Diplomacy rivals prostitution as the oldest profession. Like street-walking, it has never enjoyed a wholly favourable reputation. Often confused with its clandestine cousin, espionage, it has for centuries been associated with deviousness and duplicity. Added to this is the outdated but stubbornly enduring image of the aristocratic diplomat, clad in pinstripes, quaffing champagne, leading the good life in a magnificent embassy. Despite such stereotypes, other countries have traditionally held the British Foreign Office in high esteem for its pragmatism and expertise. Sadly, this reputation is now under threat. Like much of Whitehall, the Foreign Office today cannot make up its mind whether it is a service or a business. Blitzed by Labour's targets culture and short of funds, it is punching well below its weight, when diplomacy is needed as much today as at any time in the past 500 years. I joined the Foreign Office on a warm autumn day in 1966, at the age of 22. I was astonished at the lack of formal preparation for the job. After a month-long induction, I found myself a wet-behind-the-ears but fully functioning British diplomat, expected to advise my seniors, including the secretary of state, on all aspects of relations with some 15 African states. That was the British way of doing things: to learn on the job. It still is to some extent. The British diplomatic tradition is not to be overly abstract or intellectual. It is in some contrast to continental Europe, where diplomacy is often taught at specialist academies. In Germany, after years of studying things like international law, virgin diplomats are not let loose until they are sniffing the approach of middle age. In Britain we do not have academies. We do not teach diplomacy, we teach foreign languages. This approach works. However, it did not take me long to realise that I had joined an organisation as troubled as it was talented. These were the years when the words of Dean Acheson, a former American secretary of state, rang in our ears: "Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role." The Foreign Office suffered a prolonged agony of introspection, reflected in inquiry after inquiry into the purpose and nature of British diplomacy. The most far-reaching of these, the 1977 report of the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS), in essence recommended the abolition of the Diplomatic Service and its integration into the home Civil Service. Fortunately, this conclusion was rejected, and the government endorsed the primacy of the Foreign Office in the conduct of foreign policy. As a result, it regained its footing and self-confidence. But, 30 years later, the FO has, according to numerous witnesses, fallen again on hard times, surrendering swathes of responsibility for foreign policy to other players in the Whitehall community. The notion, for example, that the Foreign Secretary is responsible "for the overall conduct of overseas relations" has been undermined by the activism abroad of the Prime Minister's office and the autonomy and funding given to the Department for International Development, which, with a budget at least three times that of the Foreign Office, pursues its own agenda abroad. One diplomat told me recently that she feared that "we will just end up a Ministry for Consular Affairs, rescuing distressed travellers and tourists." How was this allowed to happen? After all, following the bleak under-achievement of the Seventies, Britain enjoyed more than a generation of economic renaissance, which enabled us to play a confident and assertive role in the world. How is it possible that the wise and careful Lord Hurd, a former foreign secretary and professional diplomat, could get up in the House of Lords this year and speak of "a malaise becoming increasingly apparent" in the working of the Foreign Office; of an organisation that has been "hollowed out", because it is no longer "a storehouse of knowledge providing valued advice to ministers and is increasingly an office of management ... of a steadily shrinking overseas service"? What lies beneath accusations made in 2008 by the human resources consultancy Couraud, hired by the Foreign Office itself, of "institutional timidity", "a cultural fear of failure", "people getting to the very top of the Office by never making any mistakes"? The use of outside consultants is itself part of the problem: the symptom of weak leadership that cannot see what needs to be done; or, if it does, dares not make changes without some sort of validation from the private sector. This is not a phenomenon peculiar to the Foreign Office. New Labour's obsessive reliance on the alchemy of consultants has infected much of Whitehall. The culture of targets, set by the Treasury, has acquired the madness and mendacity of Soviet statistics. While I was in Washington as ambassador, from 1997 until 2003, I had to engage in an annual objective-setting exercise. In principle, it is absolutely right to set clear goals for your embassy. But the Foreign Office, throttled by the Treasury's grip on its budget, insisted on a bureaucratic exercise of elephantine proportions. The Office had its own objectives. Each department within the Office had its own. Each embassy and high commission had theirs, as did individual officials. The idea was that there should be a "cascade" of objectives from the top to the bottom. Getting all these objectives to fit together took ages. Finally, like the annual promulgation of the theses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the objectives would be published, often months into the year to which they were meant to apply. They were, for all practical purposes, dead on arrival. Meantime, we just got on with the job for which there was only one authentic objective: advancing the national interest, using our judgment, common sense and professional skills to work out how to get from A to B. The Foreign Office website continues to be riddled with the jargon of management consultancy. There is much talk of corporate leadership, audit and risk, business strategies, "change owners" and what appears to be the terrible sin of "change-bunching". Innovation has become a virtue in its own right, as if permanent revolution were necessary for the effectiveness of British foreign policy. Reform and modernisation are periodically necessary. Today's Foreign Office is a better place for the true meritocracy of its recruitment. But, the price paid for necessary improvements has been high. I still have ringing in my ears something said to me on my first day in the Office: "Always remember this is a service, not a business." That has seemed to me ever since a pretty good principle for all Whitehall. But, over a generation or more, it has become progressively diluted. Consultants, special advisers and sundry outsiders – many with Civil Service status on short-term, high-paying contracts – have been increasingly entrusted with tasks once reserved for the mainstream Civil Service. It is not as if this has led to any obvious improvement in efficiency. The implicit deal when I joined was clear: we will pay you modestly (£60 a month after tax in 1966), in return for which you will get job security, a final-salary pension and a decoration if you do well – and, by the way, you will go wherever we choose to post you. That admirable ethos looks to me in pieces, perhaps beyond repair. This has not been great for British diplomacy, when it should be protecting our national interest. The poor bloody infantry can win a thousand firefights in Helmand province, and earnest officials from the Department for International Development can make their plans for a bridge here, a dam there, but until these efforts are linked to an achievable political process, underpinned by diplomacy, they are so much waste of blood and treasure. President Obama is vulnerable to the charge of dithering in Afghanistan. But, I too would dither if there were no credible political process that justified the troops' sacrifices. The three pillars of the national interest are security, prosperity and values. Sometimes these pillars are, as they should be, mutually reinforcing. Sometimes one – especially values – will be in conflict with the others. Either way, there are sharp lessons to be drawn from the past to guide us through the turbulent present. The sharpest of them all is that, despite the profound changes in international affairs over the past 500 years – geopolitical, demographic, economic, environmental, technological – a nation that loses sight of its interests, and neglects its diplomacy, is a nation lost. Britain risks such a fate. © Christopher Meyer, 2009. Extracted from 'Getting Our Way: 500 Years of Adventure and Intrigue: the Inside Story of British Democracy', published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, on sale now at £18.99. Christopher Meyer will be presenting a major BBC television series also entitled 'Getting Our Way', which will be broadcast in February and will be produced by Wingspan ProductionsLights are going out at the Foreign Office
The Foreign Office, once the envy of the world, is losing its power and prestige, says Christopher Meyer.
I remember being told by a Japanese diplomat how Tokyo had studied several of the European diplomatic services and had concluded that the British one was best. It was admired in particular for its professionalism, negotiating skills, and profound knowledge of abroad. The Foreign Office was organised around great clans of specialists: Arabists, Kremlinologists, Sinologists and
the like.
Monday 2 November 2009
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