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00:00For 500 years, our little island Britain has punched above its weight around the world,
00:10getting our way.
00:13The means to our success, not just gunboats and commerce, but ruthless powerbroking, Machiavellian
00:23manoeuvring and plenty of child diplomacy.
00:29Diplomats are the people you don't often get to hear about. It's the kings and queens,
00:33the politicians and the generals who dominate the history books, but this series is about
00:38my predecessors who championed Britain's interests abroad, ambassadors and envoys, powerbrokers
00:45and negotiators.
00:46You must never forget that it's British interests which you're there to promote and protect.
00:52You are constantly having to talk to, make deals with, make concessions to people who
00:59in other ways are doing things which you thoroughly dislike and disapprove of.
01:04You have to be a bit of a schemer, otherwise you can't do the job properly.
01:08As our man in Washington, I saw history in the making.
01:19Now I am putting myself in the shoes of different diplomats over the last five centuries who
01:24ensured Britain's rise to greatness and who managed our decline.
01:32No one doubts that security and prosperity are the twin pillars of the national interest,
01:36but what has always been much more controversial is the question of values, the idea that maybe
01:42there should be an ethical dimension to foreign policy.
01:52History has had too many examples of us standing by and then saying, never again, and then
02:00we find ourselves a few years down the road saying, never again, again, and where would
02:07it be the next time?
02:38Istanbul, where Asia meets Europe, Islam meets Christendom.
02:43The only city in the world to span two continents.
02:53For much of the last 500 years, Constantinople, as it was then called, was the top ambassadorial
02:59post for Britain.
03:06In 1876, this was the epicentre of the first great controversy in our history about the
03:24Our man on the ground is Sir Henry Eliot.
03:30His official title was Ambassador to the Sublime Port, named after this monumental gateway
03:43which led into the offices of the Grand Vizier of Ottoman Turkey.
03:50The Ottoman Empire was an important strategic ally for Britain and Henry Eliot was tasked
03:56with maintaining this special relationship.
04:00He did so diligently, he was a rather conventional diplomat, but one experienced and trusted
04:06for his quiet firmness.
04:10Eliot conducted most of his business from here, Pera House, today Britain's Consulate
04:15General.
04:22Dealing with our Ottoman allies was never entirely straightforward.
04:25There was something to the popular view of sultans and viziers, harems and eunuchs, and
04:31layer upon layer of court intrigue, and of course from time to time, the Ottomans behaved
04:36pretty outrageously.
04:39The Ottoman Empire was vast.
04:41In Europe it reached far into the Balkans, where its Christian subjects were increasingly
04:46restless for independence.
04:49The Ottomans suppressed a series of rebellions with savage and exemplary brutality.
04:56Worst of all was the treatment meted out to the Bulgarians in April 1876.
05:02The news came through to Henry Eliot in a trickle of reports.
05:05Some 15,000 Bulgarians massacred, dozens of villages completely destroyed by the Bashi
05:11Bazooks, Muslim irregulars in the pay of the sultan, the 19th century equivalent, if you
05:16like, of the gingerweed wreaking havoc in Darfur, funded by the state and notoriously
05:22ferocious.
05:24Henry Eliot was appalled.
05:29Unarmed men, women and children were slaughtered indiscriminately, sometimes burned alive
05:34in the schools and churches where they had sought refuge.
05:42A British consular official, sent to investigate, reported from the small Bulgarian town of
05:47Batak.
05:49I visited this valley of the shadow of death.
05:53The stench was so overpowering.
05:56The whole of the main street was a mass of human remains, but the most fearful spectacle
06:01was the church and its al-sand.
06:04Here the corpses lay so thick that one could hardly avoid treading on them.
06:10Altogether I can hardly describe the horror of the scene.
06:241876 still lives strong in local memory.
06:30When the Svekermi were driven out of their homes, he was with his grandmother.
06:37She fell dead on his back, and he was left alive.
06:42But a Turk noticed him and said, two houses are still alive.
06:47And he started to stab him with a knife.
06:51The blood came out, and he cut himself.
06:56He stood like this for three days and nights.
07:01My great-grandfather was burned alive by the Turks.
07:05He was on the verge of death at the age of 75.
07:10For me, this is a part of history that must be remembered,
07:15passed on, not forgotten, not hidden.
07:20It must not be repeated anywhere in the world.
07:51It must not be repeated anywhere in the world.
07:56It must not be repeated anywhere in the world.
08:01It must not be repeated anywhere in the world.
08:06It must not be repeated anywhere in the world.
08:11It must not be repeated anywhere in the world.
08:16It must not be repeated anywhere in the world.
08:21The cry went up from Parliament and people alike.
08:25Something must be done.
08:31The Bulgarian cause was taken up by the grand old man himself,
08:36liberal statesman William Gladstone, now on the back benches.
08:41Incensed by Turkish villainy, he published a lengthy pamphlet,
08:46which proposed a whole new values-based foreign policy.
08:51It was the nation's moral duty to intervene and to prevent further atrocities.
08:57There have been perpetrated crimes and outrages so vast in scale
09:02as to exceed all modern example.
09:05These are the Bulgarian horrors.
