Tom Fletcher, a former British diplomat, has explored the practice of diplomacy in the digital age in his book, Naked Diplomacy. He has traced the birth of diplomacy to that Stone Age encounter when one of our ancestors succeeded in persuading his neighbour to join hands in hunting or foraging for food, instead of repeatedly clubbing him on the head in order to grab his meagre meal. Not much has changed since then, or has it? India may have succeeded in persuading China to put aside the club it was brandishing threateningly in Doklam, to join in collaborating at Xiamen instead. Diplomacy ...