Dumb Diplomacy

Here's a thought to start the week in light of the fiasco that unfolded at the G7 (or whatever they might be called going forward) meeting in Quebec over the weekend: Diplomacy is a two way street. In the case of a gathering of 7 countries, it is actually a complex web with seven points I guess.

Seeing as we seem to like to bastardize a lot of words, I'll throw a pretty good definition of the word in here from Dictionary.com

noun

1. the conduct by government officials of negotiations and other relations between nations.
2. the art or science of conducting such negotiations.
3. skill in managing negotiations, handling people, etc., so that there is little or no ill will; tact_

It's interesting that we often will use variations of this word in everyday parlance and the meaning is crystal clear. We may ask a member of one of our teams at work to be diplomatic in handling a relationship with an external party. Everyone gets it. Then we get to diplomacy on the international stage and things get murky, especially if Donald Trump is involved.

The spat between Trump and Trudeau on Sunday has everyone here in Canada up in arms. Most people here generally hate Trump and would disagree with him over just about anything. But when he "insults" the Prime Minister. Oh, it is on! I view it as the equivalent to a dumb fight between two kids where they're both at fault. "You sit over there! You, sit on the other side of the couch! Now I am going to sit down and tell you both what you've done wrong so that we can move past this." If I were the hypothetical "dad" in this case, here is what I would tell the two boys:

Little DT, while you certainly have your reasons and are attempting to look tough before sitting down with Little Rocket Man this evening, you didn't do anyone any favors by lambasting JT right after you left the summit. It was undiplomatic. It was rude. You cannot just be so careless in the way you insult people. Words matter. JT is sensitive. He is younger and littler than you and he's still learning a lot. He probably already feels threatened and is obviously leery of bullying. So don't bully him. It's just mean and uncalled for and won't accomplish anything. You owe him an apology. You were wrong.

Little JT, wipe that smirk off your face, I'll get to you next. Just because DT acted stupid and is wrong, does not automatically mean you are right. Indeed, you are wrong too! DT might be big and awkward because he grew faster than the other kids but that does not make it ok to tease him. I don't expect you to realize all of this yourself but I would expect your friends (handlers) to help you figure it out. DT might be overreacting about your speech after he left the summit to fly to Singapore but you absolutely knew he would overreact. Just because you're popular with almost all of the other kids and just because you know that most of your citizens will support you in any conflict with him does not make it ok for you to act this way. You were chosen for your job because we thought you would be responsible enough to resist this temptation. It was undiplomatic of you to take a swipe at the Americans after they left. I understand you might have been too mesmerized by John Bolton's mustache to say it to them while they were there but you could have just said nothing at all! What benefit did you get from this statement? Were you scared that the other kids at home would stop liking you if you didn't say something? Believe me, they won't stop liking you and you will be much more well-respected in the long run if you resist the urge to taunt DT. Besides, we didn't send you on the field trip to Quebec to play with your friends. We sent you there to play with DT, Shinzo, Angela, Manny, Theresa and the new Italian kid. That boy seems nice by the way. Anyways, what you did was wrong not because you said something untrue but because you said something when you knew that it would cause a fight and it didn't need to be said. I am all for standing up for your principles but in diplomacy, you need to minimize the ill will, even when you're just dying to kick the other boy in the nuts.

I am disappointed in both of you. The other kids did not behave entirely well either and I hope their parents give them a talking to!

The moral of this story is that we do need a return to real diplomacy. You can hate Trudeau or Trump as much as you want but I think we can all agree that whatever that garbage was over the weekend was not diplomacy and we are going to need a big helping of real diplomacy to get past the burgeoning trade war between the US and Canada.

CW