On interspecies diplomacy
By Tore Fougner
If we humans are currently at war with non-human animals (as convincingly argued by Dinesh Wadiwel) and if diplomacy is considered an alternative to war, then what are the prospects for diplomacy to replace war in human relations with other animals? In the light of both how inhumane and unethical the violence defining current human-animal relations is, and how this violence connects with the way we are progressively destroying the life-support system on planet Earth (e.g. animal agriculture and climate change; habitat destruction and biodiversity loss), this is the question that I address in a recent article published as part of a special issue on “animals in international relations” in the journal International Relations.
There are two requirements for this to make any sense at all. First, there is a need for a conception of diplomacy that delinks it from how it is conventionally understood with reference to inter-human relations in general, and inter-state relations in particular. In this connection, nothing beats James Der Derian’s understanding of diplomacy as the “mediation of estrangement”, which has had a significant influence on critical studies on diplomacy in general. Second, there is a need for a conception of animals as estranged others with whom diplomatic relations can be established. While this can be unproblematic when it comes to so-called wild animals, it also requires an acknowledgement of domesticated or humanized animals being estranged in the sense of being something more than whatever meaning we have imposed on them. No matter how constrained and manipulated by humans, all animals should be treated as sentient and agential subjects with their own way of being in the world.
We need a conception of diplomacy that delinks it from how it is conventionally understood with reference to inter-human relations in general, and inter-state relations in particular.
On this basis, one can start thinking about ways in which human-animal relations can be mediated and oriented towards non-violent coexistence, and my article engages with different ideas meant to stimulate our imagination in this respect. Moving from within the way the world is currently organized in anthro-political terms, it is possible to follow Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka in conceiving of wild animal communities as sovereign, and then consider how diplomatic relations between sovereign human and animal communities can somehow be institutionalized with humans acting as proxies for animals. Alternatively, inspiration can be drawn from the way many indigenous communities have a long tradition of seeing themselves as being parties to treaty relations with animal nations – this, it should be stressed, without any need for humans to somehow represent other animals. No, animals are here considered to be powerful and fully capable of representing themselves in relation to humans.
An alternative can be to look for individuals who can play the role as diplomats in human-animal relations. For instance, specific animals can potentially serve as ambassadors and mediate relations between humans and animals more generally. Companion animals have been considered to have this capacity, and the same is the case with animals residing in farm animal sanctuaries or zoos. Based on a conception of diplomacy being as much about knowing and relating to oneself as knowing and relating to others – or, expressed differently, about how knowledge about others can be transformative in relation to how one knows oneself and subsequently relates to others – ethologists can potentially also play a role as diplomats in human-animal relations through knowledge produced on the basis of observing animal behaviour under natural conditions. Finally, it is possible to consider if the idea of everyday diplomacy can be applied to human-animal relations – this, with respect to both human-animal companionships, and human relations with other animals encountered in everyday life.
All the above said, any attempt to replace war with diplomacy in human-animal relations will be difficult, and the simple reason to this is that human violence vis-à-vis animals is institutionally entrenched and socio-culturally normalized by commonly held speciesist or human-supremacist attitudes and worldviews. One possible implication of this is that even well-intended proposals for human-animal diplomacy can end up masquerading war. For instance, can it really make sense to conceive of an animal kept captive in a zoo as an “ambassador” for conspecifics in the wild? Irrespective of this, there is a clear need to move beyond the current war against animals for both ethical and ecological reasons, and one promising avenue towards that end is in my view to explore further how we can start engaging diplomatically with other animals.
Tore Fougner works as Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at Bilkent University, Ankara.
This article is original content published under a Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