09:07And the question is, what can and should be done,
09:11either to punish or to brand or to prevent?
09:16Gladstone's idealistic call to arms was a sensation.
09:20200,000 copies of his pamphlet were sold within a month,
09:24spawning a national moral crusade against the government's traditional policy
09:29of alliance with the Turk.
09:31I think Gladstone was right about the Turkish massacres,
09:35the importance of Britain trying to stand up for oppressed populations,
09:41and recognising what had become, since the time of the Congress of Vienna,
09:46the much stronger pressure for nationality to be recognised,
09:50for people to be able to determine their own future.
09:53And I think Gladstone picked up that and rode on that wave of a world
09:59which gave greater recognition to people being able to decide more of their own affairs.
10:06Over the next few months, hundreds of demonstrations took place
10:10throughout the land, expressing their support for an ethical foreign policy.
10:17There's a tendency to think that 24-hour wall-to-wall television
10:21has somehow created a completely new world.
10:24People have been under pressure from the media over foreign policy
10:28all through history.
10:30It's just different type of pressure, and something must be done.
10:35It's the consistent cry.
10:37And sadly, quite often big mistakes are taken in order to respond to this.
10:42Press and public opinion have an enormous influence on foreign policy these days.
10:48The trouble is that their view of foreign policy
10:52tends to be rather emotional and rather oversimplified.
11:00If you get shocking pictures in the press,
11:04screaming headlines saying something must be done,
11:09it's not a very good basis for policy.
11:18The popular clamour for intervening in Bulgaria
11:21took scant account of the strategic interests
11:24which underlay Britain's long alliance with the Ottoman Empire.
11:28The key is geography.
11:30That way, down through the Straits of the Dardanelles,
11:33through the Suez Canal, is India.
11:36That way, just over the Black Sea, is Russia.
11:40You've got to remember that sometimes diplomacy
11:44is about choosing the least worst option.
11:47And it was an absolute axiom of British foreign policy
11:50to prop up the Ottoman Empire against the Russian bear.
11:55After all, we fought the Crimean War on that principle.
12:02So the pragmatic Henry Elliot knew there was good reason
12:05to keep the Ottomans on the side.
12:08And Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's government
12:11demanded of Elliot a hard-headed, pro-Turkish line.
12:19Gladstone versus Disraeli.
12:21Idealism versus realism.
12:24It's the classic dichotomy in foreign policy.
12:30To his horror, Henry Elliot found himself ensnared
12:33in the controversy, with the idealists taking direct aim at him.
12:37It was shoot-the-messenger time with a vengeance.
12:41He sat down and wrote to London.
12:44To the accusation of being a blind partisan of the Turks,
12:48I will only answer that my conduct has never been guided
12:53by any sentimental affection for them,
12:55but by a firm determination to uphold the interests of Great Britain
12:59to the utmost of my power.
13:02And that those interests are deeply engaged
13:05in preventing the disruption of the Turkish Empire
13:08is a conviction which I share in common
13:11with the most eminent statesmen who have directed our foreign policy,
13:15but which appears now to be abandoned by shallow politicians
13:19or persons who have allowed their feelings of revolted humanity
13:23to make them forget the capital interests involved in the question.
13:28I could not have put that better myself, Sir Henry.
13:31It's not that you were an amoral diplomat,
13:34but that you believed in a higher interest,
13:37and abandoning it would not have saved a single Bulgarian life.
13:43The diplomat isn't there to do the bleeding-heart humanitarian
13:49stuff. That's not what we're trained to do.
13:51We are there to analyse the geopolitical situation,
13:55not today or tomorrow, but in the long term.
13:59There is a standard debate between idealists and realists,
14:02and idealists are good and realists are bad,
14:05although I've never understood why the perception,
14:08understanding of reality should be a sinful thing.
14:11My view is that there is and should be a moral part
14:15of British foreign policy,
14:19but that in deciding what to do,
14:22you have to take account of reality.
14:25Gladstone was wrong in that respect when he said
14:29you must push the Turks' bag and baggage out of the provinces
14:33that they have desolated and profaned, something like that.
14:36Anyway, great stuff.
14:38But actually doing that, of course, he couldn't have done it
14:41if he'd been Prime Minister, and when he became Prime Minister,
14:44he made no attempt to do it.
14:47The crisis intensified in 1877 when the Russians used the plight
14:51of their oppressed Christian brethren in the Balkans
14:54to declare war on Turkey and grab some of its territory.
14:58Without hesitation, the Israelis sent a fleet to the Dardanelles
15:02to show support for the Turks.
15:05It worked to bear back down without Britain's having to go to war.
15:09The fickle pendulum of public opinion
15:11swung right back to support the government.
15:14An anti-Russian song, composed in patriotic celebration,
15:18swept the land.
15:22The misfeeds of the Turks
15:24Have been spouted through our lands
15:27But how about the Russians?
15:30Can they show spotless hands?
15:33They snorted well at Kosovo
15:37They snorted well at Kiev
15:39In Siberia icy cold
15:42How many subjects down to death
15:45Will there perhaps be told?
15:48Bulgaria was forgotten, Turkey out chum again.
15:52It just goes to show that public opinion
15:54is as much there to be led as followed.
