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Last Man Standing: Memoirs of a political survivor

(Pan Macmillan: London, 2013), pp. 582 (incl. index). ISBN 978-1-4472-2276-7.
[buy this book] [Kindle ed]

Jack Straw was the ablest and wisest of Tony Blair’s foreign secretaries and served in this capacity from 2001 until he was ungratefully dumped without warning by his leader in 2006. Afterwards he hit the headlines by courageously publishing his dislike of the full veil worn my some Muslim women, on the grounds that this was such a visible statement of separation and difference that it complicated community relations and was, in any case, a cultural preference rather than a religious obligation. (Straw was then and still is the Labour MP for a Bradford constituency with a large Muslim population.) In the long chapters on his time at the Foreign Office in these memoirs he is very interesting on the genuine fear of nuclear war between India and Pakistan and the steps taken to avoid it, his keenness to negotiate with the moderates in Iran, the great efforts he made to facilitate Turkey’s admission to the EU, and his despair over the persistent diplomatic wrecking tactics in the Middle East of the alliance between the American neo-cons and Israeli hardliners – and the unwillingness of Tony Blair to take them on. On the Iraq War there is nothing in these pages that we have not already learned from his evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry, or not already learned about his adeptness at – to use his own football metaphor – the ‘body swerve’ in handling uncomfortable criticism. A theme throughout these chapters is his close personal and policy rapport with his US counterpart Colin Powell.

Straw does not tell us much about the Foreign Office itself or the Diplomatic Service generally. However, there is a tantalizing reference to a group of its very senior members who called themselves the ‘Senators’ and made little secret of their disdain for mere politicians (p. 330). He also makes clear on more than one occasion (pp. 326, 468) how coveted was the position of foreign secretary among his senior colleagues in the Labour government. Already a heavyweight in Blair’s cabinet (he had previously been Home Secretary) and proceeding on the prevailing assumption that in 2001 he would take over John Prescott’s massive Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, when nevertheless Tony Blair told him that he had decided instead to make him foreign secretary, what was his immediate reaction? ‘“F*** me,” I said, and almost fell off my chair.’ Can anyone still take seriously the argument we used to hear that foreign ministries are doomed?

Last Man Standing: Memoirs of a political survivor2019-10-14T20:28:41+01:00

British Diplomacy and the Descent into Chaos: The career of Jack Garnett, 1902-19

(Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2012), 280 pp (incl. index). ISBN 978-0-230-34897-4.
[buy this book] [Kindle ed]

I am in favour of biographies of relatively obscure individuals like Jack Garnett because there are plenty of them on the famous; moreover, studies of this kind often turn up interesting details (including how the famous were seen from the foothills) and stimulate thought on bigger questions. John Fisher’s well written and thoroughly researched study of this early twentieth century British diplomat, into which contextual detail is expertly woven, is no exception. (The contents list of the book can be seen on the publisher’s website here.)

Garnett was inclined to be moody, headstrong, quickly bored, and indiscreet in gossiping about his chiefs and their wives. As a result, although able, adventurous, not shy of hard work, deeply patriotic and ambitious, this rather enigmatic man was never promoted beyond first secretary and left the diplomatic service under a cloud when only in his early forties. Perhaps the first general point which John Fisher’s book usefully underlines, therefore, is that either persons like this should not be admitted to the diplomatic profession in the first place or, if they are, should be handled better by those responsible for career development – heads of mission as well as the foreign ministry at home: in particular, they should not be sent to missions where they would have little to do, the fate of Garnett when posted in late 1916 to Tangier, where he idled away days as well as nights playing bridge, and later to Buenos Aires. (This shows that the Foreign Office’s mid-nineteenth century attempt to make a head of mission’s deputy something more than a chargé d’affaires in waiting had not been a complete success.) In the event, on resigning from the diplomatic service three years later, Garnett spent the following decade doing an amazing variety of social work in the East End of London and drifted to the political left; then, on inheriting his substantial family property in Lancashire in 1929, he abandoned the metropolis and became a provincial Tory magnate.

Another point that struck me as particularly interesting was the account of worries over the physical security of the Legation Quarter in Peking, in which Garnett found himself as third (later second) secretary at the British legation in 1905. This was just five years after the siege of this arrogant diplomatic enclave by the Boxers, and the need for precautions against another such assault was still very much in the minds of most diplomats, although Garnett had few concerns about his own safety and was soon fed up with the ‘semi-imprisonment’ of legation life. Among other less known details we learn from John Fisher that in February 1906 the German legation acquired a howitzer and that British ministers were inclined to play down security threats for fear of being withdrawn. (The last point, however, is left a little vague.)

Garnett might have had a relatively short diplomatic career but it was varied, taking him to Constantinople, Bucharest, St. Petersburg, Tehran, Sofia, and Athens, as well as the places already mentioned. (In addition, he served for some time in the Foreign Office’s Parliamentary and Contraband Departments during the First World War.) At most of these postings, in part because he often had little else to do, he found himself involved – socially and otherwise – with their expatriate British communities. In the war these became of more than usual concern to London and afterwards the Foreign Office established a Committee on British Communities Abroad. ‘Diaspora diplomacy’, as my colleague Kishan Rana has called it, has become much more important since, and those interested in its origins would do well to look at John Fisher’s work, including his previously published articles on the subject. The same might be said for those interested in the development of commercial diplomacy, for Garnett was one of its early supporters and this overlapped with attentiveness to the diaspora.

There is much else besides of interest to students of diplomacy as well as diplomatic history in this valuable book. Unlike some I could mention, it also has a good index. I commend it most warmly.

British Diplomacy and the Descent into Chaos: The career of Jack Garnett, 1902-192019-10-14T20:28:42+01:00

Transformational Diplomacy after the Cold War: Britain’s Know How Fund in Post-Communist Europe, 1989-2003

(Routledge: London and New York, 2013),
224 pp. (incl. index). ISBN13: 978-0-415-69203-8 (hbk).
ISBN13: 978-0-203-38158-8 (ebk). [buy this book]

This is the long awaited history of the Know How Fund (KHF) produced by the recently retired Foreign and Commonwealth Office historian Keith Hamilton. Like other FCO ‘internal histories’, it was initially written ‘to provide background information for members of the FCO, to point out possible lessons for the future and evaluate how well objectives were met.’ We are fortunate that this one has been released to the general public because it is based on official papers which would otherwise have remained classified for many years to come. For information on the contents of the book and its author, together with a preview of the first 30 pages, see here.

The ‘Know How Fund’ is short-hand for a programme of technical assistance conceived in the FCO to bring to fruition British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s dream of transforming the countries of the former Soviet empire, including Russia itself, into free market economies with liberal-democratic political institutions. It was not, therefore, a conventional bilateral ‘foreign aid’ programme with an emphasis on economic development: instead, its chief thrust was political, the more so because of the geographical proximity of these countries to western Europe and the massive security threat they had long presented. The KHF was also driven by an anxiety not to be outdone by the Germans and the Americans in the struggle for influence in them and for commercial advantage in their new markets. It took shape in programme teams in London, inter-departmental Whitehall committees, and project teams in British embassies (some newly opened) in the region – all assisted more or less ably by an army of non-government advisers, from over-paid bankers and management consultants to police officers and employees of the BBC. It started with a focus on Poland and ended with a concentration on Russia.

Keith Hamilton’s authoritative study provides many insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the KHF and the circumstances in which it prospered and those in which it did not, and it will therefore be of great value to those with an interest in how to conceive and administer this sort of programme. It provided, he concluded, ‘a model for the later deployment of technical assistance in support of specific foreign policy objectives.’ (With the benefit of post-2008 hindsight, it might however be regarded as laughable – if in principle admirable – that so much of the British effort was put into giving advice on best practice in banking and financial services.) The book will also be very useful to students of British relations with the countries concerned over this recent period. Inevitably, it contains a great deal of administrative history (and a plethora of abbreviations). We learn how the programme was set up and about the tensions which developed over its aims between the ‘Diplomatic Wing’ of the FCO and its foreign aid wing, tensions later magnified when Tony Blair came to power in 1997 and made the latter – with its ‘pro-poor agenda’ – into a separate department (DfID). There are also many summaries of the contents of key internal documents. Some will find this sort of thing rather dull but it is all an important part of the record.

