engleski

Language, power, law: groundwork for the theory of diplomatic ambiguity

This thesis explores the theory and practice of diplomatic ambiguity, predominantly in the form of ambiguous peace agreements/international instruments such as the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords, the Rambouillet Draft Agreement, and the UN Security Council Resolution 242. Claims about diplomatic ambiguity are usually justified through considerations that can be roughly separated into three groups: those that relate primarily to power, those that draw on the notion of legal interpretation, and those that draw on some, more or less substantiated, notion of language. The pertinent theorisation of diplomatic ambiguity should thus be situated within the field defined by the parameters of language, power, and law. This thesis seeks to explain how such parameters relate to each other and how the claims justified within certain parameters can be contested and rectified through the claims justified within the other parameters. It articulates a three-step argument in support of the view that the move from the parameter of power through the parameter of law to the parameter of language is a move through positions of increasing plausibility. Most importantly, the thesis emphasizes ambiguity’s potential for rationalizing of the process of negotiation, and argues that finding or constructing a ‘universe’ of shared beliefs by the parties of an ambiguous peace agreement provides the only assurance that diplomatic ambiguity will be eliminated in the most reasoned way. In its third and constructive part, the thesis both relies on an axiological theory of language to substantiate the claim that the use of language as such implies a tendency towards the formation of such a shared fund of beliefs and draws on a strong version of the principle of charity. Furthermore, it proposes several arguments against the incommensurability thesis and clarifies its position vis-à-vis Habermas’s discourse-ethics.

diplomatic ambiguity ; language ; power ; law ; discourse-ethics ; international politics

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