Showing posts with label diplomacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diplomacy. Show all posts

July 13 – International Sister Cities Day

Posted on July 13, 2017


Did you know that more than 2,000 cities, states, and counties are partnered with cities / etc. in 136 countries around the world? They are called Sister Cities, and the nonprofit group Sister Cities International tries to create and strengthen this program.

This kind of citizen diplomacy program seeks to build global understanding, cooperation, and peace. It's one of the great ideas that came out of the horrific World Wars.

Waaay back in 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed people-to-people citizen diplomacy efforts. One of the things that came out of that was People to People, which started out as a nonprofit student ambassador program. Other student and youth exchanges and travel programs fit into this category as well.


In addition to youth and education programs, Sister Cities concentrates on art and cultural exchange, humanitarian assistance, and economic development. Here are just a few programs:

Tokyo, Japan, and Washington, D.C., are sister cities. In Washington the National Cherry Blossom Festival honors the city's ties to Japan and Tokyo.


Safe Drinking Water Initiative - cities whose sister cities are in Ethiopia and Nigeria (two of the African countries facing killer droughts) set a goal of distributing hundreds of thousands of water purification packets capable of purifying millions of liters of water.


Kids in Sister Schools exchange videos and webcasts and sometimes run join fund-raising campaigns or start leadership-building projects.


I wanted to find out if Los Angeles, California, a big city near me, had any sister cities. And....Gee-willikers! LA has 25 sister cities!!! Everywhere from Athens, Greece, to Auckland, New Zealand, from Jakarta, Indonesia, to Tehran, Iran, and from Vancouver, Canada, to Salvador, Brazil!


My own smaller city of Chino has none that I can find! But loads of smaller cities in California do have sister cities - including nearby Covina (Xalapa, Mexico), Ontario (two cities in Mexico, one in Canada, and one in New Zealand!), and Walnut (Calamba City, Philippines, and Shilin, Taiwan).

Does your town, or nearby towns, have one or more sister cities?



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April 10 – The Start of "Ping-Pong Diplomacy"

Posted on April 10, 2016

One thing I love about sports is that they often encourage diplomatic – peaceful! – relations between countries, instead of suspicion, tension, and war. On this date in 1971, the world got a little safer and more peaceful as a table tennis team from the United States responded to China's invitation and traveled there.

After World War II, China had a civil war in which communists under Mao Zedong gained control of the government. The defeated government, led by Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan and claimed to be the “real” Chinese government.

American President Truman intended to recognize Zedong's communist government, since U.S. tradition (after Woodrow Wilson, at least) was to recognize governments once they had demonstrated control of their countries. But political and military advisors urged him to wait just a few months so that Chiang's supporters couldn't blame the U.S. for his inevitable defeat.

However, the Korean War broke out. For two whole decades, the U.S. didn't recognize China – and that meant no diplomatic relations, no trade agreements, no nothin'!

That began to change in the summer of 1971. The U.S. ping pong team was in Japan for the World Table Tennis Championship. The Chinese government extended an invitation for the team to visit China. And when the team said “yes,” they became the first Americans to step foot in China's capital city of Beijing in 22 years!


Did the ping-pong visit actually help make better relations between the U.S. and China? You bet! By the next year, U.S. President Richard Nixon visited China, and the Cold War shifted and resettled. Nixon called his visit to China “the week that changed the world,” and “Nixon going to China” has become a metaphor people sometimes use when talking about unexpected actions taken by politicians.

Since the U.S. ping pong team's visit to China also lasted a week, I think we could say that THEIR visit was “the week that changed the world”!

Did you know...?

The guy who just hit the ball
is Zhuang Zedong.
One reason that the U.S. team was invited to China was probably the encounter between American table-tennis player Glenn Cowan and Chinese star player Zhuang Zedong.

One afternoon in Japan, at the Table Tennis Championship, Glenn Cowan had been practicing with a Chinese player, but the training area was about to be closed for the day. Cowan looked around for his team bus, but it was nowhere to be found – it turned out that it had left without him! The Chinese player invited Cowan to get onto the Chinese team bus.

Zhuang Zedong and Glenn Cowan,
with the silk-screened art piece.
Cowan talked to all the players, using an interpreter. And suddenly Zhuang Zedong came up to Cowan and presented him with a silk-screened art piece of mountains. 

Cowan told him that he wished he had something to give back, but he didn't have much in his bag – other than a comb. 