‘Transformational’ diplomacy inevitably requires the injection of some funds into a target country even if the emphasis is on technical assistance rather than direct economic assistance or financial relief. This carries a small risk of propping up its creaking conservative regime. A programme conducted in a manner too patronising in tone or clumsy and inefficient in implementation might carry a still greater risk of this sort by stimulating nationalist feelings. To avoid or at least minimise these risks requires first class local knowledge and wide-ranging local contacts – in short, suitably staffed embassies. What is their ideal role? They identify the right projects and monitor their progress; they also provide safe platforms from which experts can operate and have the professional expertise to soothe the reactionaries who might otherwise be disposed to sabotage the desired ‘transformation’. Not surprisingly, by 2002 the British embassy in Moscow had a large KHF section with locally engaged Russians among its staff. When the locally unpopular step has to be taken of running down a programme as a whole and the thoughts of those at home have already turned elsewhere, the embassy might well find actual project management delegated to it as well, as happened to the British embassies in the Baltic republics, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia after 2001. This is the sort of interesting fact with which this important, well balanced, and predictably well written book is crammed. I salute Dr Hamilton for giving it to us.

Transformational Diplomacy after the Cold War: Britain’s Know How Fund in Post-Communist Europe, 1989-20032019-10-14T20:28:42+01:00

Expeditionary diplomacy

13 January 2013

A lot was beginning to be heard about ‘expeditionary diplomacy’ before the disaster at US ‘Special Mission Benghazi’ on 11 September 2012, somewhat less since. Read more.

Expeditionary diplomacy2020-06-03T16:24:14+01:00

21st Century Diplomacy: A practitioner’s guide

(Continuum: London and New York, 2011),
372pp (incl. index). ISBN: 9781441168382.
Available in pb at £19.99. [buy this book]

Kishan Rana is a man of lengthy and varied experience in the Indian Foreign Service, ending his career as ambassador to Germany. Since then he has spent many years as a globe-trotting trainer of junior diplomats on behalf of DiploFoundation. Few people, therefore, are as well placed to write a practitioners’ guide to the diplomatic craft; and, insofar as concerns the content of his book, which can be found described here, he has not disappointed. The structure works pretty well and it is, like all of Ambassador Rana’s writing, lively and wise. It is also full of interesting facts, for example that Latvia won a prize in 2003 for the best foreign ministry website; it is packed with topical examples; and it bursts with ideas. The author also shows that he is right on top of the latest developments in information and communications technology affecting diplomacy. All of the chapters have their merits but I particularly liked the one on ‘diaspora diplomacy’, in which – despite his enthusiasm for the genus – the author points also to its dangers. He would, however, be disappointed if I did not choose some aspects of the book on which to hint at reservations. These are mainly to do with presentation and organization.

First, Ambassador Rana more than once succumbs to a weakness for providing lengthy summaries of other writers’ views of a subject – for example, the conclusions of Brecher et al’s 1988 study of crisis management on p. 162 and Henrikson’s view of public diplomacy on pp. 85-6 – without integrating them into his own arguments. Together with digressions which sometimes appear to be placed randomly in large boxes, such as the one on ‘MFA Typology’ on p. 118 (a subject surely better treated summarily in the opening paragraph of a chapter dealing generally with MFAs), these tend to generate repetition, give a disjointed feel to the work, and sometimes leave the reader wondering which parts the author agrees with and which parts he does not.

Second, while the structure of the book is basically sound (and I know from my own experience that getting this right with a general book on diplomacy is not easy), I am not sure about the balance of emphasis between the different Parts. In particular, since it is packaged as a guide for practitioners, it is a pity that less than a third of the work is presented as dealing with ‘Craft Skills’. And it is doubly a pity, therefore, that three chapters which to my mind should have been placed under this head are to be found looking rather lost elsewhere: those on public diplomacy, ICTs and protocol.

Notwithstanding these weaknesses (which might have been eliminated by brutal editing), 21st Century Diplomacy remains a textbook which junior diplomats will always want to have with them. It was Wicquefort in saddle-bags in the 17th and 18th centuries, Martens in the Gladstone bags and attaché cases of the 19th, and Satow in briefcases in the 20th; it is Rana in carry-on bags and back-packs in the 21st.

21st Century Diplomacy: A practitioner’s guide2019-10-14T20:28:42+01:00

Economic Diplomacy: India’s experience

(CUTS International: Jaipur, 2011), 285pp. (incl. index).
ISBN 978 81 8257 139 6.

Kishan Rana is a widely published former Indian ambassador and Bipul Chatterjee, his co-editor, is the deputy executive director of the Indian NGO, CUTS International http://www.cuts-international.org/ , the publisher of this book. Both editors are also trained economists. Their volume consists of 25 chapters, all except three written by serving or former members of the Indian Foreign Service. The chapters are divided into five parts, the titles of three of which clearly indicate the broad meaning given by the editors to the term economic diplomacy: ‘Export promotion’; ‘Investment and economic aid’; and ‘Managing networks and the regulatory environment’ (the other two are ‘Context and objectives’ and ‘Today’s challenges’). They are prefixed by a lengthy introduction on ‘The role of embassies’.

It is no surprise to learn that the impetus to the development of India’s economic diplomacy was provided by the huge surge in the price of crude oil in 1973. Where they did not already exist, embassies were soon opened in the oil-producing states of the Middle East and North Africa and diplomats gave priority to expediting both material and labour exports, and interesting these states in investing in projects in India. In the last regard the chapter by Talmiz Ahmad on the role of the Indian embassy in Abu Dhabi in promoting UAE investment in India is particularly instructive.

As far as I am aware this is a unique book: there is no other which has drawn on such a broad range of diplomatic experience to develop this particular theme. It is also a valuable book because the theme is so important. Governments tend to live or die by the amount of exports their economies can generate and the foreign investment they can attract; and the division of labour in these matters between the diplomats and the businessmen (and their trade associations) and how the diplomats should handle their own brief are questions which have been around for a long time. But what work has been done on them has been largely confined to officially sponsored reports in the West. To have such a study as this on the economic diplomacy of one of the most important non-Western states is a major advance for diplomatic studies. The first edition was marred by an index that was riddled with vagaries and spectacular errors but a new edition is already in progress and will have the added advantage of a short contextual introduction to each essay. This will be the one to get hold of.

Economic Diplomacy: India’s experience2019-10-14T20:28:42+01:00

The Practice of Diplomacy: Its evolution, theory and administration

2nd ed (Routledge: London and New York, 2011),
pp. 317 (incl. index). [buy this book] [Kindle ed]

First published in 1995, the long-awaited second edition of this valuable textbook on the history of diplomacy has at last appeared. The first chapter has been expanded to include non-European traditions, and a wholly new chapter has been added to take account of developments over the last 15 years. It is for the main part a work of relaxed authority, clearly written, and – unusually for an introductory work – full of intriguing detail which it would be difficult if not impossible to find in other secondary sources. The series of chapters on the ‘old diplomacy’ and how it came to terms with the twentieth century is a tour de force. I am bound to say, however, that I think it was a mistake to employ the concept of ‘total diplomacy’ – inspired by the more familiar term ‘total war’ – in an attempt to give shape to the long chapter dealing with developments over most of the last century. In a struggle in which military confrontation was likely to produce mutual annihilation, diplomacy serving as the spear of a national effort uniting all public and private bodies was nothing more than a superpower Cold War aspiration which was imperfectly realised, to put it mildly, especially in the West (as Dean Acheson feared when introducing the American public to the phrase in February 1950 < http://www.archive.org/stream/departmentofstat2250unit#page/426/mode/2up >).

As a result, it works better as a footnote in the history of ideas about diplomacy than a term which expresses the theme of an era. There is also a certain conceptual shakiness in handling diplomatic activity itself: the authors cannot seem to make up their minds whether there is no essential difference between what professional and amateur diplomats do (the fashionable assumption of the new chapter on the most recent developments, headed ‘Diplomacy Diffused’) or whether what the latter do is ‘quasi-diplomatic’ or ‘paradiplomatic’ (terms occasionally used elsewhere). It is also a pity that the authors did not think to badger Routledge into using footnotes rather than endnotes, and at least dispense with ‘op.cits’; and the index, as with so many books these days, is disappointing (the reader relying on the index for information on service attachés, for example, will miss completely the interesting discussion of their role in intelligence gathering on pp. 190-2). But these are just quibbles. This book is much the best introduction to the history of diplomacy available. I have always recommended it as a companion to my own textbook on contemporary diplomacy, and shall continue to do so.

The Practice of Diplomacy: Its evolution, theory and administration2019-10-14T20:28:42+01:00

Five best books on diplomacy

25 July 2010

On 5 July 2010, at the beginning of a week devoted to ‘Diplomacy’ by the ‘Five Best Books on Everything’ site, I was interviewed on my own choice of the five best books on this subject. Read more.

