The Diplomatic Line Between Personal and Official Relationships
Making friends with foreign interlocutors offers distinct advantages and poses unique challenges.
By CHARLES RAY | JULY 20, 2025
The French term démarche is not familiar to most Americans, but it quickly becomes a staple in every new career diplomat’s vocabulary. It means a representation, request or demand from one government to another and is usually delivered by the ambassador or another embassy official to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs — and occasionally even to the head of the host-government. Such meetings are formal and almost always take place in an office environment.
Even in the steeped in tradition and protocol world of diplomacy, however, there are exceptions. When I served as U.S. ambassador to Cambodia from 2003 to 2005, I delivered some of my démarches to Prime Minister Hun Sen in his house, which was around the corner from my residence. The relationship we built proved decisive in several critical tests of the ties between our two countries.
Diplomats serving abroad are the voice, eyes and ears of their government in the host-country, and they carry out their duties through a mixture of negotiation, persuasion and observation. They develop networks of trust with local officials, business leaders, fellow envoys from other countries and, in some cases, private citizens. Diplomatic effectiveness depends on their skills in navigating the nuances of cultures and customs, as well as on their ability to balance national interests with the subtle art of cultivating relationships — an intricate dance choreographed anew with every posting, which can have a significant impact on outcomes.
That dance offers distinct advantages and poses unique challenges. Personal relationships, grounded in genuine rapport, trust and sometimes even true friendship, can open doors that would otherwise remain closed — or, because of bureaucratic red tape, take far too long to open. A diplomat who establishes personal bonds with host-country officials might find that negotiations proceed more smoothly, sensitive information is shared with a greater degree of candor, and crises or differences are managed in an atmosphere of goodwill.
Informal conversations over coffee or on the golf course, invitations to family celebrations or mutual support during personal milestones can dissolve barriers, creating an environment where diplomacy transcends formal protocol. In moments of heightened tension, personal connections can provide a crucial back channel, allowing both sides to de-escalate or quietly clarify misunderstandings.
But a diplomat’s close personal ties are not without peril. Friendship can blur the line between advocacy and accommodation. A diplomat who grows too close to a foreign counterpart risks being influenced by local perspectives or unwittingly prioritizing personal loyalties over national interests. Such relationships may also be viewed with suspicion by both host- and home-governments, leading to doubts about objectivity or even allegations of impropriety.
On the other hand, a strictly professional relationship maintains clear boundaries and purpose. The diplomat’s actions remain visibly aligned with their official mandate, reducing the potential for conflicts of interest. Professional distance can safeguard impartiality and ensure that communications are consistently documented and transparent. This approach reassures both the sending and receiving states that interactions are conducted with integrity and formality.
Yet exclusively professional relationships may limit a diplomat’s effectiveness, inhibiting the trust and intimacy required for candid discussions or hindering creative problem-solving. In settings where personal ties are an integral part of doing business, an overly formal demeanor might be perceived as cold or distant, potentially closing off avenues for collaboration or compromise.
During my 30-year Foreign Service career, I built both personal and professional relationships, and in some cases, it was the personal ties that were crucial to success. In Cambodia, although I had effective formal professional relations with the foreign minister and other senior ministers, I developed a personal rapport with the prime minister after I accepted an invitation to play golf during a series of Sunday outings.
For the most part, whenever the embassy needed something from the Cambodian government, we utilized our professional relationships. But sometimes the slow-moving process of exchanging diplomatic notes impeded the solution to an urgent problem. At the time, Cambodia was an epicenter of child sex-trafficking, with foreigners — including Americans — taking advantage of the rampant poverty and corruption. Shortly after my arrival in the country, Congress passed a law that made it easier to prosecute Americans who committed violent crimes against children abroad.
By this time, I’d been playing golf with Hun Sen almost every week for nearly six months. We hadn’t talked business too much during those outings, instead teaching each other our native languages, using the only one we both spoke: Vietnamese. When a U.S. citizen was arrested for a brutal assault on a young boy, the embassy’s security officer and I feared that the perpetrator, who was the CEO of a small U.S. company, would buy his way out of punishment. Our preference was to extradite him to the United States to face justice, but that would be a long process through normal channels, further complicated by the lack of an extradition treaty with Cambodia, which would give the American time to escape.
We decided that I would talk to the prime minister when we next played golf. I told him that, thanks to the new U.S. law, prosecuting the American back home would be faster and more likely to result in a conviction. Hun Sen asked me to send him a note with a specific request, which I had hand-delivered to his office the next day. He scribbled instructions to his justice minister to grant my request. Quickly and quietly, we found a way to create the conditions for U.S. law-enforcement to arrest the accused, by having the Cambodians move him to Thailand, with which we did have an extradition treaty.
There was no blowback, because our approach was completely legal, even if unorthodox — and it saved us months. I had no illusions about Cambodia’s authoritarian system and Hun Sen’s role in it, but my rapport with him helped me protect and advance U.S. interests. It was built on the basis that both of us, as former military officers, were loyal to our respective countries and would put that loyalty ahead of our friendship. But we could still be honest and respect each other.
Diplomats can develop personal relationships with foreign interlocutors and use them to get the job done, while avoiding conflict of interest or an appearance of impropriety. I tried to do that as a consul in Thailand, deputy chief of mission in Sierra Leone, consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and ambassador to Cambodia and Zimbabwe.
The art of diplomacy lies in mastering the interplay between these two types of relationships. The most skillful diplomats calibrate their approach, recognizing when to lean on personal rapport and when to opt for professional detachment. Striking this balance is the essence of the delicate diplomatic dance, and perhaps the most enduring challenge.
Charles Ray is a former U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe and Cambodia, deputy chief of mission in Sierra Leone and consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He spent 30 years in the Foreign Service and now teaches at WIDA.
The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author and don’t necessarily represent the views of the U.S. government, the Diplomatic Diary or WIDA.