Gift basket diplomacy is an approach to multilateral negotiation aimed at pushing forward progress on a particular issue without the requirement of consensus.
The policy is most often seen in United Nations style diplomatic meetings where a particular group of countries wishes to take action or make a joint statement but is unable to do so without the consensus of all parties involved.
This process leads to a series of scaled-back drafts where countries adjust their language to ever weaker positions in order to negotiate consensus.
[3] National Security Council (NSC) Director for Nuclear Threat Reduction Shawn Gallagher is credited with conceiving and first proposing Gift basket diplomacy while NSC Senior Director for WMD Terrorism and Threat Reduction Laura Holgate and White House WMD Czar Gary Samore are credited with first implementing the policy.
In the preparatory Sherpa Meetings Germany, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Japan, Jordan, South Korea and the United Kingdom, also initiated Gift basket diplomacy processes and led smaller groups on particular subjects of interest to their countries.
A second criticism is that issuing Gift basket diplomacy statements breaks the consensus building process and ultimately devalues the efficacy of a truly united and complete set of countries.
Some argue that this process undermines the value of a consensus communiqué because more focus is given to separate Gift basket diplomacy statements given their often stronger language with fewer caveats.