Lady Ashton: mistaking quiet diplomacy for silence (North Tayside Liberal Democrats)

Lady Ashton: mistaking quiet diplomacy for silence

July 19, 2010 2:27 PM
By George Lyon in the Guardian
Originally published by George Lyon - Liberal Democrat MEP for Scotland

Quiet diplomacy, it is said, helped to win the Cold War. By gently manoeuvring behind the scenes, diplomats were able to bring the Soviet Union and the United States back from the brink of nuclear conflict towards détente, and eventually peace.

This success created a paradigm that others have followed. But in the post-Cold War world, where success is measured not only by outcome but by process, can quiet diplomacy really still serve the common good?

In December, Baroness Ashton, the new EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, said: "I believe that a lot can be achieved with quiet diplomacy."

Unfortunately, Lady Ashton seems to have mistaken quiet diplomacy for deafening silence.

In seven months in the job, she has been faced with a humanitarian disaster in Haiti, international furore after Israel boarded aid ships on their way to Gaza, and most recently an unprecedented oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In all of these situations we haven't heard a peep, not a whimper from the person charged with representing the EU on the world stage. This has left many MEPs wondering why they voted to confirm Lady Ashton's candidacy in January.

Lady Ashton has been widely criticised for not visiting Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake. This was her first real test in the job and by not showing solidarity with Haitians it gave the impression that she, and by extension the EU, was disengaged from the disaster.

I am sure that Lady Ashton was coordinating aid shipments and speaking with foreign ministers by phone, but shouldn't this be done by diplomats in her team? As EU foreign minister, isn't it her job to do the work that people can see? Even Nixon was greeted by Brezhnev on the tarmac in Moscow occasionally.

In fairness, Lady Ashton did meet with all twenty-seven foreign ministers from the EU in the aftermath of the Gaza aid ship shooting that saw nine people killed. But everyone knows that Ashton is not the story when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

With everyone watching the moves of Quartet representative Tony Blair and when one word from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can change the wind direction, how much room is there for another tier of Middle East diplomacy?

Her refusal to even consider suspension of the EU's one big bargaining chip, its trade agreement with Israel, means that she is on the back foot from the outset.

Attempts to block the volcanic eruption of oil gushing from the deep ocean in the Gulf of Mexico have led to calls for a suspension of European oil drilling, including by Günther Oettinger, European Energy Commissioner, who wants an immediate halt to North Sea operations.

While this call neglects the high safety standards that Europe already has in place, especially in the UK after the Piper Alpha enquiry and the subsequent Cullen Report, events across the Atlantic do focus the mind on how we can safely extract oil from increasingly challenging wells.

On this issue, once again, the EU's foreign policy representative has been conspicuously absent.

Lady Ashton's job may be made easier now that the European External Action Service has been set up. But even attempts to establish a more secure base from which to build has been marred by turf wars and petty squabbling.

I hope that the EEA service can make a difference. While there are many foreign policy issues where the merits of quiet diplomacy can still be seen, not least in efforts to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions, in the post-Cold War era we expect our leaders to step into the spotlight and express our collective compassion, indignation or reservations.

If Lady Ashton is to stay in this role for the full five year term then she must abandon the silence of quiet diplomacy and instead start to make some noise.

North Tayside Liberal Democrats