Diplomacy in Expansion. Promoting Knowledge Through International Relations

To say that today’s international security environment has become highly complex is a truism. No one doubts this anymore, which is not to say that the efforts to argue such a reality have lost their relevance. On the contrary, the need and importance of scientific investigation are becoming critical as the international security environment becomes increasingly dynamic, generating cascading challenges. The speed of change, on the one hand, and the often claimed low level of unpredictability regarding the direction of developments taking place in society today, in any domain and at national and global levels alike, on the other hand, call for the identification and analysis, including the reassessment and reinterpretation, of opportunities and threats that are increasingly seen as existential, profound and global. Global issues that impact the security environment, which is referred to as ‘international, ‘ are being addressed by a wide range of actors, sometimes brought together in public-private dialogue networks, who can offer solutions based on their expertise and understanding of the field.

This paper aims to question the role of international relations in promoting and supporting higher education as a distinct entity within an institutionalized effort to draw international academic knowledge into the mechanism of addressing pressing global issues impacting the international security environment. Thus, taking the internationalization of higher education as a starting point, some lines of action are proposed for the promotion of knowledge through a diplomatic approach aimed at enhancing its social aspect in direct relation with the transformations of the international system and the challenges to international security.