Face-to-Face Diplomacy Social Neuroscience and International Relations

Face-to-face diplomacy has long been the lynchpin of world politics, yet it is largely dismissed by scholars of International Relations as unimportant. Marcus Holmes argues that dismissing this type of diplomacy is in stark contrast to what leaders and policy makers deem as essential and that this view is rooted in a particular set of assumptions that see an individual's intentions as fundamentally inaccessible. Building on recent evidence from social neuroscience and psychology, Holmes argues that this assumption is problematic. Marcus Holmes studies some of the most important moments of diplomacy in the twentieth century, from 'Munich' to the end of the Cold War, and by showing how face-to-face interactions allowed leaders to either reassure each other of benign defensive intentions or pick up on offensive intentions, his book challenges the notion that intentions are fundamentally unknowable in international politics, a central idea in IR theory.

Acknowledgements; 1. The puzzle of face-to-face diplomacy; 2. Face value: the problem of intentions and social neuroscience; 3. Reassurance at the end of the Cold War: Gorbachev and Reagan face-to-face; 4. Unification and distribution after the wall falls: a flurry of face-to-face; 5. Overcoming distrust at Camp David; 6. 'Munich'; 7. Escaping uncertainty; Bibliography; Index.

Marcus Holmes is Assistant Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary, Virginia. He is co-editor of Digital Diplomacy: Theory and Practice (2015, with Corneliu Bjola) and has written articles for multiple journals including International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Theoretical Politics.