For a year now, Donald Trump has brought back to the center of the international game a form of diplomacy that we thought was over a few years ago: that of personal emissaries, men of confidence, carrier pigeons therefore operating outside of any bureaucratic apparatus or administrative heaviness. At a time when multilateralism is in decline, it is interpersonal relationships and intimate negotiations, and no longer institutional mechanics, that characterize a rapidly changing world order.
Trump has never hidden his preference for the obligation of means rather than results: trying, tempting, forcing the hand of the protagonists, if necessary bypassing the States themselves. In one year, this method produced a parallel diplomacy, original, confusing for some, fearsomely effective for others. It is the religion of the ceasefire, of hard-fought agreements which must satisfy everyone without humiliating the opposing party.
A year of “personal” diplomacy
Upon his return to the White House, Donald Trump chose to methodically unravel the classic networks of the State Department to replace them with a more private relational architecture. Contrary to professional diplomacy, he favors men he trusts, those he knows, whom he tests, whom he uses as direct extensions of his political will. Men notable less for their experience in diplomacy than for deep devotion and total loyalty to the man. Where the previous administration still sought to preserve multilateral frameworks, Trump is precipitating their collapse and accelerating the transition to bilateral, targeted and persistent discussions. In any case, Trump hates being burdened with the archaism of multilateral democracy where everyone can give their voice.
“ The diplomacy of emissaries emerges as the dominant form of a global order refocused on individuals »
This diplomacy, more discreet than it seems, has propelled unexpected figures like Serge Witkoff, a network and businessman who has become a pillar of American mediation, to the forefront. At his side, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, whose influence under Trump has never really ceased, still orchestrates diplomatic sequences where personal proximity with certain leaders of the Middle Eastits privileged terrain, plays a determining role. It is no longer chancelleries that speak: they are individuals, endowed with relational capital, loyalty and a direct mandate from the American president.
This shift is all the more striking given that the traditional figures of diplomacy are gradually disappearing from the radar. Marco Rubio, once an influential Republican voice on foreign policy, is fading. We no longer hear him, the man more balanced from the start than Witkoff on the Russian-Ukrainian issue. The same goes for Russia. Sergei Lavrov, long the incarnation of Russian diplomacy for more than twenty years, is nothing more than the shadow of a system at the end of its rope.
New players in mediations in Gaza and Ukraine
It is in the most sensitive crises that the diplomacy of emissaries takes on its full scope. In Gaza, where the negotiations are constantly changing, it is Trump’s personal envoys who are maneuvering, in close collaboration with the Qatar and sometimes against the advice even of more traditional Arab diplomacies. The issue is no longer the lasting solution, but tactical progress, the temporary freeze, the diplomatic coup which repositions Washington as an essential player and which makes it possible to stabilize things on the ground.
In Ukrainethe diagram is even more revealing. American attempts to force a ceasefire are based more on interventions by non-institutional emissaries than on a state strategy. Witkoff, in particular, occupies a unique place in the Trumpian galaxy: discreet silhouette, direct influence, ability to enter into contact with actors that traditional diplomats still struggle to reach. Witkoff is the perfect good little soldier for Trump without whom he probably never would have amounted to much.
The classical diplomatic profession observes this movement with a mixture of frustration and resignation. What remains of major international negotiations when it is no longer diplomats who negotiate, but intermediaries outside any formal framework? Not much. And the worst thing is that this new informal framework could bear fruit. Anyone could then become a diplomat, without having ever studied diplomacy and succeed.
Global shift towards the diplomacy of emissaries
The phenomenon is therefore not limited to UNITED STATES. Washington sets the tone. Russia itself has aligned itself with this logic by entrusting an increasing part of its mediation to its own special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), who has gradually marginalized Sergei Lavrov. Here again, the personal relationship takes precedence over the diplomatic apparatus, loyalty over expertise, direct access to the head of state over institutional culture.
We are thus witnessing a radical recomposition of international practices. The diplomacy of emissaries is establishing itself as the dominant form of a global order refocused on individuals and no longer on organizations. It marks the assumed return of unilateralism, rapid decision-making, bilateral negotiation, and the extreme personalization of issues. It will last as long as it lasts, but it already marks the end of a cycle: that of a multilateralism which has not survived the acceleration of crises, the end of classic statesmen and the rise of person-states.
*Sébastien Boussois is a doctor in political science, media consultant, researcher in international relations associated with the CNAM Paris (Defense Security Team) and the Geostrategic Observatory of Geneva (Switzerland) and director of the European Geopolitical Institute (IGE).