15:57Our prayers for freedom and revenge
16:00Go up into the air
16:04It's too hot, it's too hot
16:08This song, with its bi-jingo, gave us the word jingoism.
16:13We fought the bear before
16:16And the wild will bring us through
16:19The Russians shall not have constancy no more
16:29But the turnaround in opinion had come too late
16:33And so did the scapegoat Henry Elliot
16:36However unjustly, his reputation had suffered
16:39And he was transferred to the lesser post of Vienna.
16:45Over a century later, the ethical questions
16:48Raised by the Bulgarian crisis still resonate.
16:53Can the world simply stand by
16:56When a rogue state brutally abuses
16:59The rights of those it governs?
17:02My thought in 1876 was clear
17:05And so is mine today.
17:08Then as now it would have been easy
17:11To look the other way
17:14Easy to argue that bigger strategic issues
17:17Were at stake than the fate
17:20Of a few hundred thousand people in the Balkans.
17:23They were wrong in 1876 over Bulgaria
17:26And they are wrong in 1999 over Kosovo.
17:32The Eastern Crisis of 1876
17:35Shows how hard it can be to reconcile
17:38Human rights with the national interest.
17:41The irony is that less than 40 years later
17:44In the First World War, Turkey was our enemy
17:47And Russia our ally.
17:50So demonstrating the truth of Lord Palmerston's famous saying
17:53When he was Foreign Secretary in 1848
17:56That Britain should be our ally
18:00That Britain had no eternal allies
18:03And no perpetual enemies
18:06But only interests that were eternal and perpetual.
18:111977
18:27In 1977 I was working in the Foreign Office Planning Staff.
18:31The job to stand back from the daily cut and thrust
18:34And think strategically.
18:36The new Foreign Secretary, young David Owen,
18:40Decided to integrate human rights systematically
18:43Into foreign policy.
18:45So we planners devised a grid.
18:48Every nation in the world was given points
18:51Against a series of benchmarks
18:54Like freedom of the press
18:57And the independence of the judiciary.
19:00Add all the points up
19:03And you have a numerical score for each country
19:06A kind of human rights league table.
19:09Marking the French relatively low.
19:12But from the start, the grid didn't work.
19:15Yes, it told us something about a country's human rights record
19:18But what about our strategic, political and military interests?
19:21Arms sales to a third world despot.
19:24Sounds bad, but hang on.
19:27What if the contract guarantees the jobs of thousands of British workers?
19:30Isn't it the government's first duty to those who put it in power?
19:33One thing's for sure
19:37Solving these kinds of questions is never simple.
19:58On the 1st of December, 1925,
20:01Europe's statesmen gathered at the Foreign Office in London
20:05It was perhaps the only diplomatic assembly in history
20:08Over which statesmen waxed lyrical
20:11And journalists went into raptures.
20:17They convened in the heart of the building
20:20In the grandest of its grand rooms.
20:25The Locarno suite is named after a diplomatic triumph
20:28That seemed to promise a new era
20:31Of altruistic international cooperation.
20:35An ethical dimension to foreign policy, you might say.
20:40The signing in the Foreign Office
20:43Of treaties previously negotiated at Locarno in Switzerland
20:46Seemed to herald a new age
20:49Following the horrors of the First World War.
20:53The spirit of Locarno became synonymous
20:56With peace, multilateral collaboration
20:59And what was hailed as the New Diplomacy.
21:03A more relaxed, more open
21:06And more accountable way of doing things.
21:09Old-fashioned notions like the balance of power
21:12Secret alliances and back-channel negotiations
21:15Were to be thrown out.
21:18Henceforth, international relations
21:21Would be governed by values
21:24By the principles of human rights, of fairness
21:27And of self-determination for small countries
21:30The World's countries would gather in Geneva
21:33To make and enforce international laws
21:36Acting together to keep the peace
21:39Through collective security.
21:42The idealism at the end of the First World War
21:45Was based on the idea
21:48Of a new world order, if you like
21:51A world order in which there would be
21:54Overarching supranational institutions
21:58Taken up by a Europe which was sick of war
22:01Which was heartily sick of war.
22:07The League of Nations had been
22:10President Woodrow Wilson's brainchild
22:13But he couldn't get it past Congress
22:16So America never joined.
22:19A decade later, the world was looking
22:22At a more dangerous place
22:26The League of Nations was founded
22:29In 1933
22:34But the first really big test
22:37For the high-minded idealists of the League
22:40Was the crisis brewing in 1935.
22:46The Italian fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini
22:49Decided to create a new Roman Empire
22:52Starting with the one nation in Africa
22:56Left for imperial conquest
22:59Abyssinia, now Ethiopia.
23:11From February till summer
23:14Mussolini massed his troops on the Abyssinian border
23:17An outrageous contravention
23:20Of the spirit of the new diplomacy
23:23The eyes of all the world
23:26Are on Abyssinia.
23:29Parades and general preparation
23:32Are in full swing
23:35In case the war, which the neutral world
23:38Hopes to avoid, breaks out.
23:41Emperor Haile Selassie,
23:44Legendary descendants of King Solomon
23:47And the Queen of Sheba
23:51What were Britain and the League going to do?
