it has been citizens from Tunis to Kiev who took the ability to network that those geeks created and turned it into something extraordinary. In years to come, people may say that the most powerful weapon in this period of the twenty-first century was not sarin gas or the nuclear bomb, but the smartphone. We have seen the power of the best of old ideas allied with the best of new technology. Regimes can ban iPhones, but the freedom and innovation that they represent will get through in the end.
This new context changes everything. Increasingly, it matters less what a prime minister or diplomat says is ‘our policy’ on an issue – it matters what the users of Google, Facebook or Twitter decide that it is. Set-piece events are being replaced by more fluid, open interaction with the people whose interests we are there to represent.
So, escaping the politics, thrills and tensions of Downing Street, there was only one place to go to maintain the adrenalin. In 2011, I moved to the epicentre of many of the earthquakes shaking the Middle East: Beirut.
My nineteenth-century predecessors as ambassadors to Lebanon went by horse, traversing the Levant region at a civilised pace that modern Lebanese traffic jams try to recreate. My twentieth-century predecessors went by air and road – one, Edward Spears, landed during the Second World War and commandeered at gunpoint the first car he saw.
By the time I got there, communication was digital. Living on the Road to Damascus, I anticipated revelations. From the beginning of my stay, it was clear to me that if we couldn’t win the argument for democracy, politics and coexistence in a country like Lebanon, we’d lose it closer to home. And that social media was a new and vital tool for us in fighting that battle, just as it was a tool for our opponents. We would need to go toe to toe, tweet by tweet.
Celebrity cook Jamie Oliver, as the Naked Chef, sought to pare back cooking to the essentials. In Lebanon, I came to realise that the diplomat needs to do the same (perhaps with an iPad to protect his modesty), while preserving the skills that have always been essential to the role: an open mind, political savvy, and a thick skin. I moved from being an intimate typist to being a Naked Diplomat.
Like the best traditional diplomacy, iDiplomacy is raw and human. The ‘tweeting Talleyrands’2 need to interact, not transmit. They will learn the language of this new terrain in the way they have learnt Mandarin or Arabic.
Equipped with the right kit, and the right courage, diplomats should be among the pioneers of the new digital terrain. They are already writers, advocates and analysts, albeit for a rarefied audience. They must now become digital interventionists. The most important thing social media does for us is not information management, or even engagement. It is that, for the first time, we have the means to influence the countries we work in on a massive scale, not just through elites.
This is exciting, challenging and subversive. Getting it wrong could start a war: imagine if a diplomat mistakenly tweeted a link to an offensive anti-Islam film. Getting it right has the potential to rewrite the diplomatic rulebook. A digital démarche,‡ involving tens of thousands, will be more effective than the traditional démarche by a single ambassador, because it can mobilise public opinion to change another country’s policy.
The Internet brings non-state actors into the conversation. That’s part of the point. Those we engage with will be a mix of the influential, curious, eccentric and hostile. Once they’re in, they can’t be ignored. Diplomacy is action not reportage, so diplomats will need to show that they can use these new tools to change the world, not just describe how it looks.
I ask colleagues who are not convinced about the power of these new digital tools to imagine an enormous diplomatic reception with all their key contacts. No serious diplomat would delegate such an event, as some delegate their Twitter accounts. None would stand in the corner shouting platitudes about warm bilateral relations, as do too many people via official social media channels. No one would turn up but lurk silently in the corner, as do too many on digital accounts. Better to be in the mix, sharing information in order to get information, hearing the best of the new ideas and confronting the worst. With or without the Ferrero Rocher.
When the way the world communicates changes, so must its diplomats. They transformed the profession when the ground was cultivated, when the stirrup was invented, when sea routes opened up, when empires rose and fell, and when the telephone came along. Someone once said that you could replace diplomats with the fax. They saw off the fax, and – in more recent years – the telegram. (Yes, in that order for the British Foreign Office.)
Now we have to prove that you can’t replace diplomats with Wikipedia, just because it knows more facts. You can’t replace diplomats with Skype, just because you can now speak to far-flung places over a broadband line. And you can’t replace diplomats with Twitter, just because you no longer need to shout from a real balcony to reach crowds of people. Diplomats must adapt their business and their mindset to these extraordinary and revolutionary new digital tools.
Many of us have made mistakes on social media, but the biggest mistake is not to be on it. It is survival of the digitally fittest.
We need to seize our smartphones.
But are we already too late?
* As Churchill said, ‘History will be kind to me, because I intend to write it.’
† I once received an email from Gordon Brown at 3.45 a.m. Another time I showed him a document on my BlackBerry. I was pleased when he commented ‘This is good.’ But not for long. He clarified – ‘Not your paper, that’s hopeless, the scroll function.’
‡ French term for a formal diplomatic meeting, in which the ambassador passes on messages from his capital.
INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST EDITION
‘Now listen, Mother dear,’ said Basil, ‘the Foreign Service has had its day – enjoyable while it lasted, no doubt, but over now. The privileged being of the future is the travel agent.’
Nancy Mitford, ‘Don’t Tell Alfred’ (1960)
New York Times columnist Roger Cohen has declared that ‘diplomacy – the kind that produced Nixon’s breakthrough with China, an end to the Cold War on American terms, the Dayton peace accord in Bosnia – is dead’.1 He is not alone. Should diplomats be packing up their diplomatic bags and finding something more productive to do?
Diplomacy is easy when you are a country on the up. Representatives of other countries answer your telephone calls, seek you out, expand their embassies and trade delegations. Magazines put you on the cover and talk up your rise. Your leader gets invited to the country houses of his counterparts, keen to bask in his reflected vigour and success. Your business lounges fill up. You have the wind in your sails.
Diplomacy is easy when you have won on the battlefield. Your rivals or opponents are more inclined to see things your way, and your allies to cut you some slack. You can flex your muscles and set the terms.
Diplomacy is easy when your people are in a pioneering mindset. The diplomats who manage empires
