Waste Of Worldly Wisdom

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Waste Of Worldly Wisdom

A posthumous book on the cold war shows why Downing Street's disdain for diplomats is not in the country's interests

Max Hastings
The Guardian
June 7, 2005

There has seldom been a time when career diplomats have been held in lower esteem. They are widely perceived as slightly superior restaurant maitre d's, vacuously meeting and greeting each other, perceiving international exchange as a good in its own right, heedless of any ultimate objective.

Margaret Thatcher famously asserted: "I never had much use for diplomacy and I have got on very well without it." Today, morale in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is poor, because Downing Street has assumed direct responsibility for all the diplomacy that matters. The FCO was ruthlessly excluded from the decision-making loop in the approach to the Iraq war, not least because it entertained grave doubts about the wisdom of US policy, and thus of British subordination to it.

Some of us, however, retain a high respect for the FCO. Of course some of the charges are true, that it is better at identifying issues than resolving them. But I have seldom spent an hour with a senior British diplomat without hearing something interesting, perceptive, penetrating.

Michael Alexander was a notable example of the breed. He spent much of the cold war working on east-west relations, with a spell as a private secretary to Thatcher, and finally serving in 1986-92 as ambassador to Nato. A collection of his writings has recently been published to celebrate his memory - he died in 2002, aged only 65.

Managing the Cold War is in most respects a book for historians, as it addresses events long past. But it contains reflections about international relations that deserve a wider audience, because they are sensible and humane, and do honour to the trade to which Alexander belonged.

"For most purposes," he observes, "Madison was right: 'compromise, compromise and compromise' are the three principles on which good government must be based'... Pragmatism and moderation are more important and more fruitful than hyperbole and self-righteousness. Only those not involved in the search for sustainable solutions can aspire to the moral high ground.

"Decades of essentially sound management of the cold war paid off. The assumption that military conflict was to be avoided at almost any cost had become deeply rooted in all the bureaucracies that mattered, as had the conviction that it was possible to negotiate about virtually anything."

In the mind of Thatcher, or Donald Rumsfeld, such remarks as these exemplify the case against diplomats. Alexander himself spent a long spell as UK representative at the Mutual Balanced Force Reduction talks in Vienna, which continued for 15 years without visible achievement, until the collapse of the Soviet Union rendered them redundant.

Reading his tales of bargaining with the Soviets makes one marvel that any man could retain his sanity, exchanging proposals day after day and month after month with opponents whose dogged ideological hostility to the west nullified any chance of progress.

Yet we should never underestimate the role played by negotiation, accompanied by a firm western military posture that Alexander supported, in keeping us alive. The happy outcome of the cold war, as he observes, should never be taken for granted.

Some of Alexander's comments on international relations seem very pertinent today. He laments the incorrigible selfishness of France: "French diplomats were invariably among the most talented, energetic and personally agreeable of one's colleagues... the elegance of their contribution was rarely equalled... Equally regularly, those abilities were deployed in pursuit of objectives, or in defence of positions, that were nationalistic in the narrowest sense..."

Alexander was without illusions about US attitudes, too: "When the stakes are high enough the Americans... will consult their own interest first and those of others later, if at all... Proponents of the special relationship would do well to remember that... this has been for many years a one-way relationship...

"I am not sure that we have yet fully appreciated the complications likely to flow from having as the world's only superpower a democracy whose electorate is conscious that for the next generation at least that country's power will be unchallenged by that of any other state. Voters in the United States are unlikely to be very attracted by the tolerant, generous and long-term policies that the global situation demands."

All this was written, of course, well before the Iraq war. So, too, was Alexander's assertion about "the tendency of the intelligence community... persistently, and sometimes grossly, to overrate the performance of and therefore... the threat from the opposition."

The author's final piece of wisdom concerns the need for Europe to develop its own security identity. The wilful refusal of Europeans to take defence seriously, which Alexander began to lament almost 30 years ago, has become even more glaring and shameful today. How can we expect Washington to heed anything Europe says when, by its abdication from credible self-defence, it exposes its determination to leave the world's security in US hands?

Alexander summarises the lessons of his years of negotiating with the Russians: "The most successful western [diplomats] were those who knew what they wanted; were patient and stayed awake; were precise; put things down on paper; were honest and frank most of the time; were blunt when necessary and cheerful when possible. In short, the best way to deal with the Russians seemed to be to treat them as though they were exactly the same as everyone else, while bearing in mind that they were not."

The FCO employs a lot of people who know a great deal about the world, and we are lucky to have them. Michael Alexander's book shows what a mistake it is for Downing Street to marginalise professional diplomats. It may suit the vanity of prime ministers to take international relations into their own private offices, but this is seldom in the interests of their country.

Managing the Cold War is published by the Royal United Services Institute.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004