23:54Of course, the idealists of the new diplomacy
23:57Felt that such aggression could not go unheeded.
24:00Collective security meant intervention.
24:03But then again, nobody wanted war.
24:06The man who had to guide Britain through this minefield
24:09Was the top dog in the diplomatic service
24:12The permanent undersecretary of state
24:15Or, as the diplomats call him, the PUS.
24:19Van Sitter was an unorthodox diplomat
24:22A playwright on the side
24:25Known for expressing his strong opinions loudly and often.
24:28Van Sitter treated the new diplomacy with caution.
24:31He was fundamentally an old-fashioned realist.
24:34And he felt that the greatest threat to world peace
24:37Was not Mussolini, but Adolf Hitler.
24:40So in Van's eyes, the strategic goal
24:43Of keeping Italy on side against Germany
24:47He made his thinking clear in this minute
24:50Of June 1935.
24:53The position is as plain as a pikestaff.
24:56Italy will have to be bought off
24:59In some form or other.
25:05Van believed the only way to keep Mussolini
25:08From jumping into bed with Hitler
25:11Was to give parts of Ethiopia to Italy.
25:14Buying countries off at the expense of others
25:17A hard-headed strategic approach
25:20Was scarcely in the spirit of the new diplomacy.
25:23And popular opinion in the 1930s
25:26Had an even stronger voice
25:29Than at the time of the Bulgarian atrocities.
25:32The public was resolutely pro-league
25:35And anti-war.
25:38When there's a quarrel between two people
25:42If peace are called in to settle it
25:45Why can't the League of Nations be strong enough
25:48To settle disputes between two nations?
25:51I've no quarrel with Frenchmen or Germans or Russians
25:54Or anybody else for that matter
25:57So let's be sensible
26:00And work together for peace by reasoning.
26:03As the crisis in Abyssinia gathered momentum
26:06A mass peace movement in Britain
26:10The peace ballot
26:13Was an unprecedented survey of public opinion.
26:16Over 11 million people
26:19That's nearly 40% of the adult population
26:22Voted in a door-to-door ballot
26:25On five broad questions of foreign policy.
26:28That's an extraordinary response.
26:31The sheer weight of turnout
26:34Gave the ballot a powerful moral and political force.
26:38Ordinary people, so it seemed
26:41Were utterly wedded to the ideals of the new diplomacy.
26:48Looking through this stuff
26:51What positively leaps from the page
26:54Is the strength of public feeling
26:57In favour of peace over war.
27:00If only it were that simple.
27:03The vast majority voted yes
27:06To banning the arms trade.
27:09Yet most also conceded
27:12That military intervention might be needed
27:15In the last resort to resist aggression.
27:18So the public wanted the League to stand up for Abyssinia
27:21But it didn't want war
27:24Or to give Abyssinia the arms to defend itself.
27:27It's a bit like saying
27:30Are you against illegal wars?
27:34Van Sittert, with his typical piff
27:37Called the ballot a free excursion into the inane.
27:40And I have to say, as a fellow diplomat
27:43I could not agree more.
27:46But it's tougher for the politicians
27:49Who have to respond to public feeling.
27:52I think it's the job of the Prime Minister
27:55And the Foreign Secretary in this country
27:58And of leaders in every country
28:02To be able to say,
28:05You know, I think we're pretty pure-eyed, really.
28:08Public opinion can get easily led astray.
28:11I think the peace ballot in the 1930s
28:14Was a very good example of that.
28:17As was the famous Oxford Union debate
28:20On whether we would fight for king and country.
28:23It all sounded, frankly, goody-goody and desirable.
28:26And of course it was.
28:30Unlike Van Sittert, the newly appointed Foreign Secretary,
28:33Sir Samuel Hoare, did have to heed the public.
28:36And he seemed fully, even extravagantly,
28:39Signed up to the new diplomacy in this speech on Abyssinia.
28:42The attitude of His Majesty's Government
28:45Has always been one of unswerving fidelity to the League
28:50And all that it stands for.
28:53For steady and collective resistance
28:56To all acts of unprovoked aggression.
29:00Fine words indeed.
29:03But they didn't put off Mussolini,
29:06Who began his invasion of Abyssinia on October 3rd.
29:22The radio station at Addis Ababa
29:25Continues to send out appeals to the world
29:28What will the League of Nations do?
29:31Will the League support the Black Emperor?
29:34Or will Mussolini have his way, his whole way,
29:37And nothing but his way?
29:40After much discussion,
29:43The League of Nations applied economic sanctions
29:46For the very first time.
29:49This was the League of Nations' only weapon.
29:52But it was a half-hearted one.
29:56The League, still anxious not to antagonise Mussolini,
29:59Wouldn't impose sanctions where they might have hurt most,
30:02On oil.
30:05So what more could the League have done?
30:08Sad truth is, not very much.
30:11The drive for peace had been accompanied
30:14By a drive for disarmament.
30:17And having rejected the military alliances
30:20Which were part of the old discredited diplomacy,
30:24And without the credible threat of force,
30:27Fine diplomatic communiques,
30:30Words about a more ethical and harmonious world,
30:33Weren't worth the paper they were written on.
