Wolfson Plans & Prospects 2019

Diplomacy for the 21st century
Relearning diplomacy
for the 21st century
Tim Hitchens reflects on the
impact of change on his former
profession
During the rule of King Izezi of
Fifth Dynasty Egypt, there was an
outstanding Vizier, Ptahhotep. He was
coming to the end of his working life –
records suggest, stretching the truth I
fear, that he was 110 – and he wanted
to retire. But the King would only let
him retire and pass his mantle to his
son if he wrote down his accumulated
wisdom to support his son in the job,
which he did in his famous maxims.
Among them my favourite is this: “Be
a craftsman in speech, that you may
be strong: for the strength of one is
the tongue, and speech is mightier
than all fighting.”
As a professional diplomat, that’s pretty
much what you hope your career is
all about: honing, crafting, and using
words to avoid war.
When I arrived at Wolfson last May,
having just handed back my diplomatic
passport and my Foreign Office pass,
and no longer called Ambassador,
I was asked to use this first year at
Oxford to invite some of those I most
admired to speak at the College about
diplomacy. The task I set them each
was as follows. Many of us have lived
through the twentieth century, and
understood its diplomacy, especially
the post-war variety. We know Kofi
Annan and the classic UN diplomacy
that through painful and cautious small
steps can build consensus through
compromise (the informal UN motto
is “Blessed are the peacemakers, for
they shall take flak from both sides”!).
We know the way in which G7 leaders
meet annually to agree the broad lines
of economic policy. We know how US
and Soviet, then Russian leaders have
engaged with each other. We’ve seen
“special relationships” between the UK
and US mediated through a series of
presidents and prime ministers. We’ve
seen the long and careful evolution of
the European Union. And we’ve seen
the way in which these organisations
and partnerships have dealt with war
and conflict in flashpoints around the
world.
But we need to relearn diplomacy for
this century. Foreign policy is not just
a Euro-Atlantic process dealing with
difficult countries elsewhere. It has new
centres of power, new players, and
above all new ways of playing. What
are the new rules of the game? Are
there rules of the game still?
So I invited a range of speakers to
come to Wolfson to set out how they
think the world will be different this
century, and the way in which the
diplomacy that tries to regulate it will
be different.
Koji Tsuruoka is not a typical
Japanese Ambassador. His English
is impeccable (if American, I am
L Tim Hitchens with Koji Tsuruoka,
Japanese Ambassador to the UK
tempted to say); his background is
as an interpreter for Prime Ministers
and Foreign Ministers, honed in the
US, but also as a hard-nosed trade
negotiator. He described for us the
way in which we Europeans need to
be less Euro-centric, and how the
strategic interests of the US were
moving from the East Coast and
Atlantic to the West Coast and Pacific.
The heart of global growth – what kept
us all from crashing further in 2008-09
– was the Asian tiger, including but
not exclusively China. The existential
challenge for global leadership and
global governance in this coming
century will be between the US and
China, and will be negotiated or fought
out across the Pacific. The Europeans
and the Americans will still be critical
actors, but their importance will rest
WOLFSON COLLEGE OXFORD . PLANS & PROSPECTS . 2019 . 9