Diplomats are the unsung heroes of international affairs
The names of kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers are etched automatically into the historical record. Few remember the loyal servants they dispatch to do the routine work of managing relations between nations. It is quite an achievement that the diplomat Sir Henry Wotton, an acquaintance of John Donne and Izaak Walton, is still celebrated five centuries later, if only for one, seemingly cynical, sentence.
Sir Henry’s famous observation that “an ambassador is an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country” was not meant to go public. It was exposed in 1611 by a German opponent of James I, in the hope that it would embarrass his diplomatic rival. Wotton’s career did falter for a while but eventually he resumed his work as an envoy, eventually becoming an MP, Provost of Eton and royal pensioner.
Wotton represented his county abroad at a time when an emissary would often have to act at his own initiative for months and sometimes years with no telegrams, phones, jet planes or internet available for instantaneous reference back to his masters of for direct intervention by them. None of that applies today. The question, as Sir Peter Westmacott the UK’s former ambassador to Ankara, Paris and Washington DC ponders in his memoir They Call It Diplomacy, is “to consider whether, in an age of instant communication, social media and mass data – of which more had been created in the two years between 2015 and 2017 than in the entire history of mankind – the world still needed professional diplomats”.
Some answers were offered this week. First in the BBC documentary Putin vs the West in which politicians vie with their officials recounting what went on “in the room” as relations with post-Soviet Russia slid into the catastrophes of Syria and Ukraine. The politicians talk about themselves, the diplomats notice how negotiations are developing.
Cathy Ashton who, features prominently in the documentary series, also published her book And Then What? Inside stories of 21st-century diplomacy this week. The UK’s exit from the European Union means that Ashton describes herself as “the last woman UK commissioner, as well as the first; the last British HRVP as well as the first”. Following the Lisbon Treaty, she was an unexpected choice to become the European Commission’s first High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security and Vice President. She was not a career-long foreign diplomat. She worked for local governmental and non-governmental organisations before Tony Blair made her a peer in 1999. She held appointments to domestic ministries including Education and Justice before becoming Leader of the Lords. She ended up a European Commissioner and High Representative after Labour men, including Peter Mandelson, David Miliband and Geoff Hoon, decided they would rather do something else. Being “first woman” meant something to her and she crafted a new template for what modern diplomacy can and cannot achieve. Rather than grandstanding loudly, Ashton built alliances and set up the new European Diplomatic Service with quiet efficiency and attention to detail.
The big issues on Ashton’s agenda during her five years as Europe’s top diplomat have unravelled since. Ashton could co-ordinate, cajole and shape discussions, but in the end the words and actions of the elected leaders of the period – Putin, Cameron, Obama, Assad, Merkel – determined the course of events, often contrary to their intentions.
The hopes for democracy kindled by the “Arab Spring” across the Middle East have fizzled out. Donald Trump collapsed the nuclear deal with Iran. Worse, as Norma Percy’s Putin documentaries show in excruciating close-ups, Putin intimidated Viktor Yanukovych and Ukraine away from a proposed association agreement with the EU. The Maidan uprising forced Yanukovych to flee to Moscow but by the time Ashton’s term ended in October 2014, Russia had annexed Crimea, sent forces into Donbas, and its missiles had brought down passenger flight MH17 with the loss of nearly 300 lives.
Diplomats represent their governments. These days they seldom lie; their principals – the political leaders – jet in to do that for them. Diplomats keep up appearances while doing what they can to mitigate the impact. As a journalist I have had many contacts and friendships with diplomats, both “our men and women abroad” and representatives and ambassadors of foreign powers. Like journalists, diplomats are hungry for information and, like them, they are usually reacting to events rather than making them happen. But they are usually able to place events in a broader context for those of us working to daily deadlines. Most of them are courteous and helpful only some Chinese and Russian envoys who can be abrupt and rude.
At her book launch Cathy Ashton described diplomats as people “in the back row of summit photographs, if they are there at all”. Discretely offering advice in the background suits them. When they enter the limelight it is often uncomfortable, as Wotton found out all those years ago. Kim Darroch stood down as US Ambassador after his candid private comments to his government on Donald Trump became public.
David Frost has made a controversial transition from middle-ranking diplomat to outspoken unelected Brexit cheerleader, Boris Johnson-appointed member of the House of Lords, and a former Cabinet minister.
Sir Peter Westmacott worries about “recent attempts in Britain to devalue and politicize the civil service and other institutions”, mildly suggesting “there could be real advantage for the country in more effectively tapping into, rather than walking away from, the expertise of those who have honed their skills in what has traditionally been one of the best performing governmental machines in the Western world”.
Since Ashton’s day, British diplomacy has had a tough time, drenched by the “hard rain” which Dominic Cummings wished on the civil service blob as a whole. Brexit has deconstructed much of the multilateral diplomacy on which British foreign relations had been built on for at least a generation. The UK’s pretensions to being the bridge across the Atlantic between Europe and America have been exploded. Foreign powers, including the US, have reassessed their relations with the UK in the light of Brexit, and now view it as a less reliable ally.
Foreign Office officials are almost in a state of shock after enduring three maverick Foreign Secretaries. Neither Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab nor Liz Truss respected the norms of ministerial behaviour or the expert advice of their diplomats. Britain’s global standing was not enhanced during their tenure.
James Cleverly, Rishi Sunak’s new Foreign Secretary, has started to rebuild trust. Like Cathy Ashton he is not a foreign affairs specialist and is said to work hard to digest his briefings before taking decisions.
At the height of the furore over Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs Cleverly’s deftness earned him the dubious reward of being fielded as a safe pair of hands for the Sunday morning media round. As Cleverly pointed out himself, such matters were a long way from his day job as foreign secretary. He wasn’t lying!
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