Diplomatic illness is the practice amongst diplomats and government ministers of feigning illness, or another debilitating condition, to avoid engaging in diplomatic or social engagements.^[1] The excuse of ill-health is designed to avoid formally offending the host or other parties.^[2][3] The term also refers to the period during which the "diplomatic illness" is claimed to persist.

Examples

• General John J. Pershing, on his return in 1926 from unsuccessful negotiations between Peru, Bolivia and Chile and suffering from ill-health, was stated by his critics to have a "diplomatic illness".^[4]
• During the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia in 1948, foreign minister Jan Masaryk was thought to have a "diplomatic illness", as he stayed out of touch with many of his former foreign contacts.^[5]
• A temporary absence of Bosnian Serb leader Ratko Mladic, at a time in 1995 when Bosnian Serb forces were withdrawing near Sarajevo under an agreement with NATO, was ascribed by some sources to "diplomatic illness".^[6]
• Boris Yeltsin, the then leader of the Russian Federation, was sometimes claimed to be invoking "diplomatic illness". One occasion was in 1994 on the outbreak of the First Chechen War;^[7] another coincided with a 1998 summit meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States,^[8] and another was in 1999 when he was due to sign a treaty with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko.^[9] The allegations were dubious, as Yeltsin suffered from repeated genuine bouts of ill-health.^[9]
• Polish leader Lech Kaczyński cited illness to avoid a Weimar Triangle meeting in the wake of a diplomatic dispute with Germany in 2006.^[10]

Related terms

• William Gladstone referred to a "diplomatic cold" as an alternative to declining a social engagement outright.^[7]
• Neville Chamberlain is reported to have contracted "diplomatic gout" in 1938.^[7]
• Polite fiction