Operation hearts and minds

The Russians understand. They know where power lies in modern diplomacy. It is not with Foreign Office striped suits, rolled umbrellas and rolled minds, with nuanced telegrams and choreographed demarches. Real diplomacy has moved out of embassy to the sandals-and-corduroy department, to the camomile-sipping, clog-dancing herbivores of the British Council8230; Culture and lifestyle are the diplomacy of the 21st century. Old-fashioned ambassadorship was long ago demoted by the telephone, the jet and the email to the Atlantis of 8220;Diplomatia8221;, where officials cling to such ancient rituals as residences abroad, formal dinners and military attaches. No businessman uses the commercial attache network8230;

Today8217;s true diplomats are comers and goers, tourists, foreign correspondents, exchange students, visiting artists and celebrities8230; They are fair-trade inspectors, merchant bankers and call-centre outsourcers8230; These new diplomats carry less historical baggage than their predecessors. In India recently I was told time and again that the British high commission was associated with the Raj while the British Council was associated with Shakespeare and London University. Indians preferred the latter8230; Libraries are still the easiest way of reaching and creating young Anglophiles. In this the council has always been not just the poor relation of the Foreign Office, but less appreciated even than the BBC World Service8230;

The council ought to be the lead diplomatic department in all but the most politically sensitive countries8230; Politics, defence and commerce should be subsidiary activities. In an age of soft power, western democracies will do far better in propagating their values of freedom of speech and expression by the exchange of people and ideas than by the bullying diplomatic rhetoric of the war on terror.

Excerpted from Simon Jenkins8217; 8216;Russian assault on the British Council reveals the true nature of diplomacy8217; in The Guardian, 18 January