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  • The Naked Diplomat

  • Understanding Power and Politics in the Digital Age
  • By: Tom Fletcher
  • Narrated by: Roger May
  • Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (35 ratings)
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The Naked Diplomat

By: Tom Fletcher
Narrated by: Roger May
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Summary

The case for paring diplomacy back to its essential elements. Stripped of the paraphernalia, what is it really about, and why does it still matter? The essential attributes are now thick skin, an open mind and a smartphone.

In the next century, we will need to deal with the equivalent of social development of the last 43 centuries: like the change from cave paintings to the atom bomb. We will see the arrival of the digital native, the rebirth of the city-state, the battle for new energy, disappearing borders, disruption and diplomacy.

So who will really be in charge of the 21st century? Will Google be the new emperors? How do you influence the future?

In The Naked Diplomat, Tom Fletcher - an experienced foreign representative - explores the core principles of a progressive 21st-century foreign policy: how to balance interventionism and national interest, use global governance structures to achieve national objectives and explore representative international systems.

Reevaluating the core question for diplomacy - who do we represent? - Fletcher discusses smart power, soft power and the new interventionism alongside lessons from our most notorious leaders and diplomats - Talleyrand, Kissinger, Mandela and the Kennedys.

Offering real-world examples of how diplomacy is having a significant impact on people's lives and why it will continue to do so, this is the refreshed case for diplomacy in the digital century.

©2016 Tom Fletcher (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"A diplomatic genius." (Gordon Brown)
"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 [The Naked Diplomat] was a new brand of 21st century statecraft: flexible, transparent, engaged with the public as much as with politicians." (BBC World Service)

What listeners say about The Naked Diplomat

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

A plea for diplomacy

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.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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  • Mr
  • 30-09-21

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

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.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent and timeless

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

A prequel and sequel required.

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