30:36The history of sanctions on the whole has not been happy.
30:39We see it in our period
30:42With respect to Iran and North Korea.
30:45It is very hard to agree on sanctions.
30:48And then it becomes even more difficult
30:52To enforce the sanctions.
30:55And the notion of the League of Nations
30:58And of the United Nations,
31:01That all countries would see issues identically,
31:04And therefore would act in unity,
31:07It's just not true.
31:10Sanctions should be a very tough, short, sharp shock.
31:13And if they don't work then,
31:16You have to probably use other means.
31:19If they are a short, sharp shock,
31:22They can sometimes avoid the use of military power.
31:25But sanctions creeping, being ignored,
31:28Gesture politics,
31:31Introduced just to keep people quiet
31:34Because something must be done,
31:37Are deeply damaging to the whole concept of sanctions.
31:41Collective security
31:44Is only as strong as its weakest link.
31:47And in 1935, the weakest link was France.
31:53With Hitler and Mussolini on its doorstep,
31:56Van Zittert knew full well
31:59Vulnerable France effectively rendered
32:02New diplomacy toothless.
32:07In December 1936,
32:11Van and Samuel Hoare arrived in Paris
32:14For secret talks,
32:17For an old diplomacy compromise deal
32:20That might end the bloodshed in Abyssinia.
32:27Driving on the way to the French Foreign Ministry
32:30Before the talks, Van Zittert leaned over
32:33And asked the big question,
32:36Foreign Secretary, will the government fight Italy over Abyssinia?
32:40Then you will have to compromise, retorted Van.
32:43That'll be unpopular, but there is no third way.
32:49The real decisions are not what they teach in the academy,
32:52Which is good versus evil,
32:55Black versus white.
32:58They're 50.5 against 49.5.
33:01They're very narrow decisions.
33:10Over two days of discussions at the Quai d'Orsay,
33:13Van, Hoare and the French Prime Minister Pierre Laval
33:16Hammered out a proposal for buying Italy off.
33:22Mussolini was kept in the loop by telephone,
33:25Haile Selassie was never consulted.
33:31The Hoare-Laval Pact would give Italy
33:34A substantial chunk of Ethiopia
33:38In exchange for Italian economic development.
33:41The price of peace was that Haile Selassie
33:44Would lose about half his country.
33:51But before the plan could be put to the league,
33:54It was leaked to the press.
33:57And to the idealists back home, it stank to high heaven.
34:01The Hoare-Laval Pact looked to the outraged public
34:04Like a classic deal of the old diplomacy.
34:07It cut up slices of Africa against all the tenets
34:10Of self-determination and justice
34:13That the league and the new diplomacy
34:16Were supposed to stand for.
34:19The public reaction was so hostile
34:22That within days the British government
34:25Did a U-turn, as did the French,
34:28And renounced the deal.
34:31The pact was dead even before arrival.
34:35It was the prospect of keeping Italy
34:38From alliance with Hitler.
34:41Sir Samuel Hoare was forced to resign as Foreign Secretary,
34:44And Van Sisset found his career and reputation in tatters.
34:48I have quite a bleak view of diplomacy
34:51In the sense that I think it's largely
34:54Made up of failures.
34:57You are given a Sisyphean task.
35:00You're pushing your boulder uphill.
35:04And while you're desperately trying to push your boulder uphill,
35:07You're watching ten others going downhill,
35:10And your own boulder may well go in that direction
35:13Before you've got to the top.
35:16It is a profoundly frustrating career,
35:19Because there is never a moment
35:22When you, I think, can clearly say,
35:25Well, we've sorted that out.
35:34The rest, as they say, is history.
35:37With the deal off, and the League impotent,
35:40Mussolini pushed his war to its conclusion.
35:46Two thousand years of Abyssinian independence
35:49Came to an end.
35:56To Geneva on the 30th of June, 1936,
35:59Came the end of the war.
36:03And on the 26th came the man without a country.
36:06Abandoned by his international friends,
36:09Emperor Haile Selassie addressed the League in person.
36:17I am here today to claim that justice
36:20Which is due to my people,
36:23And the assistance promised to it eight months ago,
36:26When 50 nations asserted that aggression
36:29Was violated in violation of international treaties.
36:32What have become of the promises made to me?
36:35It is collective security.
36:38It is the very existence of the League of Nations.
36:41It is international morality that is at stake.
36:47The new diplomacy had failed.
36:50The League of Nations had lost all credibility.
36:54It may be that in 1935,
36:57Public opinion was too idealistic
37:00About the prospects of peace.
37:03But you can argue that if the emphasis on peace negotiations
37:06Had carried the full weight and authority
37:09Of the League of Nations,
37:12Then they would have challenged Mussolini
37:15And they would have challenged Hitler.
37:18League of Nations or similar institutions are attractive
37:22Because they're idealistic
37:25And ideals are very fine things to have.
37:28But you've then got to relate them to the real world
37:31And to the real world composed of individual nation-states
37:34With their own sovereignty
37:37Who don't want to be told by others what to do.
37:40They may sign up to cooperate, to talk and so on,
37:43But at the end of the day,
37:46They're not going to let that override their national interests.
