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For 500 years, our little island,

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Britain, has punched above
its weight around the world,

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Getting Our Way.

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The means to our success?

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Not just gunboats and commerce,
but ruthless power broking,

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Machiavellian manoeuvring,

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and plenty of charm.

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Diplomacy.

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Diplomats are the people you
don't often get to hear about,

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it's the kings and queens,
the politicians and the generals

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who dominate the history books.

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But this series is
about my predecessors

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who championed
Britain's interests abroad -

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ambassadors and envoys,
power brokers and negotiators.

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You must never forget

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that it's British interests which
you're there to promote and protect.

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You're constantly having to talk to,
make deals with, make concessions to,

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people who in other ways
are doing things

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which you thoroughly dislike
and disapprove of.

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You have to be a bit of a schemer,

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otherwise you can't do
the job properly.

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As our man in Washington,
I saw history in the making.

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Now I'm putting myself
in the shoes

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of different diplomats over
the last five centuries,

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who ensured Britain's
rise to greatness

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and who managed our decline.

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No-one doubts that
Security and Prosperity

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are the twin pillars
of the National Interest.

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But what has always been
much more controversial

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is the question of Values.
The idea that, maybe,

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there should be an ethical
dimension to foreign policy.

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History has had too many
examples of us standing by

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and then saying, "Never again."

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And then we find ourselves
a few years down the road saying,

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"Never again." Again.
And where will it be the next time?

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MUEZZIN CALLS TO PRAYER

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Istanbul - where Asia meets Europe,
Islam meets Christendom.

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The only city in the world
to span two continents.

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For much of the last 500 years,
Constantinople,

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as it was then called, was the top
ambassadorial post for Britain.

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# Istanbul

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# Istanbul

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# Istanbul was Constantinople

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# Now it's Istanbul

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# Not Constantinople

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# Been a long time gone
Old Constantinople

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# Still has Turkish Delight
on a moonlit night. #

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In 1876, this was the epicentre
of the first great controversy

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in our history about ethics
and foreign policy.

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# So if you've a date
in Constantinople

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# She'll be waiting in Istanbul. #

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Our man on the ground
was Sir Henry Elliot.

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His official title was
"Ambassador to the Sublime Porte",

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named after this monumental gateway
which led into the offices

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of the Grand Vizier
of Ottoman Turkey.

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The Ottoman Empire was an important
strategic ally for Britain,

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and Henry Elliot was tasked

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with maintaining this
"special relationship".

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He did so diligently - he was
a rather conventional diplomat,

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but one experienced
and trusted for his quiet firmness.

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Eliot conducted most of his
business from here, Pera House,

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today Britain's Consulate-General.

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Dealing with our Ottoman allies
was never entirely straightforward.

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There was something to the popular
view of sultans and viziers,

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harems and eunuchs, and layer
upon layer of court intrigue.

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And of course, from time to time,

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the Ottomans behaved
pretty outrageously.

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The Ottoman Empire was vast.

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In Europe, it reached far
into the Balkans,

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where its Christian subjects
were increasingly restless
for independence.

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The Ottomans suppressed
a series of rebellions

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with savage and exemplary brutality.

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Worst of all was the treatment meted
out to the Bulgarians in April 1876.

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The news came through to Henry
Elliot in a trickle of reports.

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Some 15,000 Bulgarians massacred,

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dozens of villages completely
destroyed by the Bashi-bazouks,

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Muslim irregulars in the pay of the
Sultan, the 19th-century equivalent,

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if you like, of the Janjaweed,
wreaking havoc in Darfur.

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Funded by the state
and notoriously ferocious.

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Henry Elliot was appalled.

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Unarmed men, women and children
were slaughtered indiscriminately,

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sometimes burned alive in
the schools and churches

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where they had sought refuge.

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A British consular official,
sent to investigate,

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reported from the small
Bulgarian town of Batak.

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"I visited this valley of
the shadow of death,

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"the stench was so overpowering.

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"The whole of the main street
was a mass of human remains.

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"But the most fearful spectacle
was the church and its enceinte.

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"Here the corpses lay so thick

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"that one could hardly
avoid treading on them.

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"Altogether I can hardly describe
the horror of the scene".

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1876 still lives strong
in local memory.

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The news from Bulgaria posed
a classic foreign policy dilemma.

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A regime important to Britain
violates human rights

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within its own sovereign frontiers.
The world is aghast.

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What is Britain going
to do about it?

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Sir Henry Elliot did what most
ambassadors would have done.

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He lodged a strong protest
with the Ottoman Grand Vizier

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and reported back to headquarters
in London. After that,

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as far as Elliot was concerned
and until London told him otherwise,

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it was business as usual.

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Nothing could have prepared him
for the reaction from home.

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While the government was hearing the
news from our man in Constantinople,

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the public were gripped by reports

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wired from the killing fields of
Bulgaria direct to Fleet Street.

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The cry went up,
from Parliament and people alike,

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"Something must be done!"

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The Bulgarian cause was taken up
by the Grand Old Man himself,

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Liberal statesman William Gladstone,
now on the back benches.

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Incensed by Turkish villainy,
he published a lengthy pamphlet,

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which proposed a whole new
values-based foreign policy.

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It was the nation's moral duty

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to intervene to prevent
further atrocities.

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"There have been perpetrated
crimes and outrages

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"so vast in scale as to exceed
all modern example.

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"These are the Bulgarian horrors,
and the question is,

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"What can and should be done,

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"either to punish,
or to brand, or to prevent?"

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Gladstone's idealistic call
to arms was a sensation.

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200,000 copies of his pamphlet
were sold within a month,

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spawning a national moral crusade

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against the Government's traditional
policy of alliance with the Turk.

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I think Gladstone was right
about the Turkish massacres.

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The importance of Britain trying to
stand up for oppressed populations

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and recognising what had become,

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since the time of
the Congress of Vienna,

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the much stronger pressure
for nationality to be recognised.

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For people to be able
to determine their own future.

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And I think Gladstone picked
up that and rode on that wave

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of a world which gave greater
recognition to people

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being able to decide
more of their own affairs.

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Over the next few months,

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hundreds of demonstrations
took place throughout the land

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expressing their support
for an ethical foreign policy.

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There's a tendency to think
that 24 hour wall-to-wall television

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has somehow created a completely
new world. People have been

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under pressure from the media over
foreign policy all through history.

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It's just a different type
of pressure, and,

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"Something must be done,"
is the consistent cry, and sadly,

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quite often big mistakes are taken
in order to respond to this.

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Press and public opinion
have an enormous influence

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on foreign policy these days.

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The trouble is that their view
of foreign policy is...

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tends to be rather emotional
and rather over-simplified.

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If you get shocking pictures
in the press,

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screaming headlines saying,
"Something must be done",

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it's not a very good
basis for policy.

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The popular clamour for intervening
in Bulgaria took scant account

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of the strategic interests,

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which underlay Britain's long
alliance with the Ottoman Empire.

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The key is geography.

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That way, down through
the Straits of the Dardanelles

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through the Suez Canal, is India.

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That way, just over the Black Sea,
is Russia. You've got to remember

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that sometimes diplomacy is about
choosing the least worst option,

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and it was an absolute axiom
of British foreign policy

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to prop up the Ottoman Empire
against the Russian Bear.

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After all, we'd fought the
Crimean War on that principle.

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So the pragmatic Henry Elliot

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knew there was good reason
to keep the Ottomans onside.

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And Prime Minister
Benjamin Disraeli's government

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demanded of Elliot a hard-headed
pro-Turkish line.

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Gladstone versus Disraeli -

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idealism versus realism.

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It's the classic dichotomy
in foreign policy.

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To his horror,

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Henry Elliot found himself
ensnared in the controversy,

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with the idealists
taking direct aim at him.

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It was shoot the messenger time,
with a vengeance.

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He sat down and wrote to London.