Five best books on diplomacy2020-06-03T16:25:25+01:00

The Queen’s Ambassador to the Sultan: Memoirs of Sir Henry A. Layard’s Constantinople Embassy, 1877-1880

(The Isis Press: Istanbul, 2009), pp. 721 (incl. index), ISBN 978-975-428-395-2. Sinan Kuneralp (ed.), Twixt Pera and Therapia: The Constantinople Diaries of Lady Layard (The Isis Press: Istanbul, 2010), pp. 279 (incl. index), ISBN 978-975-428-398-3.

Once more students of Ottoman diplomatic history are in debt to the scholar-publisher, Sinan Kuneralp, for Sir Henry Layard was one of the most remarkable and controversial of British ambassadors to Turkey in the nineteenth century and served there during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8 – and yet the volumes of his memoirs dealing with this period have hitherto languished unpublished in the British Library, in part perhaps because of their size. (Layard admits himself to having been ‘somewhat minute, perhaps a great deal too much so’, p. 692.) They are here published almost in their entirety, the only exclusions being repetitive parts and some official despatches inserted into the text by Layard. The editor has also added numerous sub-headings to aid the selective reader and provided a very sharp, warts-and-all introduction to the ambassador’s apologia for his embassy to Constantinople. An otherwise excellent production is let down – as so often happens these days – only by its index, which is too short, and unaccountably divided by themes, persons and places. It also appears to have been devised by a computer: for example, the entry on Sir Alfred Sandison, the Anglo-Levantine chief dragoman of the embassy, refers the reader to twenty-one different pages but only three of them contain information on the subject of any significance.

Sir Henry Layard was a notable archaeologist and politician but as a diplomat he was also remarkable. As the editor of his Constantinople memoirs says, he was ‘probably one of the last if not the last British ambassador to have wielded some influence in the Ottoman capital’, and ‘probably one of the first Westerners to talk about double standards when Turkey is concerned’. He was unceremoniously recalled by the incoming Gladstone administration in 1880, largely because of this latter attitude but whether he was also remarkable in the professionalized diplomatic service, as Layard says himself in his bitter concluding pages, by virtue of being dismissed ‘without a cause assigned and before he had completed the terms required to entitle him to a pension’ (p. 680), I am not sure – but he was probably right. Layard was not a perfect diplomat (he was too hot-tempered and too inclined to speak his mind) but he is the more attractive for this reason; in any case he had many other diplomatic virtues and was a genuine liberal. He was also an elegant and trenchant writer, and a perceptive judge of character – not least that of the Sultan, Abdulhamid II. These memoirs are strongly recommended. Those with no prior knowledge of Sir Henry Layard and his extraordinary career before taking up diplomacy might also consult the excellent essay on him by Jonathan Parry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

The Constantinople diaries of Layard’s wife, Enid, who was only half her husband’s age, are also valuable, although in a very different way. Twixt Pera [where the British embassy was located in winter] and Therapia [the home of the summer embassy] is more revealing of life – especially the social life – of the embassy, than of high politics and diplomacy. As it happens, Lady Layard’s complete journal has been available in searchable form on the internet since 2004 but the editor of the Isis Press edition was probably right to bring out this copy in book form. As he says, students of nineteenth century Ottoman diplomatic history would be unlikely to stumble on it on the particular website where it is to be found (the present writer is a case in point!) and he has provided annotations not available in the online edition. Besides, Enid’s diaries perfectly complement the larger book containing Sir Henry’s memoirs.

Lady Layard’s diary entries tend to be rather formulaic, it is disappointing that she only rarely tells us what she thought of the many interesting personalities she met as opposed to describing their physical appearance and what they were wearing, the logging of her frequent headaches gets rather wearying, and the long lists of dinner guests are at best tantalising. The index is only a name index. Nevertheless, the entries have their compensations. For example, ‘embassy dined with us as usual’ is a frequent one, and on one occasion she records a ‘serious conversation’ with Sandison ‘on the subject of the imprudent marriage his mother was afraid lest he should make’ – all of which leads me to conclude that the family embassy survived for rather longer in Constantinople than I had thought. The entries usually record the arrival and departure of the Queen’s Messengers, thereby confirming that the service was at least fortnightly and, it seems, sometimes even more frequent. We also have further confirmation that the ambassadress was sometimes enlisted to copy the ambassador’s despatches and other documents, especially when – as we know from his own memoirs (p. 398) – it was necessary on Lord Salisbury’s insistence to keep them secret from the chancery. Those with different interests from mine will find other nuggets in these diaries.

Enid Layard was obviously a first-rate ambassadress and had charitable instincts that were strongly aroused by the appalling sufferings inflicted on the Turks by the unsought war with Russia which broke out within days of the arrival of the couple in Constantinople, and dominated the first years of their embassy. I wish that I had read her diaries before completing my history of the British embassy in Turkey.

The Queen’s Ambassador to the Sultan: Memoirs of Sir Henry A. Layard’s Constantinople Embassy, 1877-18802019-10-14T20:28:42+01:00

Diplomats at War: British and Commonwealth diplomacy in wartime

(Martinus Nijhoff: Leiden and Boston, 2008), pp. 304 (incl. index). ISBN 978 90 04 16897 8

In their Preface, the editors of Diplomats at War say that the two world wars in the twentieth century had a “catalytic impact upon the practice of diplomacy”; among other things, they continue, this produced “an unprecedented revolution” in the way heads of mission conducted their business. The first statement is unexceptionable but the second is presumably hyperbole because revolutions generally mark the fact that fundamental changes have occurred, and the corollary of this is that they are lasting – or at least not quickly overturned. As a result, had Baxter and Stewart been serious about the question of revolutionary change they would have needed to ask their contributors not only to record the character of mission practice prior to the outbreak of war but also for some years after it had been concluded. However, their book casts light only on the short term effects of war, and even these do not appear to me to be always as dramatic as they rather sweepingly assert. Since they provide no comment on the effects on embassies of pre-twentieth century wars, it cannot be said that they prove that such changes were “unprecedented” either. While the cases they choose are quite varied, the selection also seems a little idiosyncratic.

Diplomats at War contains twelve chapters, most of which concentrate on the experience of a head of mission rather than the mission as a whole, while one deals with a commercial attach and another deals not with diplomats but with British imperial proconsuls. Six of the chapters are about missions in allied states, four about missions in neutrals, and one about a mission in a state engaged in a war in which the sending state was an interested neutral; there is no chapter on a mission in a state with which the sending state was at war (to point this out is not as silly as it might sound because the missions of belligerents are not always expelled immediately, while when they are their role is usually assumed by the mission of a protecting power and this may shelter a few staff from the ‘expelled’ mission). Three chapters (a quarter of the book) are about missions in Washington, and the work has a strong Australian flavour. It begins with the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5) and concludes with the opening years of the Cold War. It has an Introduction but no formal Conclusion (the conclusion is in effect to be found in the final section of the Introduction, pp. 19-21). This is what tends to happen when scholars have a good idea but then follow it up not by means of a sole-authored monograph but via a collection of essays written in the main by other people, some of which essays are also, inevitably, re-treads.

What emerges from these studies that bears generally on the theme of the book are the unsurprising conclusions that, in war-time, diplomatic missions tend to become militarised (as today in the case of US embassies in the front line of the ‘War on Terror’); suffer privations and even shifts of location; find themselves with a more crowded agenda; need to give much more attention to propaganda; and have to cope with an upsurge in special missions, para-diplomats and war correspondents – the general upshot of which is usually that the influence of the diplomatic component in the mission is diminished. However, in reality the extent to which the influence of the diplomats diminishes varies considerably and, in his own chapter on Knatchbull-Hugessen in Ankara, Baxter comes close to arguing against himself by admitting that the ambassador ultimately won his battle with Churchill (of all people) over the issue of Turkish neutrality. He might have added, too, that this was not least because the huge military component in his embassy could – by virtue of being permanently on the spot – see for itself how vulnerable Turkey was to German power, and so supported his more sympathetic view of its predicament. (The military component was quickly wound down after the war; see my British Diplomacy in Turkey.)

Having said this much, there is not one essay in this book that is not worth reading. For example, Keith Hamilton – whose command of detail is awesome and droll asides are always to be savoured – provides a sparkling refresh of his long extant biography of Sir Francis Bertie, the ageing British ambassador in Paris during World War I; Thomas Otte revisits more deeply and with his usual authority the story of Sir Francis Oppenheimer, the scandalously maligned British commercial attach in The Hague during the same conflict, thereby incidentally reminding his readers that there are other people in embassies besides heads of mission; and Christopher Baxter – although I wish his chapter had not been quite so narrative – provides what will probably prove to be the definitive account of the affair of the spy ‘Cicero’ at the British embassy in Ankara during World War II. I was impressed, too, by the attention drawn by Greg Kennedy to the belief of Lord Halifax, British ambassador in Washington during World War II, that laying the ground work for peace was his own priority. It would have been interesting to know to what extent this was a general reflex of ‘diplomats at war’ in the first half of the twentieth century.

