Just what is it that convinces people diplomats are part of a mystical realm of government espionage and global secrecy?
Maybe it’s the notion of working in a foreign country, where they provide the government with information that assists in policy-making decisions.
Maybe it’s the fact that diplomats, while situated at an embassy, often have an up-close and personal experience with issues in other countries.
Or maybe people just “watch too many Hollywood movies,” says Clive Wright, head of the foreign policy team at the British High Commission in Ottawa.
He chuckles a little at the question.
“It’s probably common knowledge that certain countries go to great lengths to try to get hold of information that we don’t want to give them,” he says.
“Some countries would welcome access to technology secrets and things like that.”
But there’s more to being a diplomat than the Hollywood idea that they exist within a web of government secrecy.
Diplomats are spokespeople for countries to negotiate important policy issues with one another.
Wright and his team are just one example. They are in charge of tracking Canadian foreign policy on a range of issues, including the Arab Spring, a wave of citizen revolts in the Arab world that began in December 2010.
“What we’re doing is a combination of two things. It’s tracking that policy evolution so that we can report back to our government in London [that] this is the Canadian thinking on this particular subject,” he says.
“And at the same time,[we are] making sure that we have information from our foreign ministry about the [United Kingdom’s] policy toward those same issues, so that we can talk to the Canadian government directly about our views on whatever the issue is.”
But diplomats can work in many different areas, explains Paul Young, an RCMP police advisor for Canada to the United Nations.
“In any given embassy, you will find diplomats that are working in the area of political affairs, human rights, policing matters, military matters, [and] peacekeeping,” Young says.
But no matter what area a diplomat serves in, it’s crucial they always remain professional and put their own views aside.
This allows the government’s opinion to be expressed, he says.
“[Diplomats] are expected to have the ability to listen to the point of view of everybody else, whether they agree or disagree with it, and be able to express themselves in a very cordial way, in a manner that doesn’t offend anybody,” Young says.
At briefings, diplomats gather and have an equal opportunity to express these government views and listen to the ideas of others, he says.
But sometimes, countries themselves have different opinions and agreements can’t always be made.
“In certain circumstances, you would look for a common ground if there’s a disagreement,” Wright says. “That’s the nature of the job in many ways — to reach that sort of compromise and to negotiate a good way forward.”
For diplomats to fully grasp a country’s ideas and convey those to their government, they’re deployed to one location for about four years, Wright says.
During that time, they work to understand the way the country’s people think and how its political system functions, he adds. Then, they move on to somewhere new. Many countries aren’t adequate for raising a family, which is one reason for constant traveling.
Diplomats may also need to try slightly different kinds of work to gain experience, Young says.
“You also have to realize that a lot of these diplomats are in places that aren’t as hospitable,” he says. “If you have a diplomat that’s stationed in a failing state . . . for three or four years, [they] may want to move.”
Threats to physical safety, eruption of civil war, or a government’s opposition to an issue in the foreign country are all factors that may cause an embassy to close, Young says.
Alternatively, the host country can simply decide it no longer wants that embassy there, he says.
“But one of the disadvantages to not having an embassy . . . is that you lose those eyes and ears on the ground . . . and [it becomes] much more difficult to understand what they’re thinking,” Wright says.
Although history may suggest some of these eyes and ears have been used to spy, “whether or not [those allegations] have been held to be true depends on the investigation,” Young says.
Simply, a diplomat must be the voice of a government’s views.
“It’s not as glamorous a life as those movies make out,” Wright says.
