Sir Malcolm Rifkind, once a Tory foreign Secretary, made a little intervention in the Commons today earning him a news clip, to urge restraint in building bridges with Iran, likening the potential relationship as similar to that with the Soviet Union in the Cold War. What drivel!
There is a generation of Western politicians who survive from the Cold War which they understood to the finest hairline tuning, but who have entirely failed to rise to the intellectual challenge of the fluid diplomacy of the modern world and the threats it faces from insurgencies, extremists and fanatical religious conglomerations. This is no longer a world of power blocks and rivalries challenging each other from closed spheres of influence and control. It is a world which is globalized and interdependent in a way unparalleled in human history, which requires a new kind of diplomacy to navigate its crowded waters. It is a diplomacy of building alliances on issues as they arise, based on common interest and the advance of the common good. It is more about making friends than confronting enemies; the more of the former, the fewer of the latter.
The spectacular failures of post 9/11 Western foreign policy become hourly more apparent to all who can see. Apparently Sir Malcolm is not one of them. As Boris would say, time to put…………!