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"To the accusation of being
a blind partisan of the Turks,

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"I will only answer that my conduct
has never been guided

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"by any sentimental
affection for them,

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"but by a firm determination
to uphold the interests
of Great Britain

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"to the utmost of my power

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"and that those interests are
deeply engaged in preventing the
destruction of the Turkish Empire

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"is a conviction
which I share in common

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"with the most eminent statesmen who
have directed our foreign policy,

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"but which appears now to be
abandoned by shallow politicians

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"or persons who have allowed their
feelings of revolted humanity,

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"to make them forget the capital
interests involved in the question."

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I could not have put that
better myself, Sir Henry.

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It's not that you were
an amoral diplomat,

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but that you believed
in a higher interest,

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and abandoning it would not have
saved a single Bulgarian life.

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The diplomat isn't there to do the
bleeding heart humanitarian stuff -
that's not what we're trained to do,

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we are there to analyse the
geo-political situation

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not today or tomorrow,
but in the long term.

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There is a standard debate

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between idealists and realists

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and idealists are good
and realists are bad,

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though I've never understood why
the perceptive understanding of
reality should be a sinful thing.

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My view is that there is
and should be

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a moral part
of British foreign policy.

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But that in deciding in what to do,

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you have to take account of reality.

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Gladstone was wrong in that
respect when he said you must,

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"Push the Turks bag and baggage
out of the provinces that
they've desolated and profane."

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Something like that anyway.

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Great stuff, but actually doing that,
of course, he couldn't have done it
if he'd been Prime Minister

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and when he became Prime Minister,
he made no attempt to do it.

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The crisis intensified in 1877,

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when the Russians used the
plight of their oppressed
Christian brethren in the Balkans,

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to declare war on Turkey
and grab some of its territory.

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Without hesitation,

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Disraeli
sent a fleet to the Dardanelles

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to show support for the Turks.

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It worked. The Bear backed down

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without Britons
having to go to war.

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The fickle pendulum
of public opinion

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swung right back
to support the Government.

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00:15:18,400 --> 00:15:19,880
An anti-Russian song,

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00:15:19,880 --> 00:15:23,840
composed in patriotic celebration,
swept the land.

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# The misdeeds of the Turks

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# Have been spouted
through our lands

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# But how about the Russians

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# Can they show spotless hands?

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# They slaughtered well at Khiva

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# In Siberia icy cold

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# How many subjects done to death

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# Will never perhaps be told... #

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Bulgaria was forgotten,
Turkey our chum again.

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It just goes to show that public
opinion is as much there to be led
as followed.

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# While prayers
for "Freedom and Revenge"

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# Go up into the air

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# We don't want to fight

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# But by jingo if we do... #

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00:16:08,080 --> 00:16:12,360
This song, with its "by jingo",
gave us the word jingoism.

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# We've fought the Bear before

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# And while we're Britons true

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# The Russians shall not have
Constantinople. #

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But the turnaround in opinion had
come too late for the scapegoat,

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Henry Elliot. However unjustly,

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his reputation had suffered

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and he was transferred
to the lesser post of Vienna.

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Over a century later,

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the ethical questions raised by
the Bulgarian crisis still resonate.

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'Can the world simply stand by

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'when a rogue state brutally abuses
the rights of those it governs?

241
00:17:01,160 --> 00:17:05,440
'Gladstone's answer in 1876
was clear.

242
00:17:05,440 --> 00:17:07,200
'And so is mine today.

243
00:17:07,200 --> 00:17:12,480
'Then, as now, it would have been
easy to look the other way -

244
00:17:12,480 --> 00:17:17,280
'easy to argue that bigger strategic
issues were at stake

245
00:17:17,280 --> 00:17:21,640
'than the fate of a few hundred
thousand people in the Balkans.

246
00:17:21,640 --> 00:17:25,440
'They were wrong in 1876
over Bulgaria

247
00:17:25,440 --> 00:17:30,600
'and they are wrong
in 1999 over Kosovo.'

248
00:17:42,280 --> 00:17:45,520
The Eastern Crisis of 1876 shows
how hard it can sometimes be

249
00:17:45,520 --> 00:17:48,920
to reconcile human rights
with the national interest.

250
00:17:48,920 --> 00:17:53,080
The irony is that less than 40
years later, in the First World War,

251
00:17:53,080 --> 00:17:55,520
Turkey was our enemy
and Russia our ally,

252
00:17:55,520 --> 00:17:59,520
so demonstrating the truth of
Lord Palmerston's famous saying

253
00:17:59,520 --> 00:18:01,800
when he was foreign secretary
in 1848,

254
00:18:01,800 --> 00:18:06,080
that Britain had no eternal allies
and no perpetual enemies,

255
00:18:06,080 --> 00:18:10,520
but only interests
that were eternal and perpetual.

256
00:18:27,400 --> 00:18:31,320
In 1977, I was working in the
Foreign Office planning staff.

257
00:18:31,320 --> 00:18:34,400
The job - to stand back from
the daily cut and thrust,

258
00:18:34,400 --> 00:18:36,160
and think strategically.

259
00:18:36,160 --> 00:18:38,640
The new Foreign Secretary,
young David Owen,

260
00:18:38,640 --> 00:18:42,640
wanted us to integrate human rights
systematically into foreign policy.

261
00:18:42,640 --> 00:18:45,840
So, we planners devised a grid.

262
00:18:48,120 --> 00:18:50,840
Every nation in the world
was given points

263
00:18:50,840 --> 00:18:54,040
against a series of benchmarks,
like freedom of the press

264
00:18:54,040 --> 00:18:56,200
and the independence
of the judiciary.

265
00:18:56,200 --> 00:18:57,840
Add all the points up

266
00:18:57,840 --> 00:19:00,760
and you have a numerical
score for each country,

267
00:19:00,760 --> 00:19:03,000
a kind of human rights league table.

268
00:19:03,000 --> 00:19:05,000
Of course we put Britain at the top

269
00:19:05,000 --> 00:19:07,240
and Uganda under Idi Amin
at the bottom

270
00:19:07,240 --> 00:19:11,080
and we took some pleasure in
marking the French relatively low.

271
00:19:12,040 --> 00:19:15,400
But, from the start,
the grid didn't work.

272
00:19:15,400 --> 00:19:18,600
Yes, it told us something about
a country's human rights record.

273
00:19:18,600 --> 00:19:22,240
But what about our strategic,
political and military interests?

274
00:19:22,240 --> 00:19:24,440
Arms sales to a third world despot?

275
00:19:24,440 --> 00:19:26,000
Sounds bad... But hang on.

276
00:19:26,000 --> 00:19:28,720
What if the contract
guarantees the jobs

277
00:19:28,720 --> 00:19:30,880
of thousands of British workers?

278
00:19:30,880 --> 00:19:34,440
Isn't it the government's first
duty to those who put them in power?

279
00:19:34,440 --> 00:19:36,480
One thing's for sure,

280
00:19:36,480 --> 00:19:39,880
answering these kind of
questions is never simple.

281
00:19:58,280 --> 00:20:00,040
On the 1st of December 1925,

282
00:20:00,040 --> 00:20:04,080
Europe's statesmen gathered at
the Foreign Office in London,

283
00:20:04,080 --> 00:20:07,560
for what was perhaps the only
diplomatic assembly in history

284
00:20:07,560 --> 00:20:10,080
over which statesmen waxed lyrical

285
00:20:10,080 --> 00:20:13,000
and journalists went into raptures.

286
00:20:16,240 --> 00:20:19,040
They convened in the
heart of the building,

287
00:20:19,040 --> 00:20:22,160
in the grandest of
its grand rooms.

288
00:20:25,160 --> 00:20:28,120
The Locarno Suite is named
after a diplomatic triumph

289
00:20:28,120 --> 00:20:30,920
that seemed to promise a new era

290
00:20:30,920 --> 00:20:33,360
of altruistic, international
cooperation.

291
00:20:33,360 --> 00:20:37,840
A new ethical dimension to
foreign policy, you might say.

292
00:20:39,760 --> 00:20:45,480
The signing in the Foreign Office
of treaties previously negotiated
at Locarno in Switzerland

293
00:20:45,480 --> 00:20:49,640
seemed to herald a new age following
the horrors of the First World War.