Diplomats at War: British and Commonwealth diplomacy in wartime2019-10-14T20:28:42+01:00

The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell diaries

(Hutchinson: London, 2007), pp. 794, incl. index. ISBN 9780091796297

Until his resignation amid huge controversy in August 2003, Alastair Campbell was Tony Blair’s official spokesman and director of communications and strategy – ace spin doctor, closest confidante, and constant travelling companion. His diaries have probably been mined chiefly for their astonishing revelations about the internal machinations of his government and the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. However, they should also be read for the sharp and often amusing light they throw on certain aspects of diplomacy.

First among these is summitry. Here, what emerges in general is the risk of ‘getting hooked on the international stuff’ (p. 585) despite the exhaustion it generates, the danger of neglecting the domestic agenda to which it can lead, and the unpleasant surprises it may contain. In the last regard, I knew about Blair’s ‘total banjaxing’ by President Assad in Damascus in October 2001 during his campaign to wind up the pressure on Iraq, despite ‘having been promised the guy was going to be supportive’ (p. 585) but not about what happened in Moscow in April 2003, although it was evidently reported at the time. According to Campbell, Vladimir Putin had invited Tony Blair to visit him and ‘we thought we’d agreed lines’. Unfortunately, ‘unbeknown to us Putin was gearing up for a direct big whack on WMD and plenty else besides’. At the press conference ‘he let rip in the opening statement … TB was doing his best to look unfazed’ but it was a ‘diplo-disaster’ (p. 693). Nor was the British prime minister able to do his summiteering in any great style. To the Anglo-French summit at Le Touquet in February 2003 he flew on ‘a tiny plane that Chirac wouldn’t be seen dead in’ (p. 661) and usually had to take scheduled flights with all of their risks of delays: ‘He is effectively vice-president of the free world’, Campbell reports Jack Straw, foreign secretary, observing, ‘and has to travel around like a cost-cutting tourist’ (p. 670). For diary entries dealing with summitry, use the index: Bush, George W., Jnr; Chirac; Clinton; G8 summits; NATO [summits]; Putin; Schroeder. For the EU summit in Nice (not indexed), see pp. 482-3, and for the P5 meeting in New York in September 2000 (not indexed), p. 468.

Tony Blair spent a great deal of time on the telephone to other world leaders, especially to Bill Clinton and then George Bush the Younger. These calls are not indexed in the book, so look particularly at pp. 319, 333-4 (‘In all TB had eight calls with Clinton over an 18-hour period up to Sunday 4.30am, when he finally went to bed’), 393, 399, 413, 485, 566, and 671. The telephone was vital to Blair’s diplomacy but he was well aware that it was no substitute for personal contact. After one call with George Bush shortly after 9/11 in 2001, when he felt that he had failed to make the US president understand the importance of rallying other major states behind America, Campbell records that ‘TB was quite troubled afterwards, said we had to think of a way of getting to the US for a face-to-face meeting. He said he needed to see him in a room, and look in his eyes, not do all this on phone calls with 15 people listening in’ (p. 566).

As for the presentation of British policy to the world, there is a great deal on this for the very good reason that this was Campbell’s great talent and a large part of his formal responsibility. What strikes me, however, is that he put no rubbish in his diary about the allegedly new ‘public diplomacy’, although this idea was already fashionable during the years he served Tony Blair. Campbell is too hard-headed and intelligent to have had any truck with this sort of nonsense. What he recorded instead were problems to do with ‘communications’, ‘presentation’, ‘PR’, ‘media management’, ‘spin’, and – above all – ‘propaganda’ (on the last, see pp. 278, 344, 555, 572, 659, 686). Other than in mentioning the appointment of Charlotte Beers as US ‘under-secretary for public diplomacy’ (p. 583), and reporting its apparent use by someone else (p. 664), Campbell never once uses the term ‘public diplomacy’ himself.

I also found the diaries very useful on the negotiations over Northern Ireland, and there is an interesting description of the diplomacy at the funeral of King Hussein of Jordan in February 1999 (pp. 365-7). This is a primary source of first class importance and is readily available at very low prices on the internet through abebooks.

The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell diaries2019-10-14T20:28:42+01:00

Twentieth-Century Diplomacy: A Case Study of British Practice, 1963-1976

(Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2008), pp. 224, incl. index. ISBN 978-0-521-83916-7

Some years ago, John Young, Professor of International History at the University of Nottingham and long-serving Chair of the British International History Group, turned his thoughts and research in the direction of diplomatic procedure. This is the first monograph to be the product of his shift in direction and it is to be most warmly welcomed. It is original in focus, impeccably researched (private papers and oral history transcripts have been sifted as well official documents in The National Archives), crisply written, and altogether a major contribution to the contemporary history of diplomacy. What is so original about the book is that the author has asked himself: What are the major forms of diplomatic contact? And followed this with the question: How and to what effect were they each employed by one state over a period sufficiently short to make detailed research possible but not so short as to make it impossible to identify trends? Having chosen Britain over the years from 1963 until 1976, he seeks to establish which diplomatic methods were the most useful for which purposes.

Young begins with two contextual chapters. The first provides a succinct overview of the issues confronting British foreign policy in the period, a penetrating – and at times amusing – analysis of how policy was made, and a most useful description of the significant changes in the composition of the diplomatic service during these years. The second chapter is on ‘the diplomatic machine’, which he tackles by examining in turn the three major official post-war reports of which it was the object, which happened to fall more or less within his period: Plowden (1964), Duncan (1969) and Berrill (1977). He rightly praises the first, salvages the second from the mistaken charge that it was inconsequential, and damns the last with faint praise (Berrill made the elementary mistake of failing to recognise that declining military and economic power meant more diplomacy not less). My only reservation about the account of the Duncan Report is its relatively slender treatment of its impact on the commercial priorities of embassies as opposed to the economies which it urged in the diplomatic service itself.

It is with chapter 4, ‘Resident Embassies’, that Professor Young gets into diplomatic method itself, and it is an impressive launch. The role of the British embassy, whether accredited to states or international organizations, did not diminish in either the volume of its work or its importance, he demonstrates; instead, the increase in ministerial visits and multilateral diplomacy simply produced a change in the character of its role. But this varied from embassy to embassy (“There is no ‘typical’ embassy.”) and could vary in the same embassy in just a matter of years. To support and illustrate his theme, he looks in some detail at the work of six ambassadors during these years: David Hunt in Nigeria (1967-9), John Freeman in India (1965-8), Patrick Reilly in Paris (1965-8), Christopher Soames in Paris (1968-72), Lord Caradon at the UN (1964-70), and Michael Palliser at the EC (1973-5). “Their experience confirms that … it was essential to have an efficient, permanent and large diplomatic service”, he concludes, adding interestingly that some of these ambassadors contributed not only to the efficiency with which foreign policy was executed but also to its content.

The chapter on special missions is illustrated with a multitude of examples, especially that of Rhodesia. Here the author demonstrates how such missions multiplied massively during the period, using a host of different kinds of person for a host of different purposes. He rightly concludes that while resident ambassadors sometimes saw special envoys as a threat to their standing as well as a practical nuisance (especially in the case of the much put-upon Washington Embassy), the relationship was symbiotic: each needed the other. The dependence of visiting envoys on their country’s resident embassy is obvious enough but why does the latter sometimes value the former? In light of his research, Young suggests that this is not just because of the specialist knowledge that visitors can bring but because it is easier for an embassy to preserve good relations with the government to which it is accredited if it can pass to the visitor the task of delivering any unpleasant message. This is certainly true but some governments in this period undoubtedly also valued visiting envoys, especially high-ranking ones, because there was no better way of getting the local government’s favourable attention, increasing the embassy’s access, and giving it a peg on which to hang its propaganda work. My own recent research has revealed that during the 1960s the Turkish government felt undervalued by an absence of high-level visitors from Britain, and as a result the British Embassy in Ankara repeatedly begged for more of them in order to improve the bilateral atmosphere and make its own job easier. The author later makes the same point in connection with bilateral summits (p. 140) but many embassies would settle for less!

