As evening fell the day’s oppression lifted;
Tall peaks came into focus; it had rained:
Across wide lawns and cultured flowers drifted
The conversation of the highly trained.
Thin gardeners watched them pass and priced their shoes;
A chauffeur waited, reading in the drive,
For them to finish their exchange of views:
It looked a picture of the way to live.
Far off, no matter what good they intended,
Two armies waited for a verbal error
With well-made implements for causing pain,
And on the issue of their charm depended
A land laid waste with all its young men slain,
Its women weeping, and its towns in terror.
W. H. Auden, ‘The Embassy’
INTRODUCTION TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
I would obviously like to claim that 2016 proved this book right. After all, in a post-truth world, we can all claim anything. In my favour, it was a year in which many of the themes of The Naked Diplomat – truth and lies online and offline; coexistence versus wall building; open versus closed societies; the implications of our inability to reach angry and frustrated parts of our societies – have been thrust into centre stage.
But nobody really called 2016. I predicted that of the United Nations, US, France and the UK, two would be run by women in 2017. I may have got the wrong two. It has been a logic-defying, irrational year, in which three acronyms officially entered the dictionary – ‘LOL’, ‘OMG’ and ‘WTF’. And many began to worry that liberalism could be confined to the dictionary.
Among the many ironies of 2016, Germany emerged as the bulwark against Fascism; the Pope emerged as the leading spokesman for freedom; China emerged as the defender of the Davos consensus; and a TV celebrity billionaire emerged as the voice of the ordinary American. Empowered citizens voted for policies they knew would make them poorer; for liars to clean up politics; and to take back control by reducing their global influence. And experts responded to accusations that they were no longer needed by being consistently wrong. Meanwhile, Russia bombed Syrian civilians to save them from terror. George Orwell, take a bow.
The beginning and end of chapters in history books can be pretty arbitrary. But 2016 is the end of the chapter that started in 1989, or maybe even 1945 or 1789. It could be the end of the American Age. It might mark the (hopefully temporary) resignation of America as a driving force for liberty throughout the world. Donald Trump’s election created a vacancy for leader of the free world. For the first time in my life, we can take nothing about the next year for granted, let alone the next decade: because 2016 is the new normal. We are in new and uncertain terrain.
I think three themes run through Brexit, the rise of Trump and the polarisation of political debate that we have seen.
Firstly, the West is in an Age of Distrust. Authority is one more devalued currency. The UK parliamentary vote on military action in Syria in 2013 was rejected because Iraq had destroyed confidence in the establishment’s ability to make sound foreign policy. Likewise, many rejected staying in the EU because MPs’ expenses, the banking crisis and EU mismanagement had destroyed confidence in Westminster, the Square Mile and Brussels. And – ironically for a tycoon and TV personality – Trump is a rejection of the establishment and mainstream media. YouGov report that public trust is plummeting not just in politics, the media and the banks, but also in teachers, doctors and the police.
So, institutions traditionally based on consent, deference and trust are failing, and politics is failing. For the first time in recent history, the challenge is not states with too much power, but too little. Declining powers such as Russia are more disruptive than rising ones. And the great powers don’t seem to want to exert great power. Meanwhile, a Europe used to summits where it discussed other countries as problems – Afghanistan/Pakistan, the Middle East, North Korea – is now finding itself on the agenda. On the global balance sheet, it has moved from being an exporter of solutions to an exporter of problems. And, as US Senator Mike Enzi says, ‘if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu’.
Facing this new context, leaders and politicians are struggling to connect, to get their message through. As Shelley is quoted as saying of a rival, ‘he had lost the art of communication, but not alas the gift of speech’. And the politicians know it. One recent European leader told me: ‘We no longer think it is just the past that is another country. It is now the present that is another country.’ We all feel better connected but less well informed. For the first time, our problem is too much information, not too little. Being more in touch has reduced our ability to ‘reach out and touch people’.1 Hence the distrust.
Secondly, we have been reminded of Mark Twain’s nifty observation that history rhymes.* After economic downturns, nations turn inwards at the moment they should look outwards (and this was, of course, happening before Trump). They become nationalist when they should be internationalist. I now understand why we spent so much time at school studying the Weimar Republic. The consequences of the crash of 2008–9 could be as great as those after the crash of 1929.
And thirdly, as the first edition of this book argued, the flux we are experiencing is just the initial implications of the Internet. How humans interact socially and economically is changing at a faster pace than at any time in history. So how we interact politically is going to change too, as we are seeing in elections throughout the West. Look at the impact of the printing press and scale it up. There will be many losers. At a time of massive prosperity, inequality continues to rise, unleashing the spasms of anger we are seeing at the ballot box and that we will increasingly see on our streets. It was not American poverty that generated Trump but American prosperity.
I have a confession to make: I was on Trump’s mailing list. It started out gently. I took his questionnaire on media bias, just to disagree with it. But then I was sucked further in, like a potential terrorist being slowly radicalised. I received several emails a day addressing me as his key supporter. More questionnaires. I had one asking for debate advice – I suggested a greater focus on tolerance. One from Newt Gingrich asked for personal advice on how to win in November – ‘Change the candidate,’ I offered. So much for experts.
But thanks to my fascination with how his campaign pitched their world view to those they thought shared it – aggressive, macho, divisive, dishonest – I did not unsubscribe from this deluge of direct engagement. It reminded me of two personal experiences as a communicator. Firstly, my Indiana summer selling door to door in the Midwest – ‘Everyone’s buying it,’ we would repeat like a mantra. And secondly, the online arguments with extremists in the Middle East that this book describes. They and the Trump campaign used the same rhetorical and political devices – ‘us and them’, find someone to blame, we can make you great again.
Let’s