294
00:20:51,840 --> 00:20:55,280
The "Spirit of Locarno"
became synonymous with peace,

295
00:20:55,280 --> 00:20:59,320
multilateral collaboration and what
was hailed as the New Diplomacy.

296
00:20:59,320 --> 00:21:03,400
The stiff formality of the pre-war
days gave way to a more relaxed,

297
00:21:03,400 --> 00:21:07,280
more open and more accountable
way of doing things.

298
00:21:07,280 --> 00:21:10,080
Old fashioned notions
like the balance of power,

299
00:21:10,080 --> 00:21:14,320
secret alliances and back channel
negotiation were to be thrown out.

300
00:21:14,320 --> 00:21:18,600
Henceforth international relations
would be governed by values,

301
00:21:18,600 --> 00:21:21,480
by the principles
of human rights, of fairness

302
00:21:21,480 --> 00:21:24,320
and of self-determination
for small countries,

303
00:21:24,320 --> 00:21:27,160
policed by a League of Nations.

304
00:21:28,400 --> 00:21:30,200
Through the new League of Nations,

305
00:21:30,200 --> 00:21:33,320
the world's countries
would gather in Geneva

306
00:21:33,320 --> 00:21:35,880
to make and enforce
international laws,

307
00:21:35,880 --> 00:21:40,080
acting together to keep the peace
through collective security.

308
00:21:42,680 --> 00:21:46,240
The idealism at the end
of the First World War

309
00:21:46,240 --> 00:21:52,480
was based on the idea of a
new world order, if you like.

310
00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:54,120
A world order in which

311
00:21:54,120 --> 00:21:58,680
there would be over-arching,
suped-up national institutions,

312
00:21:58,680 --> 00:22:02,160
taken up by a Europe
which was sick of war,

313
00:22:02,160 --> 00:22:04,360
which was heartily sick of war.

314
00:22:08,000 --> 00:22:12,200
The League of Nations
had been President
Woodrow Wilson's brainchild,

315
00:22:12,200 --> 00:22:16,280
but he couldn't get it past
Congress, so America never joined.

316
00:22:18,840 --> 00:22:22,600
A decade later, the world was
looking a more dangerous place.

317
00:22:22,600 --> 00:22:27,240
Germany and Japan had
both quit the League in 1933.

318
00:22:33,640 --> 00:22:37,480
But the first really big test
for the high-minded idealists
of the League

319
00:22:37,480 --> 00:22:40,640
was the crisis brewing in 1935.

320
00:22:46,360 --> 00:22:49,920
The Italian fascist dictator,
Benito Mussolini,

321
00:22:49,920 --> 00:22:52,560
decided to create
a new Roman Empire

322
00:22:52,560 --> 00:22:55,200
starting with
the one nation in Africa

323
00:22:55,200 --> 00:22:57,640
still left
for imperial conquest -

324
00:22:57,640 --> 00:22:59,880
Abyssinia - now Ethiopia.

325
00:23:03,720 --> 00:23:05,760
HE SHOUTS IN ITALIAN

326
00:23:11,080 --> 00:23:13,160
From February till summer,

327
00:23:13,160 --> 00:23:16,200
Mussolini massed his troops
on the Abyssinian border.

328
00:23:16,200 --> 00:23:19,840
an outrageous contravention of
the spirit of the New Diplomacy

329
00:23:19,840 --> 00:23:21,520
and of the League of Nations,

330
00:23:21,520 --> 00:23:25,800
to which both
Italy and Abyssinia belonged.

331
00:23:25,800 --> 00:23:29,720
RADIO ANNOUNCER: The eyes of
all the world are on Abyssinia...

332
00:23:29,720 --> 00:23:34,280
Parades and general preparation
are in full swing in case the war,

333
00:23:34,280 --> 00:23:37,680
which the neutral world
hopes to avoid, breaks out.

334
00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:42,320
Emperor Haile Selassie,

335
00:23:42,320 --> 00:23:45,760
legendary descendent of King Solomon
and the Queen of Sheba,

336
00:23:45,760 --> 00:23:49,480
appealed to the international
community to come to his aid.

337
00:23:53,080 --> 00:23:55,680
What were Britain and
the League going to do?

338
00:23:55,680 --> 00:24:00,600
Of course the idealists of
the New Diplomacy felt such
aggression could not go unheeded.

339
00:24:00,600 --> 00:24:03,760
Collective security
meant intervention,

340
00:24:03,760 --> 00:24:06,560
but then again, nobody wanted war.

341
00:24:06,560 --> 00:24:11,600
The man who had to guide Britain
through this minefield was the
top dog in the diplomatic service -

342
00:24:11,600 --> 00:24:13,880
the Permanent
Undersecretary of State,

343
00:24:13,880 --> 00:24:17,200
or as the diplomats call him,
the PUS.

344
00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:19,920
Sir Robert Vansittart,
Van to his friends,

345
00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:23,120
was an unorthodox diplomat,
a playwright on the side,

346
00:24:23,120 --> 00:24:26,920
known for expressing his
strong opinions loudly and often.

347
00:24:26,920 --> 00:24:30,040
Vansittart treated the
New Diplomacy with caution.

348
00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:33,200
He was, fundamentally,
an old fashioned realist,

349
00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:37,160
and he felt that the greatest threat
to world peace was not Mussolini,

350
00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:38,520
but Adolf Hitler.

351
00:24:38,520 --> 00:24:44,320
So in Van's eyes, the strategic goal
of keeping Italy onside
against Germany

352
00:24:44,320 --> 00:24:47,680
outweighed the sympathy that
he felt for the Ethiopians.

353
00:24:47,680 --> 00:24:52,040
He made his thinking clear
in this minute of June 1935.

354
00:24:52,040 --> 00:24:55,120
"The position is as plain
as a pikestaff.

355
00:24:55,120 --> 00:24:57,280
"Italy will have to be bought off -

356
00:24:57,280 --> 00:24:59,360
"let us use and face ugly words -

357
00:24:59,360 --> 00:25:01,320
"in some form or other."

358
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:08,080
Van believed the only way
to keep Mussolini

359
00:25:08,080 --> 00:25:10,080
from jumping into bed with Hitler

360
00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:13,480
was to give parts of Ethiopia
to Italy.

361
00:25:13,480 --> 00:25:16,480
But buying countries off
at the expense of others -

362
00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:18,600
a hard-headed, strategic approach -

363
00:25:18,600 --> 00:25:22,320
was scarcely in the spirit
of the New Diplomacy.

364
00:25:24,200 --> 00:25:29,200
And popular opinion in the 1930s
had an even stronger voice

365
00:25:29,200 --> 00:25:31,840
than at the time
of the Bulgarian atrocities.

366
00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:36,400
The public was resolutely
pro-League and anti-war.

367
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:43,800
When there's a quarrel between two
people, the police are called in
to settle it.

368
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:48,280
Why can't the League of Nations
be strong enough to settle
disputes between two nations?

369
00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:52,600
I've no quarrel with Frenchmen,
or Germans or Russians

370
00:25:52,600 --> 00:25:54,960
or anybody else for that matter,

371
00:25:54,960 --> 00:25:59,360
so let's be sensible and work
together for peace by reason.

372
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:04,200
As the crisis in Abyssinia
gathered momentum,

373
00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:07,480
a mass peace movement in Britain,
the League of Nations Union,

374
00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:10,160
conducted a remarkable poll.

375
00:26:13,840 --> 00:26:18,200
The peace ballot
was an unprecedented
survey of public opinion.

376
00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:19,840
Over 11 million people,

377
00:26:19,840 --> 00:26:22,960
that's nearly 40% of
the adult population,

378
00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:24,680
voted in a door-to-door ballot

379
00:26:24,680 --> 00:26:27,600
on five broad questions
on foreign policy.

380
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:31,520
That's an extraordinary response!

381
00:26:31,520 --> 00:26:33,680
The sheer weight of turnout

382
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:38,680
gave the ballot a powerful
moral and political force.

