“Irrespective of” (line 12) could be replaced by regardless of without changing the meaning of the sentence.

TIPO “A” – TARDE PÁGINA 2/15

Text to answer questions 40 and 41.

Debating Diplomacy

1 In the first decade of the twenty-first century,
diplomacy came to be widely debated not only by
practitioners, policy experts, and academics but also in the
4 popular press and among the general public. One of the
most significant debates concerned whether diplomacy had
been or would be successful in preventing the Iraqi
7 government of Saddam Hussein from possessing (or
continuing to possess) weapons of mass destruction.
Between 2001 and 2003, it appeared that most of the
10 global public who were in a position to read a newspaper,
watch television, or surf the Internet had formed an
opinion, irrespective of whether they knew who was
13 involved or how the diplomacy in question was being
conducted. The US government of President George W.
Bush and US allies, including the United Kingdom and
16 Italy, were criticized by numerous other governments and
civil society organizations for deciding on their own that
multilateral diplomacy under the aegis of the United
19 Nations (UN) had failed and hence to take military action
against Iraq.

This debate about diplomacy raises a number of
22 questions that point to underlying, scholarly debates about
contemporary diplomacy that have significant implications
for how it will be practiced in the future. The first question
25 is a definitional issue with epistemological underpinnings:
What is to count as diplomacy, and what is not? That these
questions are fundamental to the study of diplomacy
28 shows that the longstanding consensus about “what we
mean by diplomacy” is now breaking down. The second,
overlapping debate is about the extent to which diplomacy
31 in the contemporary period has changed and is different
from, or similar to, diplomacy in the past. Key to
unpacking this debate is an understanding of what
34 constitutes continuity and change. The third debate
concerns the role of theory in diplomacy: What is the
relationship between theorizing and practicing diplomacy?
37 The most intellectually challenging of the three debates, it
perhaps has the most far-reaching implications for how we
understand and engage in diplomacy in the contemporary
40 environment.

That these questions engender debate rather than
consensus is a result of different sorts of knowledge and
43 understanding being apposite to different issues. Some
issues have emerged because of new empirical information
that challenges previously held understandings. Others
46 have arisen as a result of competing modes of analysis of
information. Yet others, such as the theory and practice
debate, arise when more radically different and
49 incompatible theoretical and epistemological approaches
50 come into contention.

PIGMAN, Geoffrey Allen. Debates about Contemporary and Future Diplomacy. In: KERR, Pauline; WISEMAN, Geoffrey. Diplomacy in a Globalizing World. Theories and Practices. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, p. 72–89. (adapted)