Every day, Didier François deals with an international topic.
Nothing could have calmed the fury of Donald Trump after the telegrams by the British ambassador in Washington were published in the British press. Despite unwavering support from his government and Prime Minister Theresa May, the diplomat yesterday handed over his resignation to the boss of the Foreign Office.
Yes, a dignified but above all extremely professional reaction from Kim Darroch, who as a very experienced ambassador, certainly one of the most experienced in British diplomacy, is fully aware that he will no longer be able to hold his place in Washington after his analyzes were made public. Because his pen was not really tender for the tenant of the White House. And one can understand that the huge ego of the American president has been somewhat wrinkled by the reading of the selected pieces that have been published, including this note of 2017 in which the ambassador says he does not believe in the fact "that this administration can become more normal, less dysfunctional, less unpredictable, less divided, less clumsy and inept diplomatically ".
After such a charge, it was impossible to restore a confident working relationship. The violence of the tweets pulled by Donald Trump for four days, in continuous gusts, in which Ambassador Darroch has been treated in turn "stupid pretentious", "stupid type", or "wacky", has completed to convince the diplomat that it was essential to turn the page in an attempt to save this famous "special relationship" that binds the United Kingdom to the United States since the Second World War.
Yet many British politicians have regretted the resignation of Ambassador Darroch, from the head of government to the leader of the Labor opposition.
Yes, which is quite nice and also sounds like an acknowledgment of the excellent work that Kim Darroch has been doing since 2016. But he is the one who is right: an ambassador must always have two roles, which are sometimes contradictory. On the one hand, he owes to the political decision-makers of his country the greatest truth without disguise and disguise, but at the same time he represents and defends the interests of his State in the country to which he is posted. And for that, it must establish and maintain the best possible relations with the authorities that host it.
Leaving to know how to show them a certain duplicity. Today, because of leaks in the British press the masks have fallen and Kim Darroch can no longer fulfill his mission.
His successor will certainly have the same problem.
Indeed, the real question is how ambassadors can continue to do diplomacy at a time when there is a strong current of thought in our societies that everything should be totally transparent. It started with Wikileaks, which in 2010 had published no less than 250,000 American diplomatic telegrams. The whole world had made the hot throats. But it is not without some wisdom that the Vienna Convention provides that diplomatic bags can not be opened when encryptors are detached to the embassies to code the telegrams sent to the Foreign Ministries.
Good diplomacy can only exist at the cost of a certain degree of confidentiality.