It comprises the skills of covert collection with expertise on certain subjects. Nevertheless, there are numerous operational overlaps.
Governments inform themselves through intelligence as well as diplomacy.
Diplomacy' is here taken to include both diplomatic representation overseas and the institution of the national Foreign Offices and Foreign Ministries to which diplomats report and which in large measure they staff. I do not try to propose a new theory of ambassadors, but I do offer conclusions about the nature of living in a globalized society of states where the economic logic of markets and the political logic of communities are at cross-purposes. It is a world in which we depend on institutions to help us maintain order and stability. Ambassadors are one of those institutions. At one level they are the concrete day by day reproduction of the society of states.