How modern diplomacy is – and isn’t – just like how it is shown on ‘The Diplomat’ – National

A top British diplomat to Canada says the ever-important work of maintaining relationships and information sharing between key allies is not much different from what audiences might see on a hit Netflix drama.

Although The Diplomat is fictional, David Prodger, the British deputy high commissioner to Canada, says the ripped-from-the-headlines storytelling captures what it’s like to prevent crises from spreading behind the scenes — especially the “repressed air of panic” around many of the characters.

“I think a lot of the little vignettes were very, very true to real life,” Prodger told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired on Sunday. The West Block.

“You’re dealing with big problems, and you’ve got to deal with them quickly, too.”

The thriller stars Keri Russell as an American career diplomat who has suddenly been appointed the new American ambassador to Great Britain, where she works to alleviate disasters at home and abroad. The series has been shot in real foreign offices and diplomatic residences in the UK and has been praised for its accuracy.

As depicted on the show, Prodger, who is based in Ottawa, said diplomacy mostly involves maintaining and developing smaller relationships between foreign diplomatic officials to ensure the “big picture relationship” is maintained, with officials at all levels who constantly talking to each other.

Still, he said the show may overstate the kind of access even senior diplomats like himself would have with government officials.

“I’m not sure I could walk into (Secretary of State) Melanie Joly’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 State Office all the time.”

“These conditions are actually key and we spend a lot of time trying to get them in the right place,” he added.

Prodger said the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partnership – which includes Canada and Britain along with the US, Australia and New Zealand – is “growing in importance” as democracies work to protect national and economic security from growing threats.

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As governments struggle to ensure people get the right information, he said it is vital for like-minded countries to work together to counter disinformation and disinformation, as well as cyber-attacks and other hostilities.

At the same time, he said, part of the job involves being “aware of where public opinion is.”

“We are public servants,” he said. “We work for our government, so we have to think a lot about how we present what we do.”

Podger said transparency with the public about what the government knows about current and emerging threats, or during an emergency like a terrorist attack, is essential.

Despite warnings from military and government officials that the current threat environment is more dangerous than before, Podger sees it differently.

“I think things are always up for grabs,” he said.

“If you look back 10 years, we had Iraq, we had Afghanistan, we had 9/11. Before that, we had the fall apart of the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain coming down. We had genocide in Europe. So … there’s always been the big geopolitical issues. It’s just changing at the moment.

“I think what we’re seeing is … global geopolitics is struggling to realign itself,” he said, “I think that’s something we’re working really hard to do.”

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