Charles Moore’s Notes: Who’d be a diplomat now?

The other day, a friend told me, he had been chatting to an old friend of his who has spent his life in diplomacy and international relations. The man, who will quite soon retire, has had a successful career, but he was full of gloom. Essentially, he said, the entire system of international relations has now been working very badly for 20 years, having worked much better in the previous 50 or so. No one — particularly no one in the West — can see a way through this, but the chancelleries and ministers are reluctant to confront this sad truth, and so a pointless merry-go-round of international conferences, bodies and negotiations consumes the energies of those foolish enough to stay in the game. My friend’s friend now longs to do something which actually helps actual people. I suspect that this disillusionment is not unusual, nor unjustified. No one knows how to concert the affairs of the world today.