37:50The Hall of Alpact has gone down in history
37:53As an act of diplomatic infamy,
37:56Leaving the indelible stain of appeasement on the foreign office.
38:01But the worst mistake of all was to do the deal
38:04And then to pull out of it.
38:07Might the compromise agreement have been better
38:10Than the wholesale sacrifice of Ethiopia,
38:13Which was the tragic consequence of the League's inability
38:16To match action with its idealistic aspirations?
38:19The results of international cooperation were admirable.
38:22But what every good diplomat has to learn,
38:25Like the prudent realist Van Sittert,
38:28Is that you've got to take the world as you find it,
38:31Not as you might wish it to be.
38:45In 1999, I found myself cruising the streets
38:49Of Chicago in a limo with Tony Blair.
38:52He was anxiously preparing for one of his most important speeches
38:55On foreign policy.
38:58That afternoon, over two years before 9-11,
39:01He laid out a new doctrine of international community.
39:05Delivered in his eloquent, evangelical style,
39:08Blair was gladstone reborn.
39:11And although the speech was about the crisis of the moment in Kosovo,
39:14It was couched in the language of universal values.
39:18In Blair's brave new world,
39:21The humanitarian imperative would trump the traditional sovereignty of nations.
39:25And if this meant invading other countries
39:28To save their people from despots,
39:31Then so be it.
39:34We cannot let the evil of ethnic cleansing stand.
39:39We must not rest until it is reversed.
39:44We have learnt twice before in this century
39:48That appeasement does not work.
39:51That word appeasement is loaded.
39:54He wanted his audience and the White House
39:57To put Milosevic's Serbia in the same box as Hitler and Mussolini.
40:00To avoid repeating the tragic mistakes of the 1930s,
40:03Britain and America should stand shoulder to shoulder
40:06To stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
40:09And after all, our recent record in the Balkans
40:12Was less than glorious.
40:18In the early 1990s,
40:21More than a century after Henry Elliott,
40:24British foreign policy was once more dominated by the Eastern Question,
40:27As the Balkans exploded yet again.
40:35The collapse of Yugoslavia
40:38Led to the kind of brutal and organized war
40:41That the Balkans had never seen before.
40:44The collapse of Yugoslavia
40:47Led to the kind of brutal and organized violence
40:50That Europe hoped it would never see again.
40:53Killings, mass rape, ethnic cleansing, concentration camps.
41:04It was Bosnia that saw the worst of the fighting.
41:08All sides targeted civilians.
41:15The capital, Sarajevo, became an ethnic battleground.
41:18With Serbs who didn't want to live under a Muslim majority
41:21Bombarding it from the hills.
41:29This was not the peaceful end of history
41:32That was supposed to follow the demise of the Cold War.
41:36In Britain, once again, the cry went up,
41:39Something must be done.
41:42Was diplomacy completely bankrupt
41:45For failing to stop these horrors on Europe's doorstep?
41:48Had we learned nothing from history?
41:51As in Elliott's day,
41:54The House of Commons was divided between the realists
41:57Who didn't want to get involved in a Balkan quagmire
42:00And those who felt that it was Britain's moral duty
42:04To stop the bloodshed.
42:07But unlike the 1870s, there was no obvious national interest
42:10At stake for Britain.
42:13The Balkans were, quite simply,
42:16No longer an area of strategic importance.
42:25Don't, don't, don't live under this dream
42:28That the West is going to come in and sort this problem out.
42:31Don't dream dreams.
42:34There will be no unilateral use,
42:37Unilateral use of United States force.
42:40As we have said before, we are not
42:43And we cannot be the world's policeman.
42:50For all our reluctance to get involved in the conflict,
42:53To stand aloof completely was not an option.
42:56If the international community had felt it had responsibilities
43:00In the 1930s, how much more powerful
43:03Was the cry, never again, after the Holocaust?
43:08Following the Second World War,
43:11The United Nations had been born out of the wreckage
43:14Of the League of Nations,
43:17Designed to keep its ideals but avoid its weaknesses.
43:22Member states were asked to provide troops
43:25For a United Nations peacekeeping force.
43:29But the blue helmets went in.
43:32People forget the UN went in very reluctantly
43:35Into the former Yugoslavia.
43:38And we went in particularly in 1992, in the autumn,
43:41Because we were afraid of a humanitarian disaster.
43:44We weren't able to get food convoys through.
43:47We went in to escort food convoys.
43:53The international response was far from ideal.
43:57It was not the best response,
44:00But the lowest common denominator politics of the UN.
44:03Neutral peacekeepers,
44:06Tasked with protecting humanitarian aid
44:09And creating safe areas,
44:12Were not there to intervene and stop the killing,
44:15But just to put a plaster on its effects.
44:20In the absence of real force,
44:23It was down to diplomacy.
44:26The UN was in its own backyard,
44:29Proclaiming grandly that this was the hour of Europe.
44:34David Owen was appointed as Europe's peace envoy.
44:37He represented a new breed of European ambassador.
44:44If the politicians are refusing to use force,
44:47And if there isn't the structures available to use force,
44:50Then diplomats are sent in to play for time.