383
00:26:38,680 --> 00:26:40,520
Ordinary people, so it seemed,

384
00:26:40,520 --> 00:26:43,800
were utterly wedded to the
ideals of the New Diplomacy.

385
00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:52,440
Looking through this stuff,
what positively leaps from the page

386
00:26:52,440 --> 00:26:57,360
is the strength of public feeling
in favour of peace over war.

387
00:26:57,360 --> 00:26:59,800
If only it were that simple.

388
00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:05,960
The vast majority voted "yes"
to comprehensive disarmament

389
00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:08,120
and to banning the arms trade.

390
00:27:08,120 --> 00:27:12,040
Yet most also conceded
that military intervention

391
00:27:12,040 --> 00:27:16,440
might be needed in the last resort
to resist aggression.

392
00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:19,480
So the public wanted the League
to stand up for Abyssinia.

393
00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:21,840
But it didn't want war

394
00:27:21,840 --> 00:27:26,360
or to give Abyssinia
the arms to defend itself.

395
00:27:26,360 --> 00:27:28,000
It's a bit like saying,

396
00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:30,920
"Are you against illegal wars?"
"Yes!"

397
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:34,240
"Do you want to be wiped
out in 45 minutes?" "No!"

398
00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:36,520
Vansittart, with his typical pith,

399
00:27:36,520 --> 00:27:39,800
called the ballot,
"A free excursion into the inane,"

400
00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:43,480
and I have to say, as a fellow
diplomat, I could not agree more.

401
00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:47,920
But it's tougher for the
politicians, who have to
respond to public feeling.

402
00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:50,360
I think it's the job
of the Prime Minister

403
00:27:50,360 --> 00:27:52,640
and the Foreign Secretary
in this country

404
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:56,560
and leaders in every country,
nowadays,

405
00:27:56,560 --> 00:27:59,600
to explain and explain
and explain again.

406
00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:04,080
The efforts to do that in the '30s
were pretty puerile, really.

407
00:28:04,080 --> 00:28:07,280
Public opinion can get
easily led astray.

408
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:11,160
I think the peace ballot in the
1930s was a good example of that,

409
00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:13,240
as was the famous
Oxford Union debate

410
00:28:13,240 --> 00:28:15,840
on whether we would fight
for king and country,

411
00:28:15,840 --> 00:28:20,760
it all sounded frightfully
goodie goodie and desirable

412
00:28:20,760 --> 00:28:23,160
and of course it was -
nobody is against peace

413
00:28:23,160 --> 00:28:26,040
but peace on what terms?
Peace on what conditions?

414
00:28:26,040 --> 00:28:28,920
Peace is something you have
to be prepared to fight for.

415
00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:33,760
Unlike Vansittart, the newly
appointed Foreign Secretary,

416
00:28:33,760 --> 00:28:36,320
Sir Samuel Hoare,
did have to heed the public

417
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:38,800
and he seemed fully,
even extravagantly,

418
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:42,760
signed up to the New Diplomacy
in this speech on Abyssinia.

419
00:28:42,760 --> 00:28:45,960
The attitude of
His Majesty's Government

420
00:28:45,960 --> 00:28:50,240
has always been one of unswerving
fidelity to the League

421
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:52,480
and all that it stands for -

422
00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:56,200
the steady
and collective resistance

423
00:28:56,200 --> 00:29:00,440
to all acts
of unprovoked aggression.

424
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:03,800
Fine words indeed,
but they didn't put off Mussolini,

425
00:29:03,800 --> 00:29:06,920
who began his invasion
of Abyssinia on October the 3rd.

426
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:26,080
RADIO ANNOUNCER: The radio station
at Addis Ababa continues

427
00:29:26,080 --> 00:29:29,680
to send out appeals to the world
from the emperor, Haile Selassie.

428
00:29:30,800 --> 00:29:32,720
What will the League of Nations do?

429
00:29:32,720 --> 00:29:35,240
Will the League support
the black emperor,

430
00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:41,120
or will Mussolini have his way, his
whole way and nothing but his way?

431
00:29:42,200 --> 00:29:43,680
After much discussion,

432
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:48,360
the League applied economic
sanctions for the first time.

433
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:53,040
This was the League of Nation's
only weapon.

434
00:29:53,040 --> 00:29:56,040
But it was a half-hearted one.
And France and Britain,

435
00:29:56,040 --> 00:29:58,920
still anxious not to
antagonise Mussolini,

436
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:02,600
wouldn't impose sanctions where
they might have hurt most - on oil.

437
00:30:04,760 --> 00:30:07,520
So what more could
the League have done?

438
00:30:07,520 --> 00:30:09,560
The sad truth is not very much.

439
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:13,360
The drive for peace
had been accompanied by
a drive for disarmament.

440
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:15,760
And having rejected
the military alliances

441
00:30:15,760 --> 00:30:19,280
which were part of the old
discredited diplomacy,

442
00:30:19,280 --> 00:30:22,400
the League had no way
of enforcing its will.

443
00:30:22,400 --> 00:30:24,960
It had no military teeth.

444
00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:30,040
And without the credible threat of
force, fine diplomatic communiques

445
00:30:30,040 --> 00:30:33,640
and words about a more ethical
harmonious world

446
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:37,000
weren't worth the paper
they were written on.

447
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:40,120
The history of sanctions,
on the whole, has not been happy.

448
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:46,240
We see it in our period with
respect to Iran and North Korea.

449
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:49,000
It is very hard to agree
on sanctions.

450
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:53,440
And then it becomes even more
difficult to enforce the sanctions.

451
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:01,920
And the notion of the League of
Nations and of the United Nations -

452
00:31:01,920 --> 00:31:07,120
that all countries would see
issues identically

453
00:31:07,120 --> 00:31:09,400
and therefore would act in unity -

454
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:11,000
it's just not true.

455
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:12,960
Sanctions should be a very tough,

456
00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:15,640
short, sharp shock.

457
00:31:15,640 --> 00:31:20,040
If they don't work, then you have
to probably use other means.

458
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:24,200
If they are a short, sharp shock
they can sometimes avoid the use

459
00:31:24,200 --> 00:31:28,320
of military power,
but sanctions creeping,

460
00:31:28,320 --> 00:31:30,800
being ignored, gesture politics,

461
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:35,840
introduced just to keep people quiet
because "something must be done",

462
00:31:35,840 --> 00:31:38,800
are deeply damaging to the
whole concept of sanctions.

463
00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:51,440
Collective security is only as
strong as its weakest link,

464
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:54,400
and in 1935,
the weakest link was France.

465
00:31:57,800 --> 00:32:00,720
With Hitler and Mussolini
on its doorstep,

466
00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:06,160
Vansittart knew full well vulnerable
France effectively rendered
New Diplomacy toothless.

467
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:11,800
In December 1935,

468
00:32:11,800 --> 00:32:16,000
Van and Samuel Hoare arrived
in Paris for secret talks -

469
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:18,360
for an old diplomacy compromise deal

470
00:32:18,360 --> 00:32:21,160
that might end the bloodshed
in Abyssinia.

471
00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:30,880
Driving on the way to the French
Foreign Ministry before the talks,

472
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:34,120
Vansittart leaned over and asked
the big question.

473
00:32:34,120 --> 00:32:35,240
"Foreign Secretary,

474
00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:38,040
"will the Government
fight Italy over Abyssinia?"

475
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:39,320
"No," said Hoare.

476
00:32:39,320 --> 00:32:42,160
"Then you will have to
compromise," retorted Van.

477
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:45,720
"That will be unpopular,
but there is no third way."

478
00:32:48,200 --> 00:32:51,520
The real decisions are not what
they teach in the academy,

479
00:32:51,520 --> 00:32:53,920
which is...

480
00:32:53,920 --> 00:32:57,080
good versus evil,
black versus white,

481
00:32:57,080 --> 00:33:00,720
they are 50.5 against 49.5.

482
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:02,560
They are very narrow decisions.

