Notes from the Corridors of Power
Diplomacy once lived on paper. It was inked on parchment, typed on cables, carried in leather bags, and read behind heavy wooden doors. Messages took weeks or months to travel, and within those delays, there was both danger and safety. A year could usher in trade wars, and another year might pass before a reply arrived. The corridors of power were lined with whispers that could topple regimes or stitch alliances, but they moved slowly enough for reflection.
Today, diplomacy moves at the speed of a notification.
As I write this, my friend Tomi Oladipo, a respected journalist in Germany, prepares for his DW bulletin. Among his stories is yet another trade sanction imposed by Donald Trump, not through a note verbale or an official communique, but with a single tweet. In an instant, ministries of foreign affairs across the world, investors in stock markets, journalists on deadlines, and ordinary citizens are informed of a shift in U.S. foreign policy.
Imagine a diplomat in Lilongwe, smiling at the sunrise, coffee in hand, easing through traffic at Area 18 interchange. By the time the coffee cools, their day has been rewritten. A tweet from Washington has transformed a routine schedule into a diplomatic emergency. What used to require sealed envelopes and coded telegrams can now be triggered by 280 characters.
Smartphones have become the new frontlines of diplomacy. They can destabilize governments, but they can also forge connections faster than any convoy of black-suited officials.
Here in Malawi, we experienced this paradox vividly. When the U.S. president announced a travel ban via Twitter, our Ministry of Foreign Affairs correctly responded that it awaited official confirmation from the Embassy. That was not an error, protocol requires formality, and the note verbale remains the gold standard of diplomacy. Yet in Washington, the machinery of state had already moved. For the United States, a tweet from the Oval Office was enough. The tension between tradition and immediacy could not have been clearer.
This is the world we live in: a world where the ambassador’s pen now competes with the president’s smartphone.
The challenge, then, is not to discard tradition but to strike a balance. As Henry Kissinger once said, “Diplomacy is the art of restraining power”¹. In today’s digital era, diplomacy may also be the art of restraining impulse, the urge to react to every post, every viral moment, every 24-hour cycle of outrage. The discipline of waiting, verifying, and drafting carefully still matters, but the reality of instant communication cannot be ignored.
Hedley Bull, one of the great scholars of international relations, reminded us that “order in world politics is maintained by a balance between change and continuity”². That wisdom speaks directly to the moment. Diplomacy today must embrace the speed of digital communication while preserving the dignity of protocol. To cling only to the old ways is to risk irrelevance; to embrace only the new is to risk chaos.
The late Ali Mazrui often warned that Africa must not only consume global narratives but contribute to them, shaping diplomacy through its own cultural and intellectual heritage³. Adekeye Adebajo, reflecting on African diplomacy, argued that “Africa’s future relevance will depend on how it adapts to global shifts while preserving its voice”⁴.
And closer to home, the Malawian scholar Paul Tiyambe Zeleza has observed that Africa’s engagement with globalization “must not be passive, but must be about agency and contribution, not just reaction”⁵. His call is a reminder that even in the era of digital diplomacy, countries like Malawi must be more than spectators. We must shape the discourse, not only wait for it.
During my years in government, serving alongside a Cabinet Minister, I saw this reality up close. The corridors of power no longer end at mahogany tables or marble halls. They extend into hashtags, trending topics, and viral videos. A policy speech can be overshadowed by a tweet. A press conference can be undone by a meme. The art of diplomacy is not lost, but it has been reframed in a new theater, open, fast, and unforgiving.
The lesson is not that diplomacy is dying. On the contrary, it is more alive than ever. But it is being redefined. The diplomat who can balance protocol with immediacy, ink with pixels, tradition with innovation, will shape the world to come.
The corridors of diplomacy are still here, but they now stretch beyond buildings and into the digital ether. And those who learn to walk both corridors, physical and virtual, will carry the future of international relations in their hands.
References
1. Kissinger, H. (1994). Diplomacy. New York: Simon & Schuster.
2. Bull, H. (1977). The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. London: Macmillan.
3. Mazrui, A. (2004). Power and Diplomacy in Africa: The Legacy of the Twentieth Century. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers.
4. Adebajo, A. (2013). The Curse of Berlin: Africa After the Cold War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
5. Zeleza, P. T. (2014). Africa’s Resurgence and the New Globalization: Essays on Globalization, Identity, and Development. Dakar: CODESRIA.
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