44:54No deal would be possible
44:57Without the say-so of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic,
45:00Who had been the driving force behind much of the violence.
45:13Both the Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd,
45:16And the European Union negotiator, David Owen,
45:19Decided that they were going to use force,
45:23And decided that Slobodan Milosevic
45:26Was not only the problem,
45:29But he was probably also the solution to the problem.
45:32And they therefore said to me,
45:35In a nutshell, get inside his head.
45:39How can we put pressure on him to bring an end to the war?
45:45At the time, he was being described in the British media
45:48As the most dangerous man in Europe.
45:52In the negotiations, you see a different side to someone.
45:55He was in a diplomatic duel with me, if you like.
46:01He had to show his best face.
46:04He had to come over as someone with whom one could do business.
46:10Diplomats have a bad reputation for talking to bad men.
46:13But sometimes this is unavoidable, even desirable.
46:16You can't manage the world's problems
46:20If you don't show your best face to your friends.
46:23I spent half a career dealing with our ideological opponents
46:26In the Soviet Union,
46:29Some of whom had certainly been complicit in communism's crimes.
46:32It mustn't be jaw-jaw for its own sake.
46:35It mustn't be appeasement.
46:38The key thing is to have a clear, tough-minded objective.
46:41I only met with those two war criminals,
46:44Radovan Kardec and Ratko Milotic, once.
46:47The European Union negotiators regularly trekked up the hill
46:50From Sarajevo to sit at their feet and empower them.
46:53I thought that was a terrible mistake.
46:59Talking to people is not absolving them.
47:02A handshake is not an absolution.
47:05Reaching an agreement with them is the next step
47:08And a different matter.
47:11And before you reach an agreement with somebody,
47:15They will keep their end of it.
47:23We soon learned that agreements made
47:26With the states of the former Yugoslavia
47:29Weren't worth the paper they were written on.
47:33Ceasefires were broken, peace plans negotiated,
47:36Rejected and then renegotiated.
47:39So it went on for three bloody years.
47:45From 1994, I was John Major's press secretary
47:48And I used to work in that office there.
47:51I had to fend off regular attacks on him
47:54For what was seen as an ineffectual and tentative policy.
47:57With news images of concentration camps in Europe once again,
48:00Diplomacy seemed utterly to have failed.
48:03But, hobbled by an unheroic United Nations mandate for the troops,
48:06There was simply no grand solution to be had.
48:10Major certainly couldn't look across the Atlantic
48:13For a grand solution.
48:16America, seeing Yugoslavia as Europe's problem,
48:19Had not joined the United Nations peacekeeping force.
48:24But as the war dragged on,
48:27The Clinton administration began calling
48:30For a new policy of airstrikes,
48:33Which infuriated the European powers
48:36Whose own troops on the ground
48:40Were at great risk.
48:43Well, you know, I began to feel
48:46That our problems with the Yugoslavs
48:49Were almost minor
48:52Compared with the difficulties
48:55Of dealing with our so-called allies.
48:58It really was a very difficult relationship.
49:01Constant carping, criticism,
49:04And it always seemed to me absolutely bizarre
49:07That the United States had a policy
49:10While contributing no troops at all.
49:13Imagine if the roles had been reversed.
49:16Imagine if the Americans had had 20,000 troops in Bosnia,
49:19But the British and French foreign ministers
49:22Had decided that they would dictate the policy.
49:25The American failure to come in earlier
49:28Was indeed a failure, and there's no excuse for it.
49:31But the Europeans share the blame.
49:34All the nations allowed the United Nations
49:37To go in without sufficient mandate.
49:40What moved the United States to get involved
49:43Belatedly and reluctantly
49:46Was the slaughter at Srebrenica in July of 1995.
49:54Srebrenica was a UN-designated safe area
49:57Where people were supposed to be protected
50:00From the violence.
50:03The soldiers took the town
50:06And told its 20,000 people to leave.
50:09These men and boys were separated from their families.
50:26Some 8,000 were led to the slaughter.
50:33It was the worst single atrocity in Europe
50:36Since the Holocaust.
50:39Several hundred lightly armed UN-Dutch peacekeepers
50:42Did nothing to prevent it.
50:49The international community failed the victims of Srebrenica.
50:52We had vowed to protect civilians,
50:55But at the moment of truth, we cut and ran.
50:58It was not the cowardice of the men in the field.
51:01They had to pull the torturers from their political superiors
51:04All the way to the top
51:07To avoid getting involved in the fighting.
51:10The practical consequence of the something-must-be-done mentality
51:13When not backed by credible force
51:16Was safe havens without safety.
51:19Ignominious disaster.
51:22I think this is the lesson of all these interventions.
51:25Whether it's economic sanctions or military intervention,
51:28And with very clear objectives.
51:31And that piecemeal, gradually, a little bit here and a little bit there.
51:34We all knew that this pledge to give safe havens
51:37In former Yugoslavia, and particularly in Bosnia,
51:40Was unsupportable.
51:43The UN generals told the military,
51:46They told the parliament representatives in the Security Council
51:49That they were not providing sufficient troops.
51:52It was a disaster waiting to happen, Srebrenica.