483
00:33:08,480 --> 00:33:12,320
Over two days of discussions
at the Quai d'Orsay,

484
00:33:12,320 --> 00:33:17,160
Van, Hoare and the French
Prime Minister, Pierre Laval,

485
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:20,120
hammered out a proposal
for "buying Italy off".

486
00:33:21,280 --> 00:33:24,160
Mussolini was kept
in the loop by telephone.

487
00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:26,760
Haile Selassie was never consulted.

488
00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:31,600
The Hoare-Laval Pact

489
00:33:31,600 --> 00:33:35,360
would give Italy a substantial
chunk of Ethiopia

490
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:40,520
and a large zone exclusively
for Italian economic development.

491
00:33:40,520 --> 00:33:45,040
The price of peace
was that Haile Selassie would
lose about half his country.

492
00:33:50,320 --> 00:33:52,960
But before the plan could
be put to the League,

493
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:54,640
it was leaked to the press

494
00:33:54,640 --> 00:33:58,520
and to the idealists back home,
it stank to high heaven.

495
00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:05,600
The Hoare-Laval pact looked, to the
outraged public, like a classic
deal of the old diplomacy -

496
00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:12,200
Europeans carving up slices of
Africa, against all the tenets of
self determination and justice

497
00:34:12,200 --> 00:34:16,560
that the League and the New
Diplomacy were supposed to stand
for.

498
00:34:18,640 --> 00:34:24,040
The public reaction was so hostile
that, within days, the British
government did a U-turn,

499
00:34:24,040 --> 00:34:26,840
as did the French,
and renounced the deal.

500
00:34:26,840 --> 00:34:30,200
The pact was dead
even before arrival

501
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:34,400
and with it, perhaps any
last vestige of a prospect

502
00:34:34,400 --> 00:34:38,080
of keeping Italy from
alliance with Hitler.

503
00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:43,400
Sir Samuel Hoare was forced to
resign as Foreign Secretary

504
00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:48,280
and Vansittart found his career
and reputation in tatters.

505
00:34:48,280 --> 00:34:52,160
I have quite a bleak view
of diplomacy

506
00:34:52,160 --> 00:34:58,680
in the sense that I think
it's largely made up of failures.

507
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:02,480
You are you are
given a Sisyphean task,

508
00:35:02,480 --> 00:35:05,280
you are pushing your boulder uphill,

509
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:08,960
and while you're desperately trying
to push your boulder uphill,

510
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:11,920
you're watching ten others
going downhill

511
00:35:11,920 --> 00:35:16,200
and your own boulder may
well go in that direction
before you've got to the top.

512
00:35:16,200 --> 00:35:18,120
It is...

513
00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:21,000
a profoundly frustrating career,

514
00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:24,400
because there is never a moment
when you,

515
00:35:24,400 --> 00:35:28,320
I think, can clearly say,
"Well, we've sorted that out."

516
00:35:38,200 --> 00:35:40,560
The rest, as they say, is history.

517
00:35:40,560 --> 00:35:43,600
With the deal off,
and the League impotent,

518
00:35:43,600 --> 00:35:46,760
Mussolini pushed his war
to its conclusion.

519
00:35:49,000 --> 00:35:54,320
2,000 years of Abyssinian
independence came to an end.

520
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:03,280
RADIO ANNOUNCER: To Geneva
on the 30th of June 1936

521
00:36:03,280 --> 00:36:05,680
came the man without a country.

522
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:08,560
Abandoned by his
international friends,

523
00:36:08,560 --> 00:36:12,400
Emperor Haile Selassie
addressed the League in person.

524
00:36:14,080 --> 00:36:16,760
Monsieur le President.

525
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:21,520
TRANSLATED: I am here today,
to claim that justice
which is due to my people

526
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:25,640
and the assistance promised
to it eight months ago,

527
00:36:25,640 --> 00:36:29,880
when 50 nations asserted that
aggression had been committed

528
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:32,440
in violation
of international treaties.

529
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:35,160
What have become of
the promises made to me?

530
00:36:35,160 --> 00:36:37,480
It is collective security,

531
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:40,680
it is the very existence
of the League of Nations,

532
00:36:40,680 --> 00:36:44,240
it is international morality
that is at stake.

533
00:36:46,920 --> 00:36:49,720
The New Diplomacy had failed.

534
00:36:49,720 --> 00:36:53,640
The League of Nations
had lost all credibility.

535
00:36:56,760 --> 00:36:59,280
Maybe, that in 1935,

536
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:04,400
public opinion was too idealistic
about the prospects of peace.

537
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:08,800
But you can argue that if the
emphasis on peace negotiations

538
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:13,360
had carried the full weight and
authority of the League Of Nations,

539
00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:16,120
then they would have
challenged Mussolini

540
00:37:16,120 --> 00:37:18,640
and they would have
challenged Hitler.

541
00:37:18,640 --> 00:37:22,240
A League of Nations or similar
institutions are attractive

542
00:37:22,240 --> 00:37:25,840
cos they're idealistic and ideals
are very fine things to have,

543
00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:28,680
but you've then got to relate them
to the real world

544
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:34,160
and to the real world composed
of individual nation states
with their own sovereignty,

545
00:37:34,160 --> 00:37:36,800
who don't want to be told
by others what to do.

546
00:37:36,800 --> 00:37:39,360
They may sign up to cooperate,
to talk and so on,

547
00:37:39,360 --> 00:37:44,200
but at the end of the day,
they're not going to let that
override their national interests.

548
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:53,000
The Hoare-Laval Pact
has gone down in history

549
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:55,280
as an act of diplomatic infamy,

550
00:37:55,280 --> 00:38:00,840
leaving the indelible stain of
appeasement on the Foreign Office.

551
00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:04,760
But the worst mistake of
all was to do the deal
and then to pull out of it.

552
00:38:04,760 --> 00:38:09,600
Might the compromise agreement have
been better than the wholesale
sacrifice of Ethiopia,

553
00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:13,360
which was the tragic consequence
of the League's inability

554
00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:16,560
to match action
with its idealistic aspirations?

555
00:38:16,560 --> 00:38:20,640
The values of the age, of peace
and of international cooperation,

556
00:38:20,640 --> 00:38:22,280
were admirable.

557
00:38:22,280 --> 00:38:25,440
But what every good diplomat
has to learn,

558
00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:28,240
like the prudent realist Vansittart,

559
00:38:28,240 --> 00:38:32,880
is that you've got
to take the world as you find it,
not as you might wish it to be.

560
00:38:45,480 --> 00:38:49,640
In 1999, I found myself
cruising the streets of Chicago

561
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:51,520
in a limo with Tony Blair.

562
00:38:51,520 --> 00:38:57,360
He was anxiously preparing
for one of his most important
speeches on foreign policy.

563
00:38:57,360 --> 00:39:01,040
That afternoon,
over two years before 9/11,

564
00:39:01,040 --> 00:39:05,000
he laid out a new doctrine of
international community.

565
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:08,520
Delivered in his eloquent,
evangelical style,

566
00:39:08,520 --> 00:39:10,680
Blair was Gladstone reborn.

567
00:39:10,680 --> 00:39:14,440
And although the speech was about
the crisis of the moment in Kosovo,

568
00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:17,720
it was couched in the language of
universal values.

569
00:39:17,720 --> 00:39:22,360
In Blair's brave new world,
the humanitarian imperative

570
00:39:22,360 --> 00:39:25,480
would trump the traditional
sovereignty of nations.

571
00:39:25,480 --> 00:39:31,560
And if this meant invading
other countries to save
their people from despots,

572
00:39:31,560 --> 00:39:32,720
then so be it.

573
00:39:33,760 --> 00:39:39,320
We cannot let the evil
of ethnic cleansing stand.

574
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:43,240
We must not rest until
it is reversed.

575
00:39:44,080 --> 00:39:47,520
We have learnt
twice before in this century

576
00:39:47,520 --> 00:39:50,120
that appeasement does not work.

577
00:39:50,120 --> 00:39:52,720
That word "appeasement" is loaded.

578
00:39:52,720 --> 00:39:55,080
He wanted his audience
and the White House

579
00:39:55,080 --> 00:39:59,600
to put Milosevic of Serbia in the
same box as Hitler and Mussolini.

