Social Distancing in Diplomacy: A challenge to the historic norm
On Monday (23/03/2020), President Armen Sarkissian of Armenia hosted the Chinese Ambassador to Armenia Tian Erlong. Not long after, this image of the meeting circulated on Twitter. Due to COVID-19 related social distancing, Sarkissian and Erlong sat incredibly far away from one another. This is strikingly different to normal diplomatic meetings. As I discussed in my first ever blog post , these usually involve two men sitting very close to one another, often with a flag trying to get involved. Sitting near each other is not a new diplomatic practice. Perhaps the most famous example of this occurred in 1945, at the Yalta Conference. Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Franklin Delano Roosevelt met there to discuss post-World War Two Europe. During the Conference, a picture was taken of the trio sat together. In truth, this isn’t even a modern behaviour. Coins from the eighth century have been discovered depicting two rulers sat next to one another, m