Diplomats’ Worst Nightmare--Science and Publicity : Summit: World leaders have seen the future in Rio and they don’t like it. Gone is the insulated world of quiet decision-making.

In 1919, the world’s leaders assembled at Versailles to put an end to World War I, and to end the scourge of war forever. Nine years later they had to come back and sign the Kellogg- Briand Pact, the treaty that outlawed war. Now the world’s leaders are assembling again, in Rio, and this time the plan is to outlaw pollution. We’ll see.

The maneuvering is intense in this normally laid-back resort. Nobody wants to make any sacrifices to help the environment, and nobody wants to be blamed for the consequences. The result, expressed in thousands of official documents consuming the paper production of whole provinces of Brazilian rain forest, is a mass of hypocritical platitudinizing unmatched in the history of the world.

“Do as we say, not as we do,” urge rich, pious countries of the First World. They all developed in a mad rush, fouling their rivers and felling their forests. But now they’ve got religion, and can’t lecture the Third World enough.

Third World leaders, while posing as victims of First World hypocrisy and greed, are themselves less than impressive. The kleptocratic leaders of nasty little oligarchies demand fat checks--just make them out to “Cash”--from the taxpayers of the First World. It’s impolite to say so, but much of that money could end up in the same Swiss bank accounts where those leaders have stashed so much of the rest of the “aid” they receive.

If gassy politicians contribute to global warming, watch out: The polar ice caps may melt during the Rio Summit. Meanwhile, Rio is hosting the world’s biggest zoo, and it’s driving everyone here crazy.

The cariocas , Rio’s 11 million easy-going citizens, are going crazy because of the traffic. More than 100 heads of state and prime ministers are coming to cash in on the greatest photo opportunity in history, and many of the city’s main streets will be closed for days as the motorcades whiz past.

The press is crazy, too. Seven thousand reporters and pundits have descended like locusts on Rio, jamming the cocktail lounges with capacity crowds. With little or no hard news expected, reporters are frenziedly searching for something, anything, to justify their fat expense accounts back at the home office.

The delegates are having the worst time. The Rio Conference, like Versailles and like Kellogg-Briand, is a diplomat’s nightmare. Complicated, controversial, public: These are the three ugliest words in the diplomatic vocabulary, and all apply, in spades, to Rio ’92.

Complicated. Most diplomats hate science. These are people, by and large, who majored in subjects like Romance languages or East Asian history. Economics and science are the last things most diplomats like to think about, and now they must wade through endless position papers on methane half-life, the role of catalysts in ozone depletion and the cost of limiting carbon-dioxide emissions.

Worse still is the controversy. The environment is not only a scientific question, it is an emotional one. Activists scream that the survival of the species is at stake; developing countries scream about their right to grow, and about the responsibilities of the rich to the poor; corporations scream about the costs of regulation.

Worst of all is the publicity. Most diplomats paled in horror when Woodrow Wilson unveiled his 14 Points. Open covenants openly arrived at? It was the most horrible concept diplomats could imagine. Seventy-five years have not made them any fonder of the idea, and they are blinking like irritable owls in the glare of the spotlights in Rio.

Publicity draws politicians like organic fertilizer draws flies, and politicians, think diplomats, make diplomacy impossible. Politicians strike poses for the folks back home--they make provocative statements to hog a few headlines. The leaders corner themselves--taking such public positions that they can’t back down for fear of looking weak. Diplomacy is the art of compromise, and the more the politicians climb out on their limbs, the harder it is for diplomats to find solutions everyone can live with.

The public is as bad as politicians--from the diplomatic point of view. Once the public gets involved, diplomacy goes to hell. French and British hatred of the Germans forced the treaty-makers at Versailles to put reparations and war guilt clauses in the treaty--and German resentment of these clauses helped bring Adolf Hitler to power.

In Rio, public opinion is represented by the Global Forum, a “parallel” conference of thousands of citizens’ groups from around the world. Twenty thousand or so activists are spending two weeks meeting together and trying to lobby the delegates at the U.N. conference down the road. Greenpeace denounces the U.N. Convention on Global Warming as fraud; a coalition of environmental groups goes on TV to attack the namby-pamby nature of the official resolutions.

It’s not an eco-Woodstock, say the Global Forum’s organizers, embroiled in messy negotiators with suppliers and trying to stay one step ahead of the bankruptcy bailiffs. Maybe not, but there are concerts every night, the Rainbow Warrior is anchored in the bay and Shirley MacLaine is squiring the Dalai Lama around. Many of these Global Forum folks think human survival is at stake here, and they intend to fight to make themselves heard.

There couldn’t be a worse scenario for diplomats, but they had better get used to it. The Rio Conference may not do much for the environment, but it sets the pattern for the diplomatic events of the 21st Century. Conferences like the Rio, with its media blitz and its parallel gathering of activists, will ultimately replace the confidential gatherings in the hushed atmosphere so dear to most diplomats.

The old, pre-Rio diplomacy was important, but simple. Should we have war or peace? Where will we draw the boundary between Sweden and Norway? Who has the right to fish in the coastal waters of Fiji? In the old days, there were only a handful of countries who counted: Six Great Powers in Europe, plus the United States and Japan. Diplomats of the Great Powers, and their technical advisers could fit around a single dining-room table in a five-star Swiss hotel.

The new diplomacy isn’t simple. There are more than 175 countries now, and on issues like trade, the environment and nuclear proliferation, many have to be consulted. Worse still, the new diplomacy deals with far more complicated issues. Global warming affects everybody--and so do the steps required to prevent it. Must diplomats tell China to burn less soft coal, and keep the United States and Brazil from cutting their virgin forests?

It isn’t just the Rio treaties, whatever these turn out to be. Trade talks like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade aren’t just about tariffs anymore. They involve rewriting hundreds of U.S. laws regarding everything from DDT limits to interstate banking. Decisions that have historically been made by national Parliaments and Congresses will, more and more, be made in international agreements. This means the politics and lobbying and media hoopla that now accompany the legislative process in democratic countries will increasingly surround the negotiations of their diplomats.

The future of diplomacy is on display in Rio and, clearly, it won’t be easy. Diplomacy may not be the world’s oldest profession, but it is about to become its hardest--and perhaps most important.