Margaret MacMillan: How today is like the period before the First World War

Good interview with Margaret MacMillan with some interesting reflections:

Do you not see any developments in modern diplomacy that keep countries away from the precipice?

We have better international institutions and more of them. And we do have the capacity now to talk quickly to each other. But what we don’t have are the experienced diplomats who used to really know a country. There’s been a tendency in most countries to downplay the role of the diplomatic corps and to say, ‘do we really need diplomats?’ You’ve got it in the Harper government: ‘Do we really need all these people? They just hang out and go to cocktail parties.’

By the same token, diplomats did not prevent the First World War.

No, they didn’t. But they did actually deal with quite a few crises before World War One. You could argue that they had shown their value. I think good diplomatic services are very very useful. It’s also worrying to me what’s happening to newspapers. The media generally are closing down their overseas bureaux because they’re too expensive. What that means is we’re getting huge amounts of information but we’re not really getting the analysis and expertise that we all need.

We mistake being able to get lots of information from everywhere very quickly with actually getting knowledge.

Margaret MacMillan: How today is like the period before the First World War – The Globe and Mail.