Although all wars may represent a failure of diplomacy, war is often the last resort of diplomacy. This paradox results from two competing ideas of what the supreme objective of diplomacy should be: peace at any cost, or peace by any means. This is the paradox of Libya. The international military intervention resulted from a mixture of an arguably successful strategy of coercive diplomacy at the UN, and a failure of third-party mediations.

Wikileaks is releasing hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic communications. But when the dust settles and the sensational tid-bits are forgotten, some of the longer-term impacts on diplomacy may in fact be positive. How so? The Wikileaks documents subvert the myth of diplomatic ineffectiveness, and illustrates that diplomats are in fact very busy pursuing interests, advocating policies, making contacts and managing networks

Diplomacy can help make the world a better place, but it has failed to adapt to the imperatives of world order management in the 21st century. It has been sidelined, under-resourced and marginalized by governments almost everywhere. If this is to change, grand strategy will have to be reconsidered.

It is almost ten years to the day since the collapse of the Seattle ministerial, but a new trade deal seems no more likely now that at any other point in the negotiations. This does not necessarily mean that a deal cannot be reached. In fact with sufficient compromise on the part of both developed and developing countries it is even possible, albeit perhaps unlikely, that a deal could be struck in 2010.

Celebrities, both in the world of entertainment and business entrepreneurship, are vibrant and embedded actors on the global stage and as such, need to be taken seriously as a component of International Relations. Rather than being viewed as an unanticipated intrusion that diminishes the discipline, taking celebrity diplomacy seriously reveals IRs rich capacity for inclusion and adaptation.