In dealing with summitry, first bilateral and then multilateral, John Young confirms most of what we already knew about this subject. This is a relief! However, some interesting new points also emerge: summitry may be used to boost the domestic position of a favoured leader; the ‘exchange of views’ category, which I had favoured, is too broad; and at least during this period the telephone conversations between British and other leaders were too trivial to be bracketed with face-to-face summits. State visits are also dealt with at length in a particularly original and interesting chapter. ‘Outward’ visits by the Queen, which totalled 18 over the period, were designed chiefly to promote ‘Great Britain plc’ and were generally thought to be successful, and ‘inward’ visits by foreign heads of state, which came to 26 in all, were designed principally to advertise Britain’s achievements and show what it had to offer. The chapter on this subject brings out how difficult the planning of such visits could be.

The book’s final chapter deals with British diplomatic practice in these years in dealing with unfriendly governments, or at least governments making unfriendly gestures on a narrow front. In particular, it describes how and why Britain brought its policy on recognition into line with the less problematical one of its European partners, shifting from recognising regimes to recognising states; and then followed willingly a path pioneered by the Egyptians and West Germans in the mid-1960s in employing interests sections to preserve diplomatic contact with governments which had severed relations with it as a publicity stunt.

I am full of admiration for this book but no reviewer worthy of the name will pass up the opportunity to point to some sin of omission. So I shall say that it is a pity that Young does not say more about so-called ‘public diplomacy’. This is a pity not because this is now such a wearyingly fashionable subject but because it was roughly at the beginning of his period that the Drogheda Report, which had urged the importance of this in 1953 (it was then known as ‘information work’), first began to be taken seriously. But the author is aware of the gap and in any case does touch on it at more than one place in passing.

What is the general conclusion of the book? Special envoys, bilateral summits and multilateral conferences all increased in number over these years but still left “plenty of room for more traditional forms of diplomatic contact to flourish”. This was not just because each of them met different needs but because each was dependent in some degree on the others. And so does Young convincingly demolish the still widespread assumption that ‘new’ forms of diplomacy are by definition competitors to old ones. His book is not just a sound test of existing general ideas about diplomacy during this period but a model which, if carefully emulated by others, using different states in different periods or different states in the same period, would advance dramatically our understanding of diplomacy.

Twentieth-Century Diplomacy: A Case Study of British Practice, 1963-19762019-10-14T20:28:42+01:00

Just a Diplomat

*Zeki Kuneralp, Just a Diplomat, trsl. by Geoffrey Lewis with a preface by Andrew Mango (The Isis Press: Istanbul, 1992), pp. 152, incl. appendices and index. ISBN 975-428-029-0

*Theophilus C. Prousis, British Consular Reports from the Ottoman Levant in an Age of Upheaval, 1815-1830 (The Isis Press: Istanbul, 2008), pp. 289, incl. index. ISBN 978-975-428-360-0

*Centre d’Histoire Diplomatique Ottomane, De Bagdad Berlin: l’Itinraire de Yanko Aristarchi Bey Diplomate Ottoman. Correspondance officielle et prive [in 2 vols.]. I Bagdad (1846-1852), pp. 355, incl. glossary and index; II Berlin (1854-1892), pp. 341, incl. glossary and index (The Isis Press: Istanbul, 2008). ISBN 978-975-428-361-7
Close students of the new, Conservative Party Mayor of London, the at once engaging and alarming Boris Johnson, will know that he has Turkish cousins. One of these is Sinan Kuneralp, a son of the late Zeki Kuneralp, probably the most distinguished and well liked Turkish diplomat of his generation. Sinan Kuneralp is a scholar-publisher and runs The Isis Press in Istanbul, a house at the forefront of publishing scholarly works and original documents on the Ottoman Empire, chiefly in English and French. The three works noticed here are all its products and reflect the publisher’s own special interest in Ottoman diplomatic history.

Zeki Kuneralp was twice Turkish Ambassador in London and, in between, secretary-general of the foreign ministry in Ankara. He finished his career, which was marked not only by great achievements but by great personal tragedy, as ambassador at Madrid. His Just a Diplomat is the memoir of this career, prefixed by a short account of his early life. The book has now been out for many years (it appeared in Turkish in 1981), and a full and sensitive obituary of the author, who died in 1998, is available here.

I notice it so belatedly simply because it came into my hands only recently and struck me as the work of a quintessential diplomat. In its preface, Andrew Mango writes: “Wherever he went Zeki Kuneralp made friends for his country, because his own fair-minded friendship was never in doubt”. What better epitaph could any diplomat receive? It is also important, I think, for English-speaking students of diplomacy to take every chance they have to see the world through other eyes. By translating this memoir into English, Geoffrey Lewis has given us a valuable insight into the mind of Turkish foreign policy and diplomacy over the three and a half decades after 1940. It is still in print.

Theophilus Prousis, who is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Florida, has also provided us with a valuable primary resource. His book contains a selection of the reports and letters, to various addressees, written by a number of British consuls in the Levant in the early nineteenth century, chiefly against the backdrop of the Greek war of liberation from Ottoman rule. His choice falls on William Meyer (Prevesa), John Cartwright (Constantinople), Francis and Nathaniel Werry (Smyrna), and Henry Salt and John Barker (Cairo, Alexandria, and Aleppo). Consuls were expected to report – to the ambassador in Constantinople and, in emergencies, directly to the Foreign Office in London – on everything of political as well as commercial significance that occurred in their districts. Though the abilities of these men varied as much as the time they devoted to their official duties (many had to engage in trade to make ends meet), some of them provided highly revealing reports. In this collection, those of John Cartwright, the long-serving consul-general at Constantinople, are of particular interest to students of consular history. This is because it was during his time that the Levant Company was dissolved, and the British government looked to him, as the senior officer in the consular network that the company had hitherto financed and operated, for a detailed report on its staff. Prousis rightly includes this important document, dated 10 October 1825, in his selection. His book is ably introduced, each section provides background on the consuls whose reports follow, there is a very good bibliography, and a reasonable index. Prousis’s own sentences have a tendency to turn into lists, and I was puzzled as to why his section introductions should have contained such long quotations from the reports that he reproduces in full only a few pages later, but these are small niggles. Consular history deserves and badly needs more attention, and this is a very useful contribution to it.

Finally, I come to the two large volumes in French of the official and private papers (largely correspondence but including diary entries in Volume II) of the nineteenth century Ottoman diplomat, Yanko Aristarchi Bey. I have as yet only had time to read the separate introductions to each of these volumes (I do not read French quickly) but, written by Sinan Kuneralp himself, these are very interesting. Aristarchi was a member of a wealthy and well connected Greek family of Istanbul and began his diplomatic career in 1842 when he joined the Bureau of Translators of the Ottoman foreign ministry. From 1846 until 1852 he was director of political affairs of the vilayet of Bagdad, and in 1854 was appointed secretary and counsellor of legation at Berlin. Except for a short interruption in 1857, he remained in the Prussian capital until 1876, rising to charg d’affaires en titre, then minister, and finally ambassador in 1874; he was recalled in 1876. His papers published here were among those which were deposited on his death in 1897 in the Library of the Greek Literary Society of Constantinople, and eventually found their way – minus some losses suffered en route – to the Society of Turkish History in Ankara.

Among the tasks with which Aristarchi was charged in Bagdad, where he arrived barely 25 years old, were preserving harmony between the French and British consuls, in which he demonstrated dexterity; seeking to ensure that they did not abuse their rights under the capitulations, in which he was zealous; and reporting on the internal affairs of the distant province to the foreign ministry in Istanbul, in which he was so candid as to suggest, believes Kuneralp, that he enjoyed a degree of high-level protection. Bagdad was regarded by the Ottomans as an important observation post from which to keep an eye on Persia, and in 1851 Aristarchi was sent there on a special mission in order to probe the Shah’s intentions. His reports during this mission make up a sizeable part of Volume I of this book.

In Berlin, where he was head of the Ottoman mission for 18 years, Aristarchi was the observer of Prussia’s successful wars against Austria and France and the creation of the German Empire. He may have been a Greek and a Christian, like many Ottoman diplomats, but he remained an Ottoman – protesting if his title of ‘Bey’ was omitted in official communications from the Prussian government and insisting that all members of his mission should wear the fez. He was also a cultivated man with wide interests and perfect German, with a strong touch of the exotic provided by the Bedouin Arab servant whom he had brought from Bagdad. He entertained lavishly, and was altogether a tremendous success in Berlin society. In 1858 he married one of the daughters of General Eduard von Bonin, the Minister of War, which was a considerable diplomatic coup because it gave him privileged access to the court. On the other hand, his relations with Bismarck were not good, the outspokenness of his despatches found less favour with a new regime in the foreign ministry at home in the early 1870s, and in 1876 he was recalled. Though still only 54, he was never employed again.

