Bonus: Back-channel Diplomacy with Happymon Jacob and Rick Moss

Diplomatic Immunity

For our final summer bonus episode, Kelly McFarland spoke to Happymon Jacob and Rick Moss, authors of two new cases on back-channel diplomacy for ISD's case studies library. Happymon is an associate professor in the Centre for International Politics, Organisation & Disarmament in the School of International Studies at Nehru University in New Delhi. Rick is an associate professor in the Russian Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College's Center for Naval Warfare Studies.

They discuss their respective case studies on the 2004-2007 India-Pakistan back channel and U.S.-Soviet back channels during the Cold War; the role of personalities in back-channel diplomacy; secrecy in diplomatic negotiations; compartmentalization of issues; and some of the broader pros and cons of back channels.

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Visit our website: casestudies.isd.georgetown.edu

Episode recorded: August 3, 2021.

Featured books and articles:

Happymon Jacob, Case 356: The Kashmir Back Channel: India-Pakistan Negotiations on Kashmir from 2004 to 2007 (Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, August 2021)

Rick Moss, Case 353: Circumventing the Foreign Policy Bureaucracy: Henry Kissinger, Anatoly Dobrynin, and Back-Channel Diplomacy (Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, April 2021)

Rick Moss, Nixon's Back Channel to Moscow: Confidential Diplomacy and Détente (University Press of Kentucky, 2017)

Happymon Jacob, "India must directly engage with Taliban 2.0," The Hindu (paywalled), July 22, 2021

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