An excellent piece by Roger Mac Ginty on the usual tokenistic knee-jerk response to perceived public opinion of politicians everywhere, rather than more strategic, comprehensive, long-term and, consequently, effective approaches to matters under their remit, which in this case does little to address drivers of insecurity and the needs of those fleeing conflict.
Source: Where is the diplomacy?
Security, Conflict and International Development (SCID) 
THANK YOU. I have been wondering the same thing for the past few years.
I have attempted to assuage my discomfort by recalling diplomacy, by its nature, occurs in private and rarely surfaces in the world news cycles. But I have nevertheless been astounded at the lack of harder hitting, deeper-level analysis by the press, as well as by the inadequate, if not entirely hollow messaging of our politicians. In fact, I suspect these gaps in performance may very well be driving the very lack of diplomacy cited in the blog. After all, how, in the absence of meaningful information, can a populace assert upward pressure on its politicians by which to propel its leaders to exercise diplomatic channels to greater effect?
Why, for instance, is it not more widely known that the Syrian crisis alone has displaced 4 million people? Or even what the number of people displaced by the unrest in Libya, Somalia, Sudan, etc amounts to? (In truth, I admit an ignorance to such an aggregate number myself, but I am also not seeing it in the myriad news sources I explore.) While such suffering and desperation is certainly incalculable, there should nevertheless be an easily accessible quantification of the human tragedy unfolding before us, and from which we might construct heuristic understanding by which to profile, dissect and ultimately help resolve the situation. Ideally too, we would have access to projected numbers as well.
IMHO, 4 million is a number every voter in the EU should know off the top of their wee pointy little heads. Every voter. Without exception. And I suspect if our average voting base better understood the actual scale of the situation they would be far more inclined to place greater importance on state-level, localised involvement (and thus diplomacy) and place such involvement at the top of their political wish lists.
With crisis comes opportunity, but I fear the leadership in Westminster, Berlin, Paris and DC is more concerned with their next election cycle and the current firefighting at hand, than in digging deep and facing down the crisis. Then again, if they aren’t actually willing to dare to beat this thing, then they certainly aren’t willing to win on it either; and I for one would be deeply concerned to bear witness to an even sloppier, more ill-conceived reaction to the situation – and the potential escalation it might unleash.
LikeLiked by 1 person