The very large number of documents contained in these two volumes, each separately indexed, cover years of immense interest from an unusual perspective. The Isis Press is to be warmly congratulated for making them accessible. I am confident that they will be of great value to students of late Ottoman diplomacy, though it will be for students of nineteenth century diplomatic history to judge their importance in that field. I am looking forward to having the time to study them.

Just a Diplomat2019-10-14T20:28:42+01:00

Cyprus: the search for a solution

(I. B. Tauris: London and New York, 2005), pp. 256 incl. index. ISBN 13 978 1 85043 665 2

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Lord Hannay, a senior British diplomat with great experience of multilateral diplomacy, retired in 1995 but was then persuaded to accept the position of Britain’s Special Representative for Cyprus. In this role he played an influential part in the UN-led effort to broker a settlement to the Cyprus conflict until the negotiations temporarily foundered in May 2003, when, with a mixture of relief and regret, he stepped down. (There is a postscript on the referendums held on the island in 2004 on the fifth version of Kofi Annan’s settlement plan.) He has written a brilliant account of the course of these negotiations: lucid, economical, forceful, and authoritative; as for the organization of the book, this is a master class in how to blend analysis with narrative.

Hannay lays the main blame for the failure of the UN mediation up to May 2003 squarely at the door of the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, but also emphasises the contribution of generic and ‘Cyprus-specific problems’. This is all pulled together in Chapter 13: ‘What went wrong, and will it ever go right’. Hannay concludes that it will only ever go right if the Cypriots themselves take more responsibility for settlement negotiations and Turkey’s EU accession negotiations do not collapse. It is difficult to disagree with him.

This book is of great value to students of diplomacy as well as to those of the Cyprus problem. There are interesting passages on ‘linkage’ in these negotiations (pp. 99-110), the ‘single negotiating text’ (pp. 140-1), venue (p. 156), and telephone calls from the top as a last resort (p. 218). The usefulness (or otherwise) of deadlines in negotiations is an undercurrent throughout the book, as is the importance but great difficulty of ‘sequencing’ related negotiations, while the limitations of a mediation when the time is not ripe – but when this cannot be determined until the effort is made – is perhaps the major lesson. This is one of the best books I have read by a diplomatic practitioner for a long time.

Cyprus: the search for a solution2019-10-14T20:28:42+01:00

Diplomacy and Developing Nations: Post-Cold War foreign policy-making structures and processes

*(Routledge: London, 2005) pp. xi 280, ISBN-10: 0714654035

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Guest Review by Kishan S. Rana

This book is a valuable addition to the slim body of literature on foreign ministries and the process of external policy making. The book is all the more welcome as it examines the situation in that large part of the world that is all too often overlooked in scholarly works. The editors have marshaled a fine collection of essays that examine the situation in Brazil, China, the Eastern Caribbean, Egypt, Ghana and Malaysia. The country studies are balanced with overviews that consider the Westphalian frame, the choices that US dominance imposes on the Third World, the emergence of new diplomatic tools, especially information technology, and the role of the non-state actors, besides a concluding essay on narrowing distinctions among states.

The introductory essay by Justin Robertson presents a novel typology of foreign policy processes as a frame of reference for the entire book (he had edited a pioneering collection in 1998, also focused on developing states, in a special issue of the journal International Insights, published by Canada’s Dalhousie University). Robertson identifies six dominant patterns that can be applied to the making of external policy:

  • Conventional diplomacy is described as systems where security considerations dominate, though the neo-realism in such countries is moderated by the interplay of domestic factors and the country’s institutional elements. Egypt and Malaysia are presented as examples.
  • ‘New state capacity’ is juxtaposed as the counterpoint to the above, where the foreign ministry plays the role of coordinator, the institutions that influence policy are networked externally, and virtual diplomacy is also deployed. This segues into niche diplomacy, and countries small in size, such as the Seychelles, show greater adaptability than larger states.
  • ‘Capital-driven’ is another category, states where economic ministries play a dominant role, leading to the ‘competition state’, or globally networked central banks dominate, producing the ‘regulatory state’. Brazil and China are believed to show these tendencies, as also Trinidad.
  • ‘Marginalization’ of foreign ministries results when external powers and international institutions dictate policy. The expansion of US military bases abroad, the ‘imposed consensus’ practiced by the US and the UK in relation to international standards, and the conditions imposed by the IMF are offered as instances. Ghana is a country that suffers from weakened autonomy in such situations.
  • ‘Elite survival’ becomes the object of foreign policy in weak states, where the dominant domestic groups pursue international relations for their own survival. This is the case in Rwanda and in other unspecified African countries, as also in the Middle East.
  • Foreign policy ‘privatization’ occurs when domestic actors, such as business groups acquire dominant influence over policy, or guerilla factions become powerful and tap into international resources, as in Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Zaire.

Such classification raises anew the inherent contradiction between empirical study and theorization, given the multifarious elements that govern the situation in each country, and the dynamic evolution that occurs continually. For instance in 1997-98, immediately after the Asian Crisis that severely crippled the economies of several SE Asian countries, one might have described Thailand, which accepted the bitter prescriptions of the World Bank and the IMF, as a country that had surrendered policy autonomy and was dominated by these international institutions—a stark contrast to Malaysia which rejected external prescription, and did not do any worse for that. But even for Thailand that was a passing phase, and it would be a gross error to label that country as anything but fully independent, even innovative, in its policy-making.

What this book describes as privatization or elite survival types of foreign policy are often characteristic of failing states, or are found in states that are under severe stress. Again, these are useful analytical concepts, but their value as classification typologies is questionable.

Where classification is useful is in allowing us to identify and isolate specific trends, to examine these in comparative terms. But if we attempt to treat such trends as dominant factors, this leads us towards sweeping and erroneous generalization. In most cases the real situation is a mix of several factors. Further, there exist ‘traditional’ systems where little change or adaptation has taken place in the diplomatic process, owing to the resistance of the entrenched system, and unwillingness to consider new options.

Another point that sometimes comes up in commentaries on foreign ministries—and features en passant in this book—is that developing countries have aped Western institutions and processes in their diplomacy, rather than beaten their own path. Does the international system offer any other choice? Those critics that offer this comment do not themselves suggest alternatives. We might think back to the early days of the October Revolution, when the newly-coined Soviet Union briefly attempted its own diplomatic style. So did Libya in the 1980s, in its revolutionary zeal. Neither of these led to anything. What the post-colonial era has produced is pluralization in some forms of diplomatic practices, such as colorful national attire, and more relaxed practices in international discourse—ASEAN’s golf diplomacy—without affecting the real content of diplomacy. We might also observe that there is now something called an ‘Asian way’ or an ‘African style’, but these are subtle or minor variations around a standard method of inter-state discourse.

Maurice East’s elegant concluding essay offers useful insight. One broad conclusion offered is that differences between developed and developing countries are narrowing. That needs closer study, because my research suggests a somewhat contrary conclusion, that on average the gulf between the practitioners of ‘smart’ diplomacy and the traditionalists is widening, though all developing states cannot be placed in the latter catch-all group. East also offers four other conclusions:

  • In most countries, the internal and the external policies are closely tied, but we should see them as the factors guiding policies, and not as the perspectives behind policy.
  • Elites play a critical role in most countries. But is this not a truism, since any group that is in a leading position will be labeled as an ‘elite’? Do we really know of countries that are not led by elites?
  • Civil society is more active everywhere, and societal factors are at play in policy-making. But having said that, can we really assert that there are places where ‘citizen-based sovereignty’ is reality?
  • Regional diplomacy is active everywhere.

Everywhere, foreign ministries are in the midst of adaptation, as this book rightly concludes. One area that awaits research is the situation in the transition states of East and Central Europe, and Central Asia, where innovative change is underway.

Diplomacy and Developing Nations: Post-Cold War foreign policy-making structures and processes2019-10-14T20:28:42+01:00

The Twenty-First Century Ambassador: Plenipotentiary to Chief Executive and Asian Diplomacy: The Foreign Ministries of China, India, Japan, Singapore and Thailand

Kishan S. Rana, The Twenty-First Century Ambassador: Plenipotentiary to Chief Executive (Malta and Geneva: DiploFoundation, 2004), pp. xiii + 258. ISBN 99909-55-18-2 (Paperback).

Kishan S. Rana, Asian Diplomacy: The Foreign Ministries of China, India, Japan, Singapore and Thailand (Malta and Geneva: DiploFoundation, 2007) pp. xiii + 246. ISBN 978-99932-53-17-4 (Paperback).

