>> Again, I suppose the opposite of that is very simply when they're not talking.
If you're not talking and relations are completely broken down and
whether it's especially if there's not even any back channel discussions.
Then clearly this is a failure.
And the most important thing of diplomacy is to keep the dialogue going,
even if it going around in circles, even if you're shouting slogans each other.
One thinks of Kruschev banging his shoe on the table.
The fact that you keep talking eventually I think gets there.
So the moment you stop talking, you say I'm not speaking to the other side.
Unless you have a mediator who's coming in and shuttling from room to room,
that's clearly the worst thing.
To not have any dialogue whatsoever.
>> Okay, and leaving behind perhaps the sort of high politics of ambassadors,
treaties and the like.
Where else do you see diplomacy at work in the contemporary world,
historical world even?
>> Well I suppose the most interesting, and becoming more and
more interesting is non-state.
I mean under the terms of the various Vienna Conventions of the 1960s,
the state is identified as the only one that can accredit official diplomats.
So now if we're looking at that sort of non-state-centric diplomacy,
business diplomacy, perhaps,
is an interesting area, which is not perhaps as new as we might think.
If you go back to the 1700s in the East India Company and these sorts of things,
the Hudson Bay Company.
Clearly they were involved in non-standard, non-state-centric
diplomacy and interaction, and even signing of treaties as well.
So non-governmental and non-state-centric involved in diplomacy,
I think is of more and more interest.
I suppose the UN Climate Change Conferences and
I was about to say jamborees.
I don't want that to necessarily sound negative, but where you're having states,
international organizations, pressure groups.
The Arctic Council might be another one where
indigenous peoples are also involved in the negotiations as well.
This is clearly an area that is expanding, that was quite difficult to identify about
say 40 to 50 years ago but it's becoming increasingly important.
>> Okay great, thinking about some of the people who operate this diplomacy.
Who are the sort of stars?
Who are the those who you look to with a degree of admiration or indeed disdain but
nevertheless those that you could attribute as quality diplomats.
>> Yeah, I was giving this some thought, and
my immediate reaction was to think of Harold Nicholson.
And then I was thinking about that and I thought,
well, he wasn't probably a very good diplomat.
And I actually hold him in high regard for the quality of his writing,
rather than the quality of his diplomacy.
[LAUGH] And after all, he wasn't quite sacked, but
he sort of walked away with something of a cloud over his head.
So maybe not, I mean, there are others you think of.
And I was going through a list and I was struggling to think of them.
And then the other night I had dinner with an old school friend of mine.
He's actually now working for the foreign office, and I won't mention any names or
where he's currently posted.
But what struck me about what he was saying is his
genuine enthusiasm for the job.
And he tells the story that when he first was offered the position,
he thought to himself, what's the job I would do for free, and
happily do it without being paid.
And he decided that being a diplomat was one of those things.
And he just seems to get a lot out of it, and
genuinely enjoys it, even the boring bits.
And I think having that genuine enthusiasm for being posted around the world,
in good, bad and indifferent postings and
being able to maintain the level of enthusiasm that he does.
How much longer he'll be able to do it, I don't know.
But maintaining that enthusiasm is what you would look for in a good diplomat.
Being able to be sort of comfortable in more or less any situation and
maintaining that enthusiasm.
How many great diplomats really do that in perpetuity, I wonder.
And I think there's probably a sell by date.
And even thinking about that,
I was also thinking about the question of what diplomats do when they retire.
And I can't help thinking perhaps as academics and students of diplomacy,
perhaps we're mistaken sometimes in taking that cut off point of when they
leave the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or Ministry of External Affairs.
because after all, there's a whole range of diplomats that then go off and
do other things.
And I wonder whether we shouldn't sometimes look more about what they do
once they leave, and where they take that skill set and what they do with it.
>> Okay, picking up on if you're identifying enthusiasm as one of the key
qualities of a diplomat.
Are there any other that you'd like to sort of identify?
Well enthusiasm is obviously one.
I mean De Caluire wrote out a great long list of what a good diplomat which we've
all studied at one point or another.