The Naked Diplomat: Understanding Power and Politics in the Digital Age

Description

Previously published as Naked Diplomacy. Who will be in power in the 21st century? Governments? Big business? Internet titans? And how do we influence the future? Digital technology is changing power at a faster rate than any time in history. Distrust is fuelling political uncertainty; inequality is fuelling economic uncertainty; and massive technological change is fuelling existential uncertainty. The scaffolding built around the 20th century global order is fragile, and the checks and balances created over centuries to protect liberty are being tested, maybe to destruction. Tom Fletcher, the youngest senior British ambassador for 200 years, considers how we - as governments, businesses, individuals - can survive and thrive in the 21st century. And how we can ensure that technology helps us create opportunity, improve security, outsmart the extremists, and mak it easier for citizens to truly take back control.

Tom Fletcher CMG is a Visiting Professor of International Relations at New York University, and Visiting Professor of Diplomatic Practice at the Emirates Diplomatic Academy. He was British Ambassador to Lebanon ( 2011-15), and the Downing Street foreign policy adviser to three Prime Ministers, (2007-11). He is an Honorary Fellow of Oxford University, and the Global Strategy Director for the Global Business Coalition for Education, which seeks to harness private sector efforts to get 59 million children into school. He blogs as the Naked Diplomat, and chairs the International Advisory Council of the Creative Industries Federation, promoting Britain's most dynamic and magnetic sector overseas. Tom is leading a review of British diplomacy for the UK Foreign Office, and a report on the future of the United Nations for the next UN Secretary General. Tom is married to Dr Louise Fletcher, a psychotherapist, and they have two sons.

'A riveting personal insight into the reality of international relations' Charlie Burton, GQ 'Articulate, intelligent and immensely readable ... Fletcher is an irrepressible optimist and his enthusiasm is contagious. Britain is fortunate to have diplomats with his skills and drive' Emma Sky, New Statesman '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 Naked Diplomacy was a new brand of 21st-century statecraft: flexible transparent, engaged with the public as much as with politicians' BBC World Service "A call for us all to reconsider our place in society and in our interconnected world. It urges us to be brave, creative, involved and connected. Diplomacy, he insists, is too important to be left to diplomats and he calls on us "citizen diplomats" to engage with it, to wield power ... As the pages turned, I thought this read increasingly as a new manifesto, and I finished it thinking how unsurprised I would be if Fletcher ended up running the Foreign Office, or the country' Anthony Sattin, Observer 'Brilliant, funny polemic ... a cracking read' Roger Boyes The Times (11 June 2016) 'A brilliant book' Stig Abell, LBC and Editor of the Times Literary Supplement 'A diplomatic genius' Gordon Brown