Critical thinking as the basis of a diplomat's information and analytical activities

Abstract

The article argues that critical thinking is not an auxiliary soft skill but a core meta-competence structuring the entire cycle of diplomatic information and analytical activity — from information search and source evaluation to reasoned judgment and policy recommendation. The purpose of the article is to define the role of critical thinking in contemporary diplomatic practice and to identify its key operational dimensions under conditions of digitalization, disinformation, foreign information manipulation, and growing cross-domain expertise requirements. The methodological framework combines systemic, institutional, and comparative approaches, as well as the analysis of international scholarly publications and policy documents. The study demonstrates that critical thinking enables source evaluation, distinction between facts, assumptions and judgments, handling uncertainty, analysis of alternatives, mitigation of cognitive biases, and coherent argumentation. It is argued that in modern diplomacy critical thinking performs the function of epistemic security and improves the quality of foreign-policy analysis. Epistemic security refers to the body of knowledge and practices that are concerned with increasing the reliability and security of information supply and distribution chains. The term “epistemic security” is often used as an umbrella term to encompass a wide range of often disparate efforts aimed at building healthy and secure information ecosystems. The article also proposes directions for improving diplomatic education and training.