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Naked Diplomacy

Power and Statecraft in the Digital Age

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Naked Diplomacy

By: Tom Fletcher
Narrated by: Roger May
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About this listen

Who will be in power in the 21st century? Governments? Big business? Internet titans? And how do we influence the future?

Digital technology is changing power at a faster rate than any time in history. Distrust and inequality are fuelling political and economic uncertainty. The scaffolding built around the global order is fragile, and the checks and balances created over centuries to protect liberty are being tested, maybe to destruction. Tom Fletcher, the youngest senior British ambassador for two hundred years, considers how we – as governments, businesses, individuals – can survive and thrive in the twenty first century. And how we can ensure that technology can make it easier of citizens truly to take back control.

 International Political Science Politics & Government United States World Middle East Imperialism Africa Socialism 21st Century

Critic reviews

‘A riveting personal insight into the reality of international relations’
Charlie Burton, GQ

‘Articulate, intelligent and immensely readable … Fletcher is an irrepressible optimist and his enthusiasm is contagious. Britain is fortunate to have diplomats with his skills and drive’
Emma Sky, New Statesman

‘Welcome to Britain’s new brand of diplomacy’
Evening Standard

‘On Her Majesty’s Service, in a new way. Britain’s mould-breaking ambassador was appointed at only 36 at the height of the Arab Uprisings. Fletcher’s Naked Diplomacy was a new brand of 21st-century statecraft: flexible transparent, engaged with the public as much as with politicians’
BBC World Service

"A call for us all to reconsider our place in society and in our interconnected world. It urges us to be brave, creative, involved and connected. Diplomacy, he insists, is too important to be left to diplomats and he calls on us “citizen diplomats” to engage with it, to wield power … As the pages turned, I thought this read increasingly as a new manifesto, and I finished it thinking how unsurprised I would be if Fletcher ended up running the Foreign Office, or the country’
Anthony Sattin, Observer

‘Brilliant, funny polemic … a cracking read’
Roger Boyes
The Times (11 June 2016)

‘A brilliant book’
Stig Abell, LBC and Editor of the Times Literary Supplement

‘A diplomatic genius’
Gordon Brown
All stars
Most relevant
Such a challenge to live lives of meaning and practically build something to pass on to be proud of

Honesty and hope filled

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An interesting account of the facets of diplomacy through the ages. What has changed and what has remained the same. Despite having been in the room while many things were decided Fletcher still manages to “diplomatically “ refrain from telling tales of secrets and yet convey how diplomacy works and how it fails.

A plea for diplomacy

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Loved it, timeless classics, worth every penny, riveting every second.

A prequel and sequel required.

Excellent and timeless

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The best part of this book is the first third or so which provides a reasonably colourful and compact summery of the history of diplomacy and diplomats. Where is tails off is where the author starts telling us about the present and future. The buzzwords and corporate jargon flow like water throughout the narrative, alongside the usual tedious “woke” messaging about this cause or that.

The world the author describes is one he obviously knows well, and he does succeed in demystifying it somewhat. But that makes it harder rather than easier to accept some of what he's saying. (Talking without irony about Obama as a peacemaker, is particularly laughable given that in the end he managed to wrack up more countries bombed than even Bush did).

There's also little mention of just how disastrous western foreign policy has been for both the rest of the world and for the ordinary people our leaders claim to be representing. He will for example, wax lyrical about the nuclear treaty with Libya while also somehow managing not to mention that western policy then turned it into a failed state and flooded Europe with boat people. There's also a casual assumption that we the western public see the major threat to “our freedoms” as nefarious foreign governments, rather than our own governments and their corporate allies. And an assumption that we all aspire to the kind of homogenized globalized liberal/left order he personally aspires to.

He's also extraordinarily star-struck, name-dropping fashionable celebrities left and right, while also being deeply enamoured of social media and the people who spend all their time on it. The book can sometimes feel like a man relating his proudest Tweets that got the most number of likes.

You'll probably enjoy this book more than I did if you share its author's underlying perspectives.

The narrator does a decent job.

I think "Blue Pill" would be a good summery.

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