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Sir Christopher Meyer swears he had nothing to do with that e-mail message.
You know the one he's talking about, the one supposedly sent on behalf of Queen
Elizabeth in which the colonies' failure to elect a president was cited as just
cause for Her Majesty to reverse the revolution of independence and reclaim all
states and territories "except Utah, which she does not fancy."
Still, Meyer said he's available to serve as viceroy should the need arise. A
viceroy, for you incurable patriots who don't know, is a kind of royal governor
who rules as the representative of his king or queen.
Meyer's real job is British ambassador to United States, and he really was on
campus Dec. 6 to talk about it. Meyer attracted a only audience of students and
faculty in, of all places, the Commons Room of the Johnston Center for
Undergraduate Excellence.
Accompanying Meyer on his visit to North Carolina was his wife, Lady Catherine
Meyer, co-founder of an international center for missing and exploited
children. Lady Catherine's estranged ex-husband abducted their two boys six
years ago and took them back to Germany. In all that time, she has seen them a
total of 24 hours. The oldest is now 15, the youngest 13. In 1999, she
published a book about her ordeal titled They Are My Children Too.
"It becomes an absolute nightmare," Lady Catherine said.
As hard as it is on parents, it's worse for a child who comes to understand
that his parents are in a state of war in which he is caught in the middle and
pulled in both directions.
Most people associate child abductions with faraway lands and a clash of
religions, but it happens more often than many people expect in the Western
world. Rapid mobility spurred by the global economy has contributed to it,
along with the high rate of divorce.
Lady Catherine has joined American parents in testifying before the U.S.
Senate's International Relations Committee about the difficulties. During her
testimony, she met N.C. Senator Jesse Helms.
"I must say Jesse Helms was fabulous," she said. "He has followed the issue and
was very helpful."
International cooperation to deal with the issue began 19 years ago with the
Hague Convention, and there are now 63 countries that have agreed to subscribe
to its tenants, at least in principle.
The problem, Lady Catherine said, is that each country has a different set of
laws and court systems and police practices that can hinder getting a child
back as much as they can help.
Changing times
In Meyer's speech about modern diplomacy, he expounded on the changing
dynamics of his line of work and on the social and economic revolution that has
been going on the past 20 years in what remains of the United Kingdom.
Meyer has worked in the British Diplomatic Service since 1966. His first
postings were to Moscow and Madrid. In 1988, he spent a sabbatical year as a
visiting fellow at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs and
was British Ambassador to Germany before he took up his U.S. duties in October
of 1997.
In the first part of the 17th Century, Sir Henry Wotten described the job this
way: "An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his
country."
Much of that may still be true, but in the 34 years Meyer has been a British
diplomat, he has seen the job shift in three fundamental ways.
First, he said, the line between foreign and domestic policy has been
increasingly blurred. Meyer still has to be an expert on war and peace, but he
has to know something about welfare-to-work programs and genetically altered
vegetables as well.
Second, the line separating the purely political and purely economic is now
crossed about as often as the tunnel to France beneath the English Channel.
In response to a question from the audience, Meyer calculated that about 50
percent of his time is spent on economic issues involving Great Britain and the
U.S. The issues can range from trade policy to American investments in Great
Britain to advice to British and U.S. companies about to merge.
When he joined the British Diplomatic Service, an ambassador might spend about
15 percent of his time on economic matters.
Meyer spoke sparingly about the effects of the European Market, but he did
reveal a bit of English humor by citing a poll (similar to that e-mail message
from the queen) in which people throughout Europe were asked to give their
definition of heaven. The answer: French chefs, British police, Italian lovers
and Germans running everything.
The same poll asked Europeans to define hell. The answer: British chefs, French
police, German lovers and Italians running everything.
Mutual interests
Meyer's continuing challenge is to convince the U.S. to keep Britain as
its partner of choice in this century as it had been in the last. That decision
should not be based on nostalgia, but a hardheaded calculation that it remains
in the U.S.'s best interest to do so.
Nine times out of 10, the policy goals he seeks to advance in America are
common goals that serve both countries' interests equally. "I am pleased to say
that the cooperation (between the two countries) has never been better, more
dynamic, denser if you will, than it is today."
The best evidence he can present to convince the U.S. to do that is to point to
the "permanent revolution," started in 1979 with the election of the Tory Party
`s Margaret Thatcher as prime minister, that reversed decades of British
economic decline.
Thatcher began the revolution by privatizing inefficient public corporations
and by deregulation and the development of a flexible labor force.
It's a revolution that continued with John Major, a Tory Party leader for whom
Meyer served as press secretary, and with Tony Blair, the Labor Party candidate
elected prime minister in May of 1997.
Blair has kept the government sailing under the banner of modernity, which
embraces a "third way" of developing a dynamic, high-tech economy and society
without abandoning the demands of social justice.
Today, 81 percent of all businesses in the United Kingdom are online, and 40
percent of the British people own cell phones, the highest percentage in
Europe. That percentage of cell-phone users goes up to 80 percent among British
teenage girls.
That revolution has delivered what is today the fourth-largest economy in the
world with the same combination of low inflation, high growth and a balanced
federal budget that the U.S. now enjoys.
American investors pour more of their dollars into Britain that in all of
France, Germany and Italy put together.
"It could be you like our golf courses, our weather, or our cuisine, but that
doesn't withstand scrutiny," Meyer said.
What Great Brian lacks in weather and food it makes up for as a nexus of
international finance. There are more Japanese banks in London than there are
in Tokyo, and more foreign exchange centers in London than in any city in the
world.
The last big change has been the speed of communication wrought by such things
as e-mail and telecommunications. Diplomacy used to be a practice of endless
subtleties. Now it's part of the instant sound bites featured on 24-hour cable
news shows.
In such an age, too, a president and a prime minister can contact each other
with the click of an e-mail or by phone no matter where either of them happens
to be.
Given the availability of modern communication, you could question the need for
an ambassador deployed to an embassy acting as an intermediary, Meyer said.
Now, an ambassador's job is to offer advice and analysis before serious
discussion between leaders takes place. "You become, if you are good, part of
the decision-making process," Meyer said.
The job is different today than in the days of Sir Henry Wooten, but no less
vital, Meyer said.
The couple's visit to the Triangle was sponsored by Duke University, Glaxo
Wellcome Inc., Reichhold Inc., and SAS Institute in conjunction with Carolina's
Great Decisions program, the University Center for International Studies, the
Morehead Foundation, the Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence and the
Triangle World Affairs Council.
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