580
00:39:59,600 --> 00:40:03,240
To avoid repeating
the tragic mistakes of the 1930s,

581
00:40:03,240 --> 00:40:06,480
Britain and America should
stand shoulder to shoulder

582
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:08,640
to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

583
00:40:08,640 --> 00:40:14,440
And after all, our recent record in
the Balkans was less than glorious.

584
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:30,200
In the early 1990s, more than
a century after Henry Elliot,

585
00:40:30,200 --> 00:40:34,600
British foreign policy was once more
dominated by the Eastern question,

586
00:40:34,600 --> 00:40:36,720
as the Balkans exploded yet again.

587
00:40:43,880 --> 00:40:45,400
The collapse of Yugoslavia

588
00:40:45,400 --> 00:40:47,920
led to the kind of brutal
and organised violence

589
00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:51,320
that Europe hoped
it would never see again -

590
00:40:51,320 --> 00:40:56,640
killings, mass rape, ethnic
cleansing, concentration camps.

591
00:41:05,720 --> 00:41:07,880
Bosnia saw the worst
of the fighting.

592
00:41:11,200 --> 00:41:14,320
All sides targeted civilians.

593
00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:16,360
THEY SCREAM

594
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:21,560
The capital, Sarajevo,
became an ethnic battleground,

595
00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:24,840
with Serbs, who didn't want to
live under a Muslim majority,

596
00:41:24,840 --> 00:41:26,520
bombarding it from the hills.

597
00:41:31,160 --> 00:41:34,600
This was not the peaceful
"end of history"

598
00:41:34,600 --> 00:41:38,040
that was supposed to follow
the demise of the Cold War.

599
00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:46,720
In Britain, once again the cry
went up, "Something must be done".

600
00:41:46,720 --> 00:41:52,080
Was diplomacy completely
bankrupt for failing to stop
these horrors on Europe's doorstep?

601
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:54,760
Had we learned nothing from history?

602
00:41:54,760 --> 00:41:58,640
As in Elliot's day,
the House of Commons was divided
between the realists,

603
00:41:58,640 --> 00:42:01,480
who didn't want to get involved
in a Balkan quagmire,

604
00:42:01,480 --> 00:42:06,040
and those who felt that it was
Britain's moral duty to stop
the bloodshed.

605
00:42:06,040 --> 00:42:07,480
But unlike the 1870s,

606
00:42:07,480 --> 00:42:11,640
there was no obvious national
interest at stake for Britain.

607
00:42:11,640 --> 00:42:13,640
The Balkans were, quite simply,

608
00:42:13,640 --> 00:42:16,640
no longer an area of
strategic importance.

609
00:42:18,920 --> 00:42:20,960
SCREAMING AND SHOUTING

610
00:42:24,840 --> 00:42:27,880
Don't, don't, don't
live under this dream

611
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:30,760
that the West is going to come in
and sort this problem out.

612
00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:33,720
Don't dream dreams.

613
00:42:33,720 --> 00:42:36,880
There will be no unilateral use,

614
00:42:36,880 --> 00:42:41,120
unilateral use
of United States force.

615
00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:42,600
As we have said before,

616
00:42:42,600 --> 00:42:45,920
we are not and we cannot be
the world's policeman.

617
00:42:48,920 --> 00:42:52,720
For all our reluctance to get
involved in the conflict,

618
00:42:52,720 --> 00:42:55,800
to stand aloof completely
was not an option.

619
00:42:55,800 --> 00:43:00,920
If the international community had
felt that it had responsibilities
in the 1920s and '30s,

620
00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:07,160
how much more powerful was the cry
"never again" after the Holocaust?

621
00:43:08,680 --> 00:43:12,080
Following the Second World War,
the United Nations had been born

622
00:43:12,080 --> 00:43:14,920
out of the wreckage
of the League of Nations,

623
00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:18,320
designed to keep its ideals
but avoid its weaknesses.

624
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:27,440
Member states were asked
to provide troops for a United
Nations peacekeeping force.

625
00:43:27,440 --> 00:43:32,360
As Yugoslavia fell apart,
the blue helmets went in.

626
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:35,320
People forget the UN
went in very reluctantly

627
00:43:35,320 --> 00:43:37,400
into the former Yugoslavia

628
00:43:37,400 --> 00:43:40,600
and we went in particularly
in 1992 in the autumn,

629
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:43,480
because we were afraid
of a humanitarian disaster -

630
00:43:43,480 --> 00:43:45,960
we weren't able to get
food convoys through.

631
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:48,640
We went in to escort food convoys.

632
00:43:52,320 --> 00:43:55,920
The international response
was far from ideal,

633
00:43:55,920 --> 00:43:59,880
typical of the lowest common
denominator politics of the UN.

634
00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:02,800
Neutral peacekeepers,

635
00:44:02,800 --> 00:44:07,280
tasked with protecting humanitarian
aid and creating safe areas,

636
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:09,920
were not there to intervene
and stop the killing,

637
00:44:09,920 --> 00:44:12,640
but just to put a plaster
on its effects.

638
00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:20,680
In the absence of real force,
it was down to diplomacy.

639
00:44:22,720 --> 00:44:28,000
The European Community
assumed responsibility for the
crisis in its own backyard,

640
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:31,960
proclaiming grandly that
this was the "hour of Europe".

641
00:44:33,480 --> 00:44:36,880
David Owen was appointed
as Europe's Peace Envoy.

642
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:39,760
He represented a new breed
of European ambassador.

643
00:44:43,440 --> 00:44:45,800
If the politicians
are refusing to use force

644
00:44:45,800 --> 00:44:49,560
and if there isn't the structures
available to use force,

645
00:44:49,560 --> 00:44:52,280
then diplomats are sent in
to play for time

646
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:54,840
and I was part of that
diplomatic thing.

647
00:44:58,400 --> 00:44:59,920
No deal would be possible

648
00:44:59,920 --> 00:45:03,680
without the say so of Serbian
President Slobodan Milosevic,

649
00:45:03,680 --> 00:45:07,400
who had been the driving force
behind much of the violence.

650
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:09,440
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

651
00:45:16,040 --> 00:45:22,320
Both the Foreign Secretary
Douglas Hurd and the European Union
negotiator David Owen

652
00:45:22,320 --> 00:45:29,480
decided that Slobodan Milosevic
was not only the problem,

653
00:45:29,480 --> 00:45:32,480
but he was probably also the solution
to the problem

654
00:45:32,480 --> 00:45:39,440
and they therefore said to me
in a nutshell, "Get inside his head.

655
00:45:39,440 --> 00:45:43,360
"How can we put pressure on him
to bring an end to the war?"

656
00:45:44,880 --> 00:45:48,280
At the time, he was being described
in the British media

657
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:50,560
as the most dangerous man in Europe.

658
00:45:50,560 --> 00:45:54,320
But in negotiations,
you see a different side to someone.

659
00:45:54,320 --> 00:45:57,920
He was in a diplomatic...

660
00:45:59,520 --> 00:46:01,200
..duel with me, if you like.

661
00:46:01,200 --> 00:46:03,880
He had to show his best face.

662
00:46:03,880 --> 00:46:08,360
He had to come over as someone
with whom one could do business.

663
00:46:10,160 --> 00:46:13,720
Diplomats have a bad reputation
for talking to bad men.

664
00:46:13,720 --> 00:46:16,720
But sometimes this is
unavoidable, even desirable.

665
00:46:16,720 --> 00:46:20,520
You can't manage
the world's problems by
talking just to your friends.

666
00:46:20,520 --> 00:46:25,440
I spent half a career
dealing with our ideological
opponents in the Soviet Union,

667
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:29,840
some of whom had certainly been
complicit in communism's crimes.

668
00:46:29,840 --> 00:46:34,160
It mustn't be jaw-jaw for its own
sake. It mustn't be appeasement.

669
00:46:34,160 --> 00:46:38,520
The key thing is to have a clear,
tough-minded objective.

