Insight into why we still need diplomats
A thorough account of 20th-century diplomacy is both frustrating and entertaining, writes Adam Roberts.
This account of the life of Christopher Mallaby, an exceptionally wellinformed oracle on EastWest relations, might appear insufferably orthodox: Eton, the 9th Lancers, King’s College Cambridge, then the FCO, ending as ambassador to Germany and France.
Fortunately, Mallaby has a hinterland: an interest in art, languages and people, that enlivens this memoir. He has a strong sense of humour and an eye for the absurd.
He recounts numerous entertaining episodes, starting in his National Service days with the British Army of the Rhine. His colonel was curious to see Hamburg’s red light district, on the dubious grounds that he sometimes had to discipline British soldiers who misbehaved there. Mallaby was his interpreter. The cabaret in the Lausen Bar consisted of naked ladies, mounted on ponies, riding around the tables. The colonel bellowed a significant price in English, and the manager agreed. Then it transpired that the colonel, a keen polo player, wanted the pony, not the girl. Assisted by Mallaby’s expert interpretation, he bought the pony, taking it away in their Army truck.
The Cold War, and its ending, provides the framework of Mallaby’s story. Joining the Foreign Office in 1959, he learned Russian, and then specialised in the critical issue of Soviet relations with the developing world. At the UN in New York he witnessed Khrushchev taking his shoe off and banging the desk with it. Mallaby relates Harold Macmillan’s immortal retort: ‘‘Mr President, perhaps we could have a translation’’.
Mallaby’s first job as ambassador was to West Germany in 1988. A fluent German speaker, and already familiar with the country, he understood the pressures for change in East Germany. Yet he admits that he was astonished when, on November 9, 1989, he came home from a meeting to be told by his wife that the Wall was open. He promptly suggested that Margaret Thatcher might enjoy a visit to Berlin to see history and freedom in the making. He was told that the Prime Minister could not come. This was a foretaste of looming troubles over British policy on German unification.
There are different views of how well he handled the awkwardness of supporting a policy that was at odds with the Prime Minister’s. He had huge respect for Thatcher and he avoided public disagreement but, at the same time, reported to Whitehall the strength of the case for unification.
The narrative in this book provides a strong justification of the role of the diplomat. It was Mallaby’s deep understanding of the countries to which he was posted that was the basis of his achievements in the Soviet Union and Germany. My disappointment is that at several points in his book he appears to support the narrowly materialistic description of the diplomat’s role as to support British interests and British business.
It is about time that equal emphasis was placed on the diplomat’s job of understanding foreign societies, cultures, and languages. Mallaby’s book provides ample evidence for the benefits of such an approach.