Diplomacy is the method by which nation-states, through authorized agents, maintain mutual relations, communicate with each other, and carry out political, economic, and legal transactions.

Although the roots of diplomacy reach back to the beginning of organized human society, the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 is generally believed to be the origin of diplomacy as an institution, since it marked the beginning of the European nation-state system (which initially consisted of twelve well-defined sovereign states) and codified the rules of conduct among sovereign and "equal" states. The Westphalian principles of sovereignty and the territorial state that were established in the seventeenth century are the foundation of today's multilateral diplomatic system.

The history of diplomacy is commonly divided between the "old diplomacy" that reached its zenith in the nineteenth century and the "new diplomacy" of the twentieth. The "old diplomacy" or "bilateral diplomacy" was dominated for almost three hundred years by the "French system of diplomacy," which established and developed several key features of contemporary diplomacy-resident ambassadors, secret negotiations, ceremonial duties and protocol, honesty, and professionalism. Old diplomacy predominantly limited to the conduct of relations on a state-to-state basis via resident missions (embassies), with the resident ambassador being the key actor. The "new diplomacy" that emerged in the nineteenth century and found its fullest expression in the twentieth is distinguished from the "old" by two themes: "First, the demand that diplomacy should be more open to public scrutiny and control, and second, the projected establishment of an international organization which would act both as a forum for the peaceful settlement of disputes and as a deterrent to the waging of aggressive war".

Bike ANNAYEVA,

 2nd year student of the Institute of International Relations

of the MFA of Turkmenistan.