670
00:46:40,160 --> 00:46:43,560
I only met with those two war
criminals, Radovan Karadzic,

671
00:46:43,560 --> 00:46:48,480
and Ratko Mladic, once. Your
European Union negotiators

672
00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:51,560
regularly trekked up the hill
from Sarajevo

673
00:46:51,560 --> 00:46:54,800
to sit at their feet
and empower them.

674
00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:57,440
I thought that was
a terrible mistake.

675
00:46:59,200 --> 00:47:02,840
Talking to people is not
absolving them.

676
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:04,960
A handshake is not an absolution.

677
00:47:04,960 --> 00:47:09,520
Reaching agreement with them is the
next step and a different matter.

678
00:47:09,520 --> 00:47:12,040
Before you reach an agreement
with somebody,

679
00:47:12,040 --> 00:47:16,680
you really have to have confidence
that they will keep their end of it.

680
00:47:23,320 --> 00:47:27,640
We soon learned that agreements
made with the states of
the former Yugoslavia

681
00:47:27,640 --> 00:47:30,600
weren't worth the paper
they were written on.

682
00:47:32,880 --> 00:47:34,800
Ceasefires were broken,

683
00:47:34,800 --> 00:47:39,480
peace plans negotiated,
rejected and then re-negotiated.

684
00:47:39,480 --> 00:47:42,880
So it went on
for three bloody years.

685
00:47:45,880 --> 00:47:50,760
From 1994, I was John Major's
press secretary and I used to
work in that office there.

686
00:47:50,760 --> 00:47:53,160
I had to fend off
regular attacks on him

687
00:47:53,160 --> 00:47:56,680
for what was seen as an
ineffectual and tentative policy.

688
00:47:56,680 --> 00:48:00,360
With news images of concentration
camps in Europe once again,

689
00:48:00,360 --> 00:48:03,040
diplomacy seemed utterly
to have failed.

690
00:48:03,040 --> 00:48:07,760
But hobbled by an unheroic United
Nations mandate for the troops,

691
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:11,200
there was simply
no grand solution to be had.

692
00:48:13,720 --> 00:48:18,920
Major certainly couldn't look across
the Atlantic for a grand solution.

693
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:22,960
America, seeing Yugoslavia
as Europe's problem,

694
00:48:22,960 --> 00:48:27,800
had not joined the
United Nations peacekeeping force.

695
00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:29,640
But as the war dragged on,

696
00:48:29,640 --> 00:48:35,360
the Clinton Administration
began calling for a new policy
of air strikes,

697
00:48:35,360 --> 00:48:40,720
which infuriated the European powers
whose own troops on the ground
would have been put at risk.

698
00:48:42,160 --> 00:48:49,200
Well, you know, I began to feel
that our problems with the Yugoslavs

699
00:48:49,200 --> 00:48:55,040
were almost minor
compared with the difficulties of
dealing with our so-called allies.

700
00:48:55,040 --> 00:48:57,760
It really was a very
difficult relationship.

701
00:48:57,760 --> 00:49:00,480
Constant carping, criticism

702
00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:03,960
and it always seemed to me,
absolutely bizarre

703
00:49:03,960 --> 00:49:09,480
that the Americans believed
that they should control the policy
while contributing no troops at all.

704
00:49:09,480 --> 00:49:12,280
Imagine if the roles
had been reversed?

705
00:49:12,280 --> 00:49:15,760
Imagine if the Americans had had
20,000 troops in Bosnia,

706
00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:19,440
but the British and French Foreign
ministers had decided

707
00:49:19,440 --> 00:49:21,840
that they would dictate the policy.

708
00:49:21,840 --> 00:49:25,520
The American failure to come in
earlier was indeed a failure,

709
00:49:25,520 --> 00:49:27,240
and there's no excuse for it,

710
00:49:27,240 --> 00:49:29,520
but the Europeans share the blame.

711
00:49:29,520 --> 00:49:31,920
The Europeans were dilatory, vague,

712
00:49:31,920 --> 00:49:34,640
and they allowed
the United Nations,

713
00:49:34,640 --> 00:49:37,360
all the nations allowed
the United Nations,

714
00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:39,640
to go in without sufficient mandate.

715
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:43,360
What moved the United States
to get involved,

716
00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:45,560
belatedly and reluctantly,

717
00:49:45,560 --> 00:49:49,960
was the slaughter at Srebrenica
in July of 1995.

718
00:49:54,480 --> 00:49:57,680
Srebrenica was
a UN-designated safe area,

719
00:49:57,680 --> 00:50:02,280
where people were supposed
to be protected from the violence.

720
00:50:02,280 --> 00:50:05,360
But Bosnian Serb
forces took the town

721
00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:08,200
and told its 20,000 people
to leave.

722
00:50:08,200 --> 00:50:11,520
These men and boys were
separated from their families.

723
00:50:25,760 --> 00:50:28,960
Some 8,000
were led to the slaughter.

724
00:50:34,120 --> 00:50:38,880
It was the worst single atrocity
in Europe since the Holocaust.

725
00:50:40,440 --> 00:50:44,160
Several hundred
lightly-armed UN Dutch peacekeepers

726
00:50:44,160 --> 00:50:46,040
did nothing to prevent it.

727
00:50:49,520 --> 00:50:53,360
The international community
failed the victims of Srebrenica.

728
00:50:53,360 --> 00:50:55,520
We had vowed to protect civilians,

729
00:50:55,520 --> 00:50:58,320
but at the moment of truth,
we cut and ran.

730
00:50:58,320 --> 00:51:00,800
It was not the cowardice
of the men in the field -

731
00:51:00,800 --> 00:51:05,280
they were under strict orders
from their political superiors,
all the way to the top,

732
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:07,680
to avoid getting involved
in the fighting.

733
00:51:07,680 --> 00:51:13,920
The practical consequence of the
"something must be done" mentality,
when not backed by credible force,

734
00:51:13,920 --> 00:51:18,960
was safe havens without safety -
ignominious disaster.

735
00:51:18,960 --> 00:51:22,400
I think this is the lesson
of all these interventions,

736
00:51:22,400 --> 00:51:26,160
whether it's economic sanctions
or military intervention,

737
00:51:26,160 --> 00:51:31,240
it should be done with full power
and with very clear objectives

738
00:51:31,240 --> 00:51:33,760
and that piecemeal, gradually,

739
00:51:33,760 --> 00:51:36,720
a little bit here and
a little bit there,

740
00:51:36,720 --> 00:51:41,160
we all knew that this pledge to give
safe havens in Yugoslavia,

741
00:51:41,160 --> 00:51:44,640
the former Yugoslavia
and particularly in Bosnia,

742
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:46,080
was unsupportable.

743
00:51:46,080 --> 00:51:49,600
The UN generals told the military,
they told the...

744
00:51:49,600 --> 00:51:55,040
permanent representatives in the
Security Council that they were
not providing sufficient troops.

745
00:51:55,040 --> 00:51:58,800
It was a disaster waiting
to happen, Srebrenica.

746
00:51:58,800 --> 00:52:02,160
Have we learned the lesson
of Srebrenica? I doubt it.

747
00:52:02,160 --> 00:52:04,400
I hope we have, but I doubt we have. 

748
00:52:06,440 --> 00:52:08,960
When Yugoslavia was
being dismembered,

749
00:52:08,960 --> 00:52:13,360
220,000 people
in Bosnia were murdered.

750
00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:18,560
People driven from their homes,
villages burnt down,

751
00:52:18,560 --> 00:52:22,040
children butchered, women raped

752
00:52:22,040 --> 00:52:25,000
and Europe did bugger all,

753
00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:30,240
and I think that was a terrible,
terrible moment in, er...

754
00:52:31,520 --> 00:52:33,720
..our history, in Europe's history.

755
00:52:33,720 --> 00:52:39,400
It mattered much more whether the
Americans were doing anything

756
00:52:39,400 --> 00:52:41,880
than whether we were
prepared to do anything,

757
00:52:41,880 --> 00:52:44,760
it mattered much more what
the Americans wouldn't do

758
00:52:44,760 --> 00:52:47,960
than what we would do and that's...