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Guest Review by John W. Young

These latest books by Kishan Rana from the DiploFoundation have all the author’s usual trademarks. As a former member of the Indian Foreign service, with a number of ambassadorships under his belt, he is able to speak with a deep first-hand knowledge of the subjects he addresses. But he also has an academic’s grasp of the relevant primary sources and secondary literature, both historical and theoretical, as well as the ability to carry out his own research in the field when necessary. For Asian Diplomacy this has meant conducting over 160 interviews with diplomats and others involved in the region’s diplomacy. His style is clear and his structure generally logical, with a liberal use of sub-headings and substantial footnotes that make the subjects easy to grasp for the unfamiliar reader. Indeed, both books will be attractive to novices in the field, though there is plenty that will interest the expert too. His insights are particularly valuable where they concern diplomacy in the less-developed world. Thus, in order to illustrate the growing emphasis on business management in professional diplomacy, he kicks off The Twenty-First Century Ambassador with a reference to Thailand’s 2003 decision to make its ambassadors ‘Chief Executive Officers’ in the countries to which they were assigned, taking pride of place among other agencies in projecting Thailand’s political, economic and cultural interests abroad. For its part, Asian Diplomacy is to be welcomed above all as a comparative study of foreign ministries in a region beyond Europe.

Of the two books, The Twenty-First Century Ambassador is likely to have the broadest appeal, given that it ranges more widely in its examples. Rana begins by drawing out some of the key changes in the world of diplomacy over recent decades: the challenges to the so-called ‘gatekeeper role’ of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the growing importance of non-state actors; the multiplication of items on the international agenda; the increasing number of summits; the information revolution; ideas of ‘delivering value to citizens’ (p. 15); the application of new technologies to diplomatic work; the growing size of embassies, with many staff drawn from beyond the Foreign Ministry; and the wider social and educational background of diplomats. After that there are chapters dedicated to: ‘ritual and form’ (protocol, ceremonial, immunities and the like); ‘partners and techniques’ (very much a chapter of two halves: official and non-state interlocutors are dealt with in the first half, while principal functions – negotiation, promotion and outreach – feedback to the sending state, the ambassador’s management role and the embassy’s service role – in consular and commercial work, and public diplomacy – are covered in the second); multilateral diplomacy; the domestic context (including dealings with the Foreign Ministry and political leaders); leadership within the embassy; and ‘human resources’ (ranging from training and language skills to ‘rogue ambassadors’, rewards and sanctions).

In the Conclusion, Rana looks into the future, but in a practical rather than a speculative way, touching on possible developments in the European Union as the concept of a joint foreign policy gathers pace, and the growing emphasis on entrepreneurship as an ambassadorial attribute. But he is confident that the institution of the ambassador is here to stay ‘as the prime, permanent channel of contact and relationship promotion with foreign countries.’ The book is not flawless. Chapter 1 reads more like an extension of the Introduction, providing essential background material (such as how the ‘ambassador’ should be defined) pointing up areas of debate that are not followed through until later on. But it should be recommended reading for those just entering the diplomatic profession, if only to show them that one of the few certainties is that of continuing change.

Building on some of the points made in the earlier book, Asian Diplomacy begins with an outline of the key challenges facing the foreign ministry in an age of globalisation, including the widening of international contacts, the plurality of subjects dealt with by foreign ministries, the impact of new technologies, the significance of public diplomacy and issues of accountability to parliaments and the public. The book then goes on to look at five Asian foreign ministries in turn – China, India, Japan, Singapore and Thailand – looking, in each case, at four common aspects: the historical context of each country’s diplomacy; the institutional structure of the diplomatic service and foreign ministry (including such issues as training and missions abroad); the contemporary priorities of their diplomacy; and the methods pursued in such areas as negotiation, inter-agency co-ordination and crisis management. There is an assessment of each country’s overall practice at the end of each of these chapters, but the real strength of Rana’s approach lies in his ability to draw comparisons between the five cases in his penultimate chapter, drawing out both common reactions to problems (regional diplomacy is a rapidly growing area; diplomacy has become much more professional over time; and, unsurprisingly, all five foreign ministries have found that ‘the best adaptation is continuous reform’, p. 182) and major differences between them (with Singapore emerging the strongest on innovation and risk management). There are plenty of comparisons too, drawn throughout the book, with Western examples.

Perhaps the most interesting chapter is number 7, where Rana explores the notion of an Asian approach to diplomacy, boosted by the continent’s economic growth and in reaction to the West’s hegemony-seeking and emphasis on its own concepts of human rights and democracy. Rana concludes that ‘Asians tolerate diversity; intercultural communication comes rather easily to them. The world sorely needs such qualities… ’ (p. 179) There is room to quibble with his choice of foreign ministries. China, India and Japan are clearly important enough in global terms to justify their inclusion, and as a threesome they also exhibit radically different cultures and political systems. But it would have been interesting to see at least one Islamic country drawn into the frame. As it is, however, the two South-east Asian examples, Thailand and the city-state of Singapore, provide plenty of scope for contrasting practices that fit Rana’s purpose. He is well aware that others can go on to explore the numerous other foreign ministries of Asia. But he can be thanked for, as he puts it, ‘opening the door to further study’ (p. 15) and those future researchers would be well advised to take his book as a model for their own case studies.

The Twenty-First Century Ambassador: Plenipotentiary to Chief Executive and Asian Diplomacy: The Foreign Ministries of China, India, Japan, Singapore and Thailand2019-10-14T20:28:43+01:00

Diplomacy with a Difference: The Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880-2006

(Martinus Nijhoff: Leiden and Boston, 2007), pp. 353, incl. Index. ISBN 978 90 04 15497 1

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In writing her history of the origins and evolution of the office of high commissioner, Dr Lloyd, who is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Keele University, has drawn on a vast range of sources. She has sifted through archives of public and private papers not just in Britain but in Ireland, Canada, and South Africa; and she has conducted many interviews and much correspondence with former high commissioners. As a result she has written the kind of book that used to appear before a swarm of failed mathematicians settled on British universities and spawned things like the risible ‘Research Assessment Exercise’, which has always put quantity before quality. But it is not just the kind of book that requires exhaustive research; it is also the sort that needs careful attention to detail, sharp and well-informed consideration of the wider context of its subject, mellow reflection, and thoughtfulness in its construction for the benefit of its readers. It is thus the kind that takes a long time to produce – but is worth three times the average book that will no doubt receive accolades in the next ‘RAE’. The fact that the subject of Dr Lloyd’s book is important (just look at the size of the Commonwealth) but has never been treated before makes it doubly valuable.

A high commissioner is the head of the resident diplomatic mission of one Commonwealth state to another but has never been simply an ambassador by another name. The office has its origins in the belief that intra-Commonwealth relations are more of a ‘family’ matter than normal ‘foreign’ relations but the implications of this for the status and functions of high commissioners have never been straightforward. In the late nineteenth century, when the Canadians prompted birth of the office, high commissioners were very lowly officials. After the First World War they grew in importance but after the Second World War seemed under threat. Nevertheless, they survived and by the 1960s had come to be regarded as ‘ambassadors plus’. This elevated position did not last long but they are still with us today. Employing to great advantage not only her vast knowledge of the subject but her expertise in international law and general Commonwealth history, Dr Lloyd charts and explains this evolution in a most lucid and convincing fashion. In the process she also produces valuable sidelights on such matters as the deanship of the diplomatic corps, the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic and Consular Relations, Irish foreign policy, the provision of consular support in Commonwealth states, and – in an appendix – the use of the title of ‘high commissioner’ in other international or quasi-international contexts. I learned a great deal from this book, which is one of the best on the history of diplomacy to appear in recent years. There is no doubt that it will come to be regarded as the standard work on the subject. No Foreign Ministry should be without it.

Diplomacy with a Difference: The Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880-20062019-10-14T20:28:43+01:00

Politics and Diplomacy in Early Modern Italy: The structure of diplomatic practice, 1450-1800

(Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2000), pp. 262 incl. index of names [only]. ISBN 0521-56189-2.

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This collection of essays, edited and well introduced by Daniela Frigo of the University of Trieste, reflects the comparatively recent rediscovery of interest in the diplomacy of their own peninsula by Italian historians. (The only non-Italian contributor is Christopher Storrs.) All of the essays are of a high standard and most contain much new research. Adrian Belton is, therefore, also to be congratulated for making them accessible to English readers by means of his excellent translation. It is invidious to pick out particular chapters, so I should make clear that the two I mention below are simply those in which I happen to have a special interest at the moment.