51:55Now, have we learnt the lesson of Srebrenica?
51:58I doubt it. I hope we have.
52:01But I doubt we have.
52:04When Yugoslavia was being dismembered,
52:07220,000 people in Bosnia were murdered.
52:10People driven from their homes.
52:13Villages burnt down.
52:16Children butchered.
52:19Women raped.
52:22They did bugger all.
52:25And I think that was a terrible, terrible moment
52:28In our history, in Europe's history.
52:31It mattered much more
52:34Whether the Americans were doing anything
52:37Than whether we were prepared to do anything.
52:40It mattered much more what the Americans wouldn't do
52:43Than what we would do.
52:46And that puts a terrible, terrible spotlight
52:50On the difference between European rhetoric
52:53And European reality.
52:56And we've got, if we want to be taken seriously in the world,
52:59We've got to do something about that gap
53:02And we must never, ever let something like that happen again.
53:14This conspicuous failure of diplomacy
53:17Finally goaded the great powers into decisive action.
53:28Just three weeks of sustained NATO,
53:31Mainly American airstrikes,
53:34Finally helped force Milosevic and the Bosnian Serbs
53:37To the negotiating table.
53:41A deal struck in Dayton, Ohio
53:44That ended more than three years of war.
53:48So far, it has held.
53:54Genocide had happened on our doorstep
53:57In an era when we have said,
54:00Never again.
54:14We can only get better
54:17Than now.
54:21Truly, when it came to foreign policy,
54:24It seemed things could only get better.
54:27Today, enough of talking.
54:30It is time now to do.
54:34Our new prime minister aimed to bring ideals
54:37Back into foreign policy.
54:41Tony Blair, like Gladstone before him,
54:44Proclaimed a moral mission,
54:47A desire to use power to do good.
54:50This led him to a doctrine of liberal intervention,
54:53Which at first served him well,
54:56In Kosovo and in Sierra Leone,
54:59Where crises were rapidly defused by decisive action.
55:02But the moral high ground can be a dangerous place.
55:05It's one thing to stop mass slaughter,
55:08It's another to create a whole new system of governance
55:11Based on our values.
55:14Something that we have attempted to our peril,
55:17And, I fear, perhaps to our discredit,
55:20In Iraq and in Afghanistan.
55:26These recent wars have not just been
55:29About humanitarian intervention.
55:32They're a far grander attempt, post-9-11,
55:35The willingness to intervene in acute situations
55:38Is a good thing, and I think Tony Blair's
55:41Willingness to go into countries like Sierra Leone was right.
55:44The trouble is, you then have to weigh up,
55:47Well, what about the situations we're not going to go into,
55:50Which may be even worse? Look at what happened in Rwanda,
55:53In Burundi. We all stood by as over a million people were massacred.
55:56It's very easy to do what Tony Blair did,
55:59And President Clinton did, to go and say,
56:02These things will never happen again.
56:05They will happen again, and we won't always be able to intervene.
56:08It won't always be sensible to intervene.
56:11Sometimes, by intervening, we will kill more people
56:14And postpone peace, instead of solving it.
56:17You have to judge that case by case.
56:20It's extraordinarily difficult, because you will reach
56:23Different answers in different cases.
56:26We are not going to go to war with China to rescue Tibet.
56:29If you accept that, there will be different answers in different cases,
56:32Then you must be very careful about your speech-making.
56:35You must be very careful not to follow the Gladstone Blair approach,
56:38Banging on as if there are universal rules
56:41Which you're going to apply in all circumstances.
56:44That is the way in which you deceive people, including yourself.
56:47And that is the way in which you can really land everybody,
56:50Including the people you're trying to help, in very great trouble.
56:53If you let rhetoric run ahead of the realities.
56:57At least my reading of history, which may reflect my predilections,
57:02A lot more people have been killed by prophets than by statesmen.
57:07And so the assertion of values and ideals as the only criterion
57:16Is not such a comforting lesson.
57:27So do values have a place in foreign policy? Of course they do.
57:32But when values become detached from reality,
57:35And tip over into ideology and messianism,
57:38The first casualty is the national interest.
57:42Perhaps the hardest lesson of all was to recognize the limits of our power
57:46And the danger of unintended consequences.
57:50Who paused to think in March 2003,
57:53As America and Britain invaded Iraq,
57:55That the strategic beneficiary would be Iran?
58:04For the last 500 years, as an island nation,
58:06We've been outward-looking and engaged worldwide.
58:09Diplomacy has not only been fundamental to our security and our prosperity,
58:13It has shaped our history, our standing, and our very identity.
58:18Today, far from ending,
58:20History has resumed with a vengeance
58:22In a world of unusual turbulence and danger.
58:25If ever there was a time for a clear-eyed, hard-headed diplomacy
58:30Rooted in our values as a nation, it is now.
58:51And our Corridors of Power season continues here on BBC4 on Thursday night
58:55With the final episode of The Great Officers of State.
58:58And tomorrow at nine, don't miss our brand-new drama
59:00As Anna Maxwell Martin and Brian Cox star in On Expenses.
59:04Next tonight, a murder victim memorialized in brand-new, award-winning Storyville.