A senior British diplomat in Canada says the ever-important task of maintaining relations and information-sharing between key allies is not much different from what audiences might see in a hit Netflix drama.
Although The diplomat is fictional, David Prodger, the British deputy high commissioner to Canada, says the ripped-from-the-headlines narrative captures what it's like to prevent crises from spreading behind the scenes, particularly the “pent-up air of panic” that surrounds many of the countries. the characters.
“I think a lot of those little vignettes were very, very true to real life,” Prodger told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired Sunday night. The west block.
“You're dealing with big problems and you need to address them quickly as well.”
The thriller stars Keri Russell as a career American diplomat who is suddenly named the new US ambassador to the United Kingdom, where she works to defuse disasters at home and abroad. The series has been filmed in royal foreign offices and diplomatic residences in Britain and has been praised for its accuracy.
As shown on the show, Prodger, who is based in Ottawa, said diplomacy primarily involves maintaining and developing smaller relationships between foreign diplomatic officials to ensure the “overall relationship” is maintained, with officials at all levels constantly talking to each other. Yeah.
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However, he said the program may overstate the type of access that even high-ranking diplomats like him would have with government officials.
“I'm not sure I can get into (Foreign Affairs Minister) Melanie Joly's office here,” he said.
“(But) whether it's on the day-to-day political side, whether it's between our respective missions and our headquarters, we would expect to see our allies coming in and out of the Foreign Office all the time.”
“Those relationships are really key and we spend a lot of time trying to get them in the right place,” he added.
Prodger said the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partnership, which includes Canada and Britain along with the United States, Australia and New Zealand, is “becoming more important” as democracies work to protect national and economic security from growing threats. .
As governments struggle to ensure people get the right information, he said it is critical that like-minded countries work together to counter misinformation and disinformation, as well as cyber attacks and other hostilities.
At the same time, he said part of the job involves being “aware of where public opinion is.”
“We are public servants,” he said. “We work for our government and therefore we also have to think a lot about how we present what we are doing.”
Podger said transparency with the public about what the government knows about current and emerging threats, or during an emergency situation like a terrorist attack, is crucial.
Despite warnings from military and government officials that the current threat environment is more dangerous than before, Podger sees it differently.
“I think things are always on the edge,” he said.
“If you look back 10 years, we had Iraq, we had Afghanistan, we had 9/11. Before that, we had the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Iron Curtain. We had genocide in Europe. So… there have always been those big geopolitical questions. It's just changing right now.
“I think what we're seeing is… that global geopolitics is struggling to realign itself,” he said. “I think it's something we're working very hard on.”
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