Book contents
6 - Bilateral summits
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 June 2009
Summary
Great princes should never see each other if they want to remain friends
Philippe de CommynesThe word ‘summit’ was first used to describe a gathering of world leaders in a speech by Winston Churchill in 1950. He probably meant only to designate a conference of the most powerful figures, at that time the US president, Soviet leader and British prime minister. But those studying international relations now use it to refer to a meeting of one or more heads of state and government; in this sense it clearly refers to an ancient practice. Even Commynes, writing towards the end of the fifteenth century, had seen too many occasions when princes fell out to recommend face-to-face encounters. Negotiations, he believed, were best left in the hands of experienced diplomats like himself. Yet, while they became rare events in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, summits never quite died out and they underwent a resurgence after 1914, fostered by the democratisation of diplomacy and the belief that issues of war and peace were too important to be left to professionals. The practice mushroomed after the Second World War as jet transport became possible and the world became more interdependent. In eight years as president, 1945–53, Harry Truman made only four overseas journeys and two of those were to neighbouring countries, Mexico and Canada, but in less than six years, 1969–74, Richard Nixon made forty-two visits abroad, often as part of wide tours that took in several capitals.
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- Twentieth-Century DiplomacyA Case Study of British Practice, 1963–1976, pp. 115 - 141Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008