Global go-betweens
CATHERINE FLETCHER is fascinated by a new history exploring the actions and motives of diplomats, and revealing the impact of their work on individuals and nations
This book is not primarily about ambassadors; its subtitle is a much better guide to the contents. Cooper’s main interest lies at a higher level: in foreign ministers and their senior officials, and in how they think. He begins during the Italian Renaissance with a chapter on Machiavelli, then jumps forward to the French court and its ministers Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. The bulk of his case studies, however, are taken from the 20th century, as the great statesmen of the west steer their way through wars both hot and cold. For readers who want to get inside the minds of the policymakers at the top of western diplomacy, this is a fascinating book, written by an author with ample personal experience on which to draw.
Cooper explains that he wants “to convey the drama of diplomacy”, and there is certainly plenty of that in his tales of statecraft, whether concerning the Berlin blockade or the Cuban missile crisis. His emphasis is firmly on Europe and the United States. The Soviet Union is present mainly as antagonist and, though we hear plenty from the memoirs of western diplomats, we don’t get their eastern counterparts; nor is there much on the Global South. The focus, moreover, is on hard power rather than cultural exchange, though there are some wonderful anecdotes – for example, about the US ambassador to Moscow whose interpreter hired circus seals to perform party tricks.
The most intriguing sections of this book are those dealing with lesser-known histories. A chapter is devoted to the diplomacy of Denmark with Nazi Germany, and of Finland with the Soviet Union, giving a fascinating insight into how small states operate within the world system. The final chapter picks up the stories of two consular officials who, despite their relatively low rank in the diplomatic pecking order, did more than most to save Jews from the Holocaust. Frank Foley issued visas from the British consulate in Berlin, while Chiune Sugihara, Japanese vice-consul in Lithuania, did the same to help refugees from occupied Europe cross the Soviet Union. Foley bent the rules to do so; Sugihara broke them. A scattering of others did the same but, as Cooper notes, these were “exceptional people”. By and large, diplomats “followed the rules and their instructions”.
After the Second World War, questions of peace and reconstruction in Europe were taxing minds across the continent and beyond. Cooper explores how they were tackled through diplomacy, via initiatives such as the Marshall Plan and, later, the European Coal and Steel Community – a predecessor of the European Union.
“What has changed Europe,” Cooper writes, “is the creation of a political community among its states who are in continuous communication and negotiation with each other. The EU, for all its faults, has altered the continent in ways that make it quite different from the Europe of 1914 or 1939.” If this is in part a history of diplomacy and its actors, it is also a defence of the idea of a liberal world order that Cooper believes today is under challenge not only from Russia and China but also, in Britain, from the rise of populism.
There are wonderful anecdotes – for example, the US ambassador to Moscow whose interpreter hired circus seals to perform party tricks