Universe, p. 2.
8831. Frost, Global Ethics: Anarchy, Freedom, and International Relations, p. 31.
8832. Roger P. Alford, and James Fallows Tierney, “Moral Reasoning in International Law,” in The role of ethics in International Law, ed. Donald Earl Childress III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 27.
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