One golden rule of diplomacy, of course, is to tell your hosts what they wish to hear but another equally (some say, even more) important is to be discreet in public comment, especially when speaking on foreign soil and within hearing distance of the intended target.
From all accounts, David Cameron passed the first test effortlessly (the fact that the only job he ever held outside politics was in PR must have helped) during his maiden foreign tour as Prime Minister last week. But, in the process, he flunked the second with his so-called “tell-it-as-it-is” brand of diplomacy falling at the first hurdle when in his attempt to please his Indian hosts he publicly attacked Pakistan for its role in “exporting terror” and ended up sparking an almighty row with Islamabad.
Commentators said that even a child could have anticipated how his comment would be received in Pakistan. Not surprisingly, it provoked fury: protesters burnt his effigy on the streets of Karachi and the government reacted by calling off a visit by its intelligence officials to Britain ahead of President Asif Ali Zardari's trip this week.
At one stage, there was speculation that even Mr. Zardari might not turn up but, in the end, he must have realised the danger of being seen to be protesting too much. So, the trip is on but, given the events of the past week, the first Cameron-Zardari summit is unlikely to be an exactly cheery affair.
This is not the first time that a British leader has gone to the subcontinent and returned with a bloodied nose. Indeed, there is a history of British politicians blundering into controversy on their visits to the region, leaving Whitehall to pick up the pieces. Remember January 2009, when David Miliband, the then Foreign Secretary, found himself thrust into the centre of an ill-tempered row over his tactless remarks on Kashmir and the Mumbai terror attacks? Or 1997 when Robin Cook, the newly-appointed Foreign Secretary, nearly ended up wrecking the Queen's visit to India by infuriating Delhi with an offer to mediate on Kashmir prompting I.K. Gujral, India's Prime Minister at the time, to tell him to mind his own business dismissing Britain as “a third-rate power”? More recently, Gordon Brown was involved in a very public spat with Islamabad when on a visit to Afghanistan in the dying days of his premiership he said that two-thirds of all terror plots foiled by British intelligence agencies were hatched in Pakistan.
What is it, then, about the subcontinent that causes the famous British stiff upper lip go all a-quiver?
It is striking that while the more gung-ho Americans seldom put a wrong foot, the British despite their supposedly better understanding of the region and particularly Indian-Pak sensitivities never seem to get it right. Mr. Cameron is simply the latest casualty of a tendency that, one suspects, has something to do with a mindset which refuses to recognise that the era of Britain lecturing its former colonial subjects while they listened quietly is over.
His attack on Pakistan came barely hours after he upset Israel by describing Gaza as a “prison camp” when speaking in Ankara in what appeared to be a stab at pleasing his Turkish hosts. A BBC world affairs correspondent, Paul Reynolds, noted on his blog that Mr. Cameron had “invented a new diplomacy — go to one country and criticise another”.
While Mr. Cameron has defended his style saying “it is important to speak frankly”, critics (and that means almost the entire British media from the right-wing Telegraph group to the centrist Times and the left-wing Guardian and the Independent ) have accused him of “hit-and-run” diplomacy and making policy on the hoof to “charm” his audience. Openness, they point out, is one thing and rushing into ill-timed comments is quite another.
“This trip [to Turkey and India], after errors on his previous visit to see Barack Obama in Washington, has led to questions about a style that may be a little too freewheeling,” said The Times urging Mr. Cameron to “reflect on the limits of seeking to charm his hosts in diplomacy”.
At the other end of the spectrum, the Independent had the same message. It pointed out that while Mr. Cameron's criticism of Pakistan “may have been music to the ears of those he was trying to woo in Delhi” and his remarks in Turkey echoed “pretty much everything his hosts in Ankara wanted to hear”, there were “dangers in saying so fully what his hosts want to hear”. In diplomacy, frankness needed to be tempered with discretion. Enhancing economic relations with India was, no doubt, a good policy “but the Prime Minister must be careful to maintain a sense of balance between Britain's economic and its strategic interests”, it said warning that “in making new friends it is wise not to be seen to scorn old ones”.
Broadly, this has been the theme of British commentators —namely, that India may be a good market to sell British goods and services but it is Pakistan which is “our” key strategic ally in the region and it is more important to keep an ally on board than chasing potential customers across the border — at least so long as British troops are still in Afghanistan and on the tender mercy of Pakistan-based groups.
