A top Briton Diplomat To Canada says the ever-important task of maintaining relationships and sharing information between key allies isn't too different from what audiences might see on a Netflix drama.
Although Diplomat Imaginary, says David Proger, the British deputy high commissioner to Canada, is that headline storytelling captures what it's like to prevent crises from spreading behind the scenes — especially “the suffocating atmosphere of fear.” ” Letters
Proger told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired Sunday West Block.
“You're dealing with big problems, and you have to deal with them quickly.”
The thriller stars Keri Russell as a career American diplomat who is suddenly named the US ambassador to Britain, where she works to mitigate disasters at home and abroad. The series is filmed in real foreign offices and diplomatic residences in the UK and has been praised for its accuracy.
As shown on the show, Proger, who is based in Ottawa, said diplomacy mostly involves maintaining and fostering small relationships between foreign diplomatic officials to ensure that A “big picture relationship” should be maintained, with officials at all levels constantly communicating with each other.
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Still, he said the show could expand the kind of access that even high-ranking diplomats like himself would have access to government officials.
“I'm not sure I'll be able to walk into (Secretary of State) Melanie Jolie'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 get them in the right place,” he added.
Proger said the Five Eyes Intelligence Sharing Partnership – which includes Canada and the United Kingdom along with the United States, Australia and New Zealand – is “increasingly important” as democracies seek to protect against growing threats to national and economic security. They work.
As governments struggle to ensure people are getting the right information, he said, it's important for like-minded countries to work together to combat disinformation and disinformation, as well as cyber attacks and other threats. It is important to work.
At the same time, he said part of the job involves “taking care of public opinion.”
He said that we are government employees. “We work for our government, and so we have to think about how we present what we're doing.”
Poder said transparency with the public about what the government knows about current and emerging threats or an emergency such as a terrorist attack is critical.
Despite warnings from military and government officials that the current threat environment is more dangerous than ever, Poder 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 coming down of the Iron Curtain. We committed 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 reorient itself,” he said. Working hard.”
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