Silent Treatment in International Relations

• Applicant: Dr. Lunting Wu
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 570426572

If diplomacy is fundamentally about communication - how can silence communicate? The silent treatment is a ubiquitous phenomenon in interpersonal, social, and interstate relations. While the role of silence has received increasing attention in political science, its use and effects at the interstate level remain insufficiently explored. The lack of systematic scholarly inquiry into interstate silent treatment represents a critical gap in the discipline. States involved in conflict often withhold or cut off communication as a diplomatic tool to achieve specific goals - such as influencing outcomes, expressing dissatisfaction, exerting pressure in negotiations, or covertly punishing an adversary without risking excessive escalation. Examples include: Beijing’s 1.5-year suspension of military-to-military communications with the United States following then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan; Pyongyang’s repeated cutoff of inter-Korean hotlines; and China’s diplomatic freeze toward the British government under David Cameron after his meeting with the Dalai Lama, or Donald Trump's refusal to engage with Justin Trudeau amidst his tariff threats until the last minute. This project draws on approaches from critical security studies, foreign policy analysis, and political psychology to explore several key questions: 1. Why is the silent treatment used between states? What goals and meanings does it have across different socio-cultural contexts? 2. What are the implications of the silent treatment for international peace and security? 3. How is it applied - as an isolated act or in combination with measures such as economic sanctions or military provocations? What are the costs of severing communication channels? 4. To what extent is the silent treatment effective in achieving its intended goals? 5. What dynamics lead to the lifting of the silent treatment and the resumption of communication? 6. How is the silent treatment experienced by state representatives? Given the ambiguity of silence, this project employs qualitative research methods: (meta-)discourse analysis, expert interviews, phenomenological analysis, and comparative case studies. Building on my forthcoming article in International Affairs (June 2025), "Ghosting Diplomacy: China’s Silent Treatment amidst Great Power Competition", the project aims to produce four peer-reviewed journal articles and a monograph. In addition, I plan to write op-eds for online platforms to reach a broader audience. This research is relevant to the fields of security and diplomatic studies as well as to the practice of foreign policy, and it serves as the starting point for a larger research agenda on covert aggression in international relations, with the potential for future third-party funding.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position