I found Andrea Zannini’s lucid and comprehensive essay on the crisis of Venetian diplomacy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a particularly rewarding read. This was not least because, as the author says, the last work specifically devoted to this subject “dates back more than half a century”, while the famous end-of-tour reports of Venetian diplomatists have tended to attract disproportionate scholarly attention. Venetian diplomacy holding such an important place in the history of diplomacy, this is a very valuable essay. I also found stimulating Maria Grazia Maiorini’s chapter on eighteenth century Neapolitan diplomacy, in the shaping of which the secretary of state, Bernardo Tanucci, played such an influential role. I was struck here by the contrast between Tanucci’s very parsimonious attitude to diplomatic representation and that of his earlier counterpart in France, Cardinal Richelieu (see especially p. 192). So, not all of the architects of early modern diplomacy were disciples of the Cardinal.

There are also essays by Fubini on Florence and Venice in the fifteenth century, Contini on Medicean diplomacy in the sixteenth, Frigo on the diplomacy of the small states of Mantua and Modena, Storrs on Savoyard diplomacy in the eighteenth century, and Riccardi on Vatican diplomacy over the whole period. All hold great interest.

My only regret about this excellent collection – apart from the fact that the name of the best known English writer on diplomacy is repeatedly misspelled (Nicolson, not ‘Nicholson’) – is that it only has a ‘name index’. I would not go so far as to suggest that the grave of the person who first dreamed up the idea of a name-only index should be hunted down and desecrated, though the thought is a tempting one. He has, however, a lot for which to answer. Frigo’s book, in which different authors deal with the same topics, is precisely the kind that cries out for a proper index, that is, one which deals with subjects as well as proper names. The absence of such an index in this work will limit its usefulness to students. I also thought it pretty cheap that, while acknowledging on the Contents page that the book has only an ‘Index of names’, the publisher should then have used the misleading sub-head ‘Index’ at the end of the book. If Cambridge University Press does this sort of thing, all hope is lost.

Politics and Diplomacy in Early Modern Italy: The structure of diplomatic practice, 1450-18002019-10-14T20:28:43+01:00

The Year of Europe: America, Europe and the Energy Crisis, 1972-1974

Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series III, Vol. IV (Routledge: Abingdon, Oxon, 2006, on behalf of the Whitehall History Publishing Consortium)

This is the latest volume in the DBPO series, which has proved so invaluable to diplomatic historians over the years. It comes as a package consisting of two CDs, a slim hardback volume, and an A4-size booklet, and is described in detail on the FCO website.

Putting the documents on searchable CD-Roms is a new departure for the FCO Historians and I congratulate them on it. That they are searchable is an obvious advantage of great value but the new format also enables them to make available far more documents than usual, bring them out more quickly, and actually save copies of some doomed to subsequent destruction because they do not meet the criteria for acquisition by The National Archives – 12 documents on this occasion. The accompanying hardback volume contains: a very useful 43-page thematic Introduction to the contents of the documents by Keith Hamilton, the Senior Editor of the series; a very comprehensive list of the persons who feature in the documents, together with their official positions (invaluable); and a list of all 568 documents together with a one sentence summary of each – what used to be called a ‘calendar’. As for the A4-size booklet, this is a ‘trailer’ for the volume. Put together and also well introduced by Keith Hamilton, this contains a selection of tasty documents on ‘Britain’s role in Kissinger’s nuclear diplomacy, 1972-1973’ – ‘Operation Hullabaloo’, as the FO code-named it. Here there are two items of particular interest to the student of diplomacy.

The first is a reminder that in those days ‘public diplomacy’ still meant diplomacy being conducted with the knowledge of the public – meaning just that they know it is going on, not what is actually being said, so not to be confused with ‘open diplomacy’. (To Henry Kissinger, at the time still National Security Adviser to President Nixon, public diplomacy was almost as distasteful as open diplomacy, though sometimes for good reasons.) Today, of course, and despite all the semantic wriggling that surrounds it, ‘public diplomacy’ is just a euphemism for propaganda conducted by diplomatists and MFAs. The second point in these papers that I found instructive was the revelation that a very senior member of the British Foreign Office was in effect used by Kissinger as his desk officer for the Soviet Union on the highly sensitive issue of whether or not Moscow and Washington should sign an agreement not to use nuclear weapons against each other. The knowledge that this happened is further evidence that Kissinger’s well known contempt for the US State Department did not mean that even he could do without the services of somebody’s ministry of foreign affairs – hence more grist to the mill of those among us who still believe that such ministries remain important.

I shall end this review with just a few words of warning for digital dunces like me. First, though you will be told that you need Adobe Reader 6.0 to run the CDs, they also run on the later versions. Secondly, when you get to the Contents page do not click on the ‘START’ button, which will merely … ahem … take you back to the start, i.e. the title page; instead, click on one of the lines on the Contents page itself. Once you have avoided these traps, into which of course I plunged headlong, all is plain sailing.

The Year of Europe: America, Europe and the Energy Crisis, 1972-19742019-10-14T20:28:43+01:00

Spies in Uniform: British Military and Naval Intelligence on the Eve of the First World War

(Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2006), pp. 272 incl. index. ISBN 0-19-926150-4

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Matthew Seligman, who is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Northampton, sets as his target the claim – recently revived by Niall Ferguson – that the British decision for war in August 1914 was made despite the absence of any compelling evidence that Germany was prompted by a ‘Napoleonic’ design. Focusing on the work of British military and naval attachés in Berlin in the decade and a half before the First World War, Seligmann then fires at this target some hefty broadsides and scores some damaging hits. His long and detailed book will have to be taken very seriously by historians of the origins of this war. It will also be of great interest to historians of diplomacy since the role of service attachés in embassies has been surprisingly neglected. (The only full-length scholarly work on the subject – and that rather ponderous and something of a scissors and paste job – was written by Alfred Vagts back in the 1960s.)

Seligman has long chapters on the social role of the service attachés at the British Embassy in Berlin (a role not to be sneered at, not least because it gave them easy access to Wilhelm II), how they obtained their intelligence and what it contained. His archival research is exhaustive and his analysis lucid and exceptionally systematic. He concludes at the end of these chapters that, though there were naturally some differences of view between the attachés, collectively they were nevertheless ‘harbingers of the German menace’ – arguing, moreover, that it would loom largest in the years from 1913 to 1915. But what can be said of the influence of their reports on government policy? This is the subject of the final and most important chapter, which is as methodical as ever. Here Seligman demonstrates first that the reports of the service attachés were widely distributed at home, surfacing in officer training manuals as well on the desks of senior members of the government. He then documents the evidence to show that they were generally received with great respect, though less so on the relatively rare occasions when they did not support existing preconceptions. And finally he provides a lengthy analysis of two examples of British reactions clearly shaped by the reports of the service attachés: airship development, and naval policy in the context of ‘the alleged “German acceleration” of 1908-9’. His overall conclusion, therefore, is that the service attachés not only warned repeatedly of the German menace but had a receptive audience in government.

There is no doubt that this is an impressive argument, though at the end I felt that the author was not altogether convincing on his third and critical measure of attaché influence – direct evidence of cause and effect. Of course, Seligmann confronted huge problems in this regard because of the massive weeding of War Office and Admiralty files of this period. (He laments this so often and uses the word ‘sadly’ with such frequency that I shall ever afterwards think of him as ‘the mournful Dr Seligmann’!) The research on which his book is based is also so thorough that it is difficult to know what else he could have done. Nevertheless, I thought that the author had slipped a little from his own high standards by providing two examples of attaché influence that the evidence does permit, and then suggesting that these are ‘illustrative of the role of attachés in the decision-making process’ (p. 253). And again: ‘In relation to our third test of attaché influence – impact on government – it can, therefore, be concluded that the service attachés made their mark’ (p. 260). The last sentence is carefully worded but it is clear nevertheless that on this point Seligmann is straining to make a case. The give-away is the word ‘illustrative’ in the previously quoted line. Illustrations, of course, are not proof; they are instances of a general principle proved by some other means. I have some other niggles, among them that the structure leads to some repetition and that the index is not much more than one of proper names (no entry on ‘weeding’, for example, which would have been very useful).

Despite my few reservations, I have no hesitation in saying that this is a very important book. It is also a good read. The detail is rich and interesting and, mournful though Dr Seligmann may be, this does not mean that he lacks a sense of humour. I loved the story about the naval attaché who went to Danzig to meet the British consul, Colonel Brookfield, and was greeted at the station by his ‘sort of an ADC’ – his 12-year old daughter. ‘Baby Brookfield’, as she introduced herself, at once secured the attaché’s luggage and within five minutes they were driving off in a cab. Furthermore, it subsequently transpired that – in the view of the naval attaché – she was the source of the only news of real interest provided by her father. It would be interesting to know if the Colonel supported votes for women.

Spies in Uniform: British Military and Naval Intelligence on the Eve of the First World War2019-10-14T20:28:43+01:00
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