759
00:52:47,960 --> 00:52:51,480
That puts a terrible,
terrible spotlight

760
00:52:51,480 --> 00:52:55,440
on the difference between
European rhetoric

761
00:52:55,440 --> 00:52:57,680
and European reality
and we've got,

762
00:52:57,680 --> 00:53:00,360
if we want to be taken seriously
in the world,

763
00:53:00,360 --> 00:53:03,120
we've got to do something
about that gap

764
00:53:03,120 --> 00:53:07,280
and we must never, ever let
something like that happen again.

765
00:53:15,200 --> 00:53:18,200
This conspicuous
failure of diplomacy

766
00:53:18,200 --> 00:53:22,080
finally goaded the great powers
into decisive action.

767
00:53:29,120 --> 00:53:34,120
Just three weeks of sustained NATO -
mainly American - air strikes

768
00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:38,160
finally helped force Milosevic
and the Bosnian Serbs

769
00:53:38,160 --> 00:53:40,440
to the negotiating table.

770
00:53:42,200 --> 00:53:44,800
A deal struck in Dayton, Ohio,

771
00:53:44,800 --> 00:53:48,680
ended more than three years of war.

772
00:53:48,680 --> 00:53:50,840
So far, it has held.

773
00:53:54,720 --> 00:53:57,200
Genocide had happened
on our doorstep

774
00:53:57,200 --> 00:54:01,120
in an era when we had said,
"Never again."

775
00:54:08,440 --> 00:54:10,720
# Things

776
00:54:10,720 --> 00:54:13,880
# Can only get better

777
00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:18,760
# Can only get better

778
00:54:18,760 --> 00:54:21,440
# Now I've found you... #

779
00:54:21,440 --> 00:54:24,320
Truly, when it came
to foreign policy,

780
00:54:24,320 --> 00:54:27,600
it seemed things
COULD only get better.

781
00:54:27,600 --> 00:54:30,560
Today, enough of talking -

782
00:54:30,560 --> 00:54:34,000
it is time now to do.

783
00:54:34,000 --> 00:54:37,320
Our new prime minister
aimed to bring ideals

784
00:54:37,320 --> 00:54:39,240
back into foreign policy.

785
00:54:42,880 --> 00:54:47,080
Tony Blair, like Gladstone before
him, proclaimed a moral mission -

786
00:54:47,080 --> 00:54:49,920
a desire to use power to do good.

787
00:54:49,920 --> 00:54:52,720
This led him to a doctrine
of liberal intervention

788
00:54:52,720 --> 00:54:56,160
which at first served him well
in Kosovo and Sierra Leone,

789
00:54:56,160 --> 00:55:00,360
where crises were
rapidly defused by decisive action.

790
00:55:00,360 --> 00:55:04,200
But the moral high ground
can be a dangerous place.

791
00:55:04,200 --> 00:55:06,280
It's one thing
to stop mass slaughter,

792
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:12,680
quite another to seek to create
a whole new system of governance
based on our values.

793
00:55:12,680 --> 00:55:19,080
Something we have attempted
to our peril, and I fear perhaps
to our discredit,

794
00:55:19,080 --> 00:55:21,120
in Iraq and Afghanistan.

795
00:55:21,120 --> 00:55:23,160
CHEERING AND SHOUTING

796
00:55:24,560 --> 00:55:30,560
These recent wars have not just been
about humanitarian intervention.

797
00:55:30,560 --> 00:55:36,280
They're a far grander attempt, post
9/11, to try to spread democracy.

798
00:55:36,280 --> 00:55:39,680
The willingness to intervene
in acute situations is a good thing

799
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:43,200
and I think Tony Blair's
willingness to go into countries

800
00:55:43,200 --> 00:55:46,600
like Sierra Leone was right.
The trouble is you then

801
00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:47,840
have to weigh up, well,

802
00:55:47,840 --> 00:55:50,520
what about situations we're
not going to go into,

803
00:55:50,520 --> 00:55:51,840
which may be even worse.

804
00:55:51,840 --> 00:55:54,280
Look at what happened
in Rwanda, in Burundi,

805
00:55:54,280 --> 00:55:57,320
we all stood by as over
a million people were massacred.

806
00:55:57,320 --> 00:56:01,240
It's very easy to do what Tony Blair
did and President Clinton did -

807
00:56:01,240 --> 00:56:04,600
to go and say, "Oh, these things
will never happen again."

808
00:56:04,600 --> 00:56:08,480
They WILL happen again and we
won't always be able to intervene.

809
00:56:08,480 --> 00:56:10,960
It won't always be
sensible to intervene.

810
00:56:10,960 --> 00:56:15,200
Sometimes by intervening, we will
kill more people and postpone peace

811
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:16,640
instead of solving it.

812
00:56:16,640 --> 00:56:20,120
You have to judge that case by case.
It's extraordinarily difficult.

813
00:56:20,120 --> 00:56:23,560
Because you will reach different
answers in different cases.

814
00:56:23,560 --> 00:56:26,600
We are not going to go to war
with China to rescue Tibet.

815
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:28,760
I mean we're simply not.

816
00:56:28,760 --> 00:56:32,560
But if you accept that there'll be
different answers in different cases,

817
00:56:32,560 --> 00:56:36,040
then you must be very careful
about your speech making.

818
00:56:36,040 --> 00:56:40,320
You must be very careful not to
follow the Gladstone/Blair approach -

819
00:56:40,320 --> 00:56:45,120
banging on as if there are
universal rules which you're going
to apply in all circumstances.

820
00:56:45,120 --> 00:56:48,520
That is the way in which you
deceive people including yourself.

821
00:56:48,520 --> 00:56:51,520
And that is the way in which you can
really land everybody,

822
00:56:51,520 --> 00:56:55,200
including the people you're trying
to help, in very grave trouble,

823
00:56:55,200 --> 00:56:57,840
if you let rhetoric
run ahead of the realities.

824
00:56:57,840 --> 00:57:03,200
My reading of history, which may
reflect my predilections,

825
00:57:03,200 --> 00:57:06,680
is that a lot more people have been
killed by prophets

826
00:57:06,680 --> 00:57:12,320
than by statesmen and so...

827
00:57:12,320 --> 00:57:16,120
the assertion of values and ideals

828
00:57:16,120 --> 00:57:20,880
as the only criterion
is not such a comforting lesson.

829
00:57:29,600 --> 00:57:32,960
So do values have a place
in foreign policy?

830
00:57:32,960 --> 00:57:34,520
Of course they do.

831
00:57:34,520 --> 00:57:39,520
But when values become detached from
reality, and tip over into ideology

832
00:57:39,520 --> 00:57:44,280
and messianism, the first casualty
is the national interest.

833
00:57:44,280 --> 00:57:49,320
Perhaps the hardest lesson of all is
to recognise the limits of our power

834
00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:52,440
and the danger
of unintended consequences.

835
00:57:52,440 --> 00:57:57,800
Who paused to think in March 2003,
as America and Britain invaded Iraq,

836
00:57:57,800 --> 00:58:01,400
that the strategic beneficiary
would be Iran?

837
00:58:05,920 --> 00:58:08,600
For the last 500 years,
as an island nation,

838
00:58:08,600 --> 00:58:11,920
we have been outward looking
and engaged worldwide.

839
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:16,280
Diplomacy has not only been
fundamental to our security
and our prosperity,

840
00:58:16,280 --> 00:58:20,840
it has shaped our history,
our standing and our very identity.

841
00:58:20,840 --> 00:58:25,200
Today, far from ending, history
has resumed with a vengeance,

842
00:58:25,200 --> 00:58:28,360
in a world of unusual turbulence
and danger.

843
00:58:28,360 --> 00:58:33,480
If ever there was a time for a
clear-eyed, hard headed diplomacy,

844
00:58:33,480 --> 00:58:36,960
rooted in our values as a nation,
it is now.

845
00:59:02,800 --> 00:59:05,840
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846
00:59:05,840 --> 00:59:08,880
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