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A top British diplomat to Canada says the increasingly important task of maintaining relationships and information sharing between important allies is not much different than what the public can watch on a hit Netflix drama.
Although The diplomat is fictional, David Prodger, Britain’s deputy high commissioner to Canada, says the ripped-from-the-headlines stories capture what it’s like to prevent crises from spilling over from behind the scenes – especially the “suppressed air of panic” around many of 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 on The West Block.
“You are dealing with big problems, and you also have to deal with them quickly.”
The thriller stars Keri Russell as a career American diplomat who has suddenly been named the new US ambassador to the United Kingdom, where she works to defuse disasters at home and abroad. The series was filmed in real foreign offices and diplomatic residences in Britain and has been praised for its accuracy.
As depicted in the series, Prodger, who is based in Ottawa, said diplomacy mostly involves maintaining and developing smaller relationships between foreign diplomatic officials to ensure the “big picture relationship” is maintained, with officials at all levels who talk to each other constantly.
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Still, he said the show may override the kind of access even high-ranking diplomats like himself would have with government officials.
“I’m not sure I can run (Foreign Minister) Melanie Joly’s office here,” he said.
“(But) whether it’s on the day-to-day policy side, whether it’s between our respective missions and our headquarters, we would expect to see our allies in and out of the foreign office all the time.”
“Those relationships are really key, and we spend a lot of time trying to find them in the right place,” he added.
Prodger said the Partnership Five Eyes intelligence sharing – which includes Canada and Britain along with the United States, Australia and New Zealand – is “growing 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 for like-minded countries to work together to counter disinformation and misinformation, 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 civil servants,” he said. “We work for our government, and therefore we have to think very carefully about how we present what we do.”
Podger said transparency with the public about what the government knows about current and emerging threats, or during an emergency situation such as 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 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 coming down 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 … global geopolitics is struggling to realign itself,” he said, “I think that’s something we’re working really hard to do.”
& copy 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
