General Diplomatic Studies And Practice - 2005 Words

General Diplomatic Studies Practice Term 2 Convenor: Jaana Karhilo Tutor: Jie Cherry Yu Learning Diary Pornnarong Uamkum: 615015 Word Count: 1,983 Learning Diary During term 2, I have developed skills which are essential for diplomatic career through workshops from the course on General Diplomatic Studies and Practice. What I have leant from each module; negotiation, mediation, policy analysis, crisis game, and speech training, can be elaborated as follows. Negotiation The negotiation skills workshop gave me both theoretical and pragmatic skills in negotiation. Beginning with informal multilateral negotiation in groups was a good way to start and break the ice among participants. The theoretical part on political†¦show more content†¦One important thing that I learnt from this skill is that sometimes you might not need to speak a lot or try to speak all the time, but the important thing is that you should try to see which actor shares the same opinion as you and whether that actor is strong enough to act on your behalf. This was really obvious in the activity of multilateral negotiations on negotiating intervention in a civil conflict where I played Iraq. I found that Iraq shared a lot in common with the Arab states, especially Iran on the Syrian issues. Balancing interests in the negotiation through the Arab countries helped Iraq protect its interests. Without speaking much, but allying very well with Iran and balancing the interests wit h the Arab states, it turned out that I gained the highest score in my group. However, there was one thing I found quite unrealistic about this activity. That was the rule on unanimous agreement. I do not think this can be applied in the real world situation. I think that it would be better if we do not need to stick on this. The unanimous rule made some players concede too much, and that did not reflect real international negotiations. The role play on Six-party talks was both fun and useful. This role play gave me a chance to practice more skills on negotiation and chairing. This activity really showed the difficulties of negotiations on issues that are really critical to national survival. The North Korean issue was very