Mazlan Othman, of Malaysia, was just appointed the UN's ambassador to aliens. Apart from showing unusual foresight on the part of the UN, it also speaks volumes about their attitudes towards potential alien invaders. Not their individual choice of Othman - the fact that they appointed a minister at all. If the UN harbored a realist view of intergalactic politics, they wouldn't bother with a minister to the aliens - it would just start building missiles with which to blow the aliens out of the sky. If the UN held a liberal view, it would welcome the aliens with a landing party of economic leaders, traders, and CEOs - all the better to start establishing trans-planetary trade. However, the astrophysicist Othman was appointed as an AMBASSADOR, and that implies a constructivist point of view.
Othman's extensive knowledge of the universe would (theoretically) prove to be something that would help her understand aliens a bit more than the lay-diplomat. That's where the constructivism takes hold - appointing an ambassador shows the UN is willing to listen, at least a little. If aliens were to come down to earth, we will not assume they are coming to harvest our brains and blow them away. No, instead, we will allow the aliens to speak to one of us. A diplomat's job, of course, is to be a liaison - and for that, a diplomat needs to listen. A diplomat needs to take in what the aliens say, put her information into the common pool, and let all the give-and-take coalesce into a cogent view of the relationship between the human and alien races. This is what constructivism is - not delivering a knee-jerk response based on a preplanned schema, but allowing for deviations in what is expected. Heck, by appointing an alien ambassador in the first place, the UN is deviating from what is expected. I'd say that we're on the right track.
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