Cowan apologized for not having anything he could give back.

When the athletes left the bus, there were some photographers who took a picture of the American and Chinese athlete unexpectedly together.

Cowan was able to buy a T-shirt that he later gave Zhuang. It was decorated with a red-white-and-blue peace-sign flag along with the words “Let It Be.” (It's said that Cowan was a bit of a hippie.)

Later, interviewers from both countries asked the American and Chinese athletes about their encounter. Asked why he had given a gift to the American player, Zhuang explained that China's Chairman Mao had said that China should place its hope on American people. So when he saw Cowan on the bus, Zhuang rummaged in his bag, looking for something good enough to give as a gift.

And when a journalist asked Cowan if he would like to visit China, Cowan immediately said “Of course!”

And he probably said it really enthusiastically. In the photo below, Cowan is the guy who is waving exuberantly as he arrived in China.


I like diplomacy, including the diplomacy that happens when sports are international (like the Olympics), and ESPECIALLY when sports ends up creating moments like this gift exchange between people who were raised to think of “the other” as an enemy!


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September 3 – Anniversary of the Signing of theTreaty of Paris

Posted on September 3, 2014

I wrote a ridiculous title for today's post. When you read that title, you should wonder, “WHICH Treaty of Paris?”

According to Wikipedia, there are a few “Treaty of Paris” signings. One might even say QUITE a few. Like, many:

  • 1229
  • 1259
  • 1303
  • 1320
  • 1323
    This painting of the Treaty of Paris,
    by Benjamin West, was never completed
    because the British diplomats refused to pose.

    Can we say "bad loser"?
  • 1355
  • 1515
  • 1623
  • 1626
  • 1657
  • 1718
  • 1761
  • 1763
  • 1783
  • 1784
  • 1796
  • 1802
  • 1806
  • 1810
  • 1814
  • 1815
  • 1856
  • 1857
  • 1898
  • 1900
  • 1918
  • 1919
  • 1920
  • 1947
  • 1951
  • 1952
  • 1973
  • 1995

The one that happened on this date in 1783 was between Great Britain and the United States of America; it formally ended the American Revolutionary War.

Why were so many treaties signed in Paris?

We often think of the Eiffel Tower when
we think of Paris, but it wasn't built
until 1889.
There are several reasons. One of course is that France is somewhat centrally located to much of Europe, and Paris has for centuries had high-level offerings in lodging and food and culture.

Partly it's because France dominated Europe through its military, for a while, and since this country and language were associated with power, many Europeans and Americans learned to speak French and sought to learn about all things French. From fashion to art, cooking to dance, French language dominated many fields, and Paris was considered to some extent to be one of the world's gems.

Partly it's merely “tradition.” Once Paris was known as the place to be for diplomacy, there was a snowball effect that caused even more diplomats to travel to Paris for peace talks.

Because Paris became a place where negotiations and peace talks occurred, French became the lingua franca of diplomats. (Lingua franca means a language that is used as a common language between people who speak different languages. Note that the phrase lingua franca itself is, in fact, French!)

Here are a few of the French words used even in English-speaking countries for diplomatic matters:

  • detente – improvement in relations
  • fait accompli – something that has already been done
  • attache – a junior officer or a specialist officer
  • communique – a brief public statement summarizing diplomatic meetings

And here are some English words that came from French words:

  • accord – an international agreement
  • consulate – an office in one nation set up for diplomats and visitors from another nation
  • diplomat – an agent who represents a nation and has the power to negotiated trade and peace treaties
  • embassy – the home of an ambassador
  • passport – papers of identification used to travel between different nations
  • protocol – the ceremonial side of diplomacy, and the customs thereof
  • treaty – a formal agreement between nations
  • visa – an endorsement for a person to travel to another nation, often for work or study purposes

Because French had become the language of diplomacy, even more people came to Paris when it was time to create a treaty. Because even more people came to Paris for negotiations, French became even more important to diplomats. It's one of those feedback loops!

Is French still the lingua franca of diplomacy?

Many argue that English has taken over in being the “language of diplomacy,” and it certainly has become the most-spoken second language in the world. In other words, if Indian, Italian, Chinese, and Peruvian software engineers meet together, they probably chat with one another in English. English has become the language of science (it used to be German and, before that, French), and English has become the language of technology and business as well. Because so many people worldwide speak English for these reasons, diplomats tend to be even more familiar with English than with French, so many more meetings are being held in English.


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