Leslie Johns 0:03

Hello everyone, and welcome to today's Burkle book talk. Our guest today is Baroness Cathy Ashton, the former foreign policy chief at the EU. But before we get started, I have a few brief announcements. The first is that audio and video recordings are being made of today's talk. You can access these later on YouTube or as podcasts through the Burkle Center webpage. The audience and our guests today cannot be heard or seen though. If you'd like to ask questions of today's speaker, please submit your questions by typing them out using the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. Please be sure to be clear and brief when typing out your questions because I need to be able to read them and summarize them concisely. So I'd like to go ahead and just give some brief information about Cathy Ashton to our audience. So Cathy was the EU's first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy between 2009 and 2014. And that's basically the EU's equivalent of the Secretary of State; that's like the top diplomat of the EU. One of her major accomplishments while serving in that position was she acted on behalf of the EU Security Council to coordinate negotiations that resulted in the nuclear program agreement with Iran. She also served as the EU Commissioner for Trade, as well as serving as a variety of positions in the domestic government of the UK, including serving as a Minister in the Departments of Education and Justice, as well as being a leader in the House of Lords and president of the Queen's Privy Council. She is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. And she's a senior adviser to the Geneva-based organization Humanitarian Dialogue. So I'd like to go ahead and welcome Cathy to join us. And she is going to be giving a brief presentation telling us about her new book, "And Then What? Inside Stories of 21st Century Diplomacy." So welcome so much, Cathy, I'm gonna go ahead and hand things over to you.

Catherine Ashton 2:40

Well, Leslie, thank you so much, and welcome to everybody. Thank you so much for joining me on this opportunity to talk to you all, at UCLA and beyond. And I wanted to really draw out five things that I learned from my time in office, which are illustrated by the stories that I tell in the book. The book is a series of incidents, stories, places, times, things that I experienced when I was in the job, and where I hope I can be able to explain to you some of the things that were incredibly important at that time. And so I thought I'd draw five things I've learned and just take you through them today. The first thing to say about anything that we do in the international arena, or indeed, that any country considers for the benefit of its people, is that there are no issues that we can solve alone. No matter how big we are as a country, no matter how independent we feel as a country, we need to collaborate to be able to achieve our objectives. If you think about it, the job of governments is to protect and support its citizens, to be able to offer them opportunities, whether that's in education, or travel, or work, whether that's about keeping them safe from harm, whether that's about building their economy, whether that's about making sure that we have real security for the people who live in our countries. It all requires collaboration to achieve. You need trade deals to build the economy. You need to provide opportunities for people to be able to work, not just at home, but overseas. You need to have embassies across the world to be able to promote your ideas and objectives, but also that people can talk to if they're traveling and need advice and support. You need to collaborate if you're going to achieve what you need to achieve as a nation. And so the first thing that I thought about when this became a very obvious part of the work that I was doing was to think about the ways in which we collaborate. There are very obvious examples, the United Nations, the European Union, the collaboration between big organizations that have often got deep roots. They're based on common ideas, they're based on signing up to the principles. They're based on funding. They're based on a long term set of objectives, which people come together to try and achieve. The World Trade Organization, all of those big collaborative bodies, where there's an assumption that people will stick to the rules, and where there is a desire to have a commonality of principle and idea. Then you also have the organizations that come together for one specific purpose. It might be because there is a crisis, and countries club together to be able to try and address that crisis, to be able to try and deal with the problem. They may have very little in common on any other issue. They may not agree on much. They may be democracies and countries that are not democracies, they may come from very different parts of the world, but they come together to try and solve a particular crisis or problem. So there are two basic models of collaboration, the informal and the formal. One of the things that I felt, by the time I'd finished my five years in office, was we need to find perhaps additional models of collaboration, ways of working together, that bring new opportunities to develop models that are not just one or the other. Probably the best example of that, for me, was when I led the negotiations on the Iran nuclear program. This was a group of countries, the P5+1, the permanent five members of the Security Council, Russia, China, the United States, France, and Britain, together with Germany, the plus one, because it had begun as a European initiative. The P5+1 had its roots and its authority from the UN Security Council. So it was based on that big formal model. But it worked as an informal model, in that it was a group of countries that were dealing with one issue alone. And even during that time, when we were negotiating on the Iran nuclear deal, we have the challenge, of course of Ukraine, and Russia's invasion and taking of Crimea. All of that happened at the same time. So simultaneously, we had Russia collaborating with us in Vienna, on the Iran talks. While when we were in Kyiv, we were talking about them in the negative because they had come in and taken Crimea, were in the Donbass, were creating problems for Ukraine. But of course, we know later turned into the invasion and war that we currently have. So different models, but the big message and the big lesson is, there's nothing that we can really achieve on our own. Collaboration is a fundamental part of international relations, a fundamental part of nations being able to offer to their people the opportunities that countries should wish to. Number two, the second thing that I wanted to talk about, really goes back to my time at the beginning of being High Representative or the EU's foreign minister, which was the biggest issue of the day, Somali pirates. Now this may mean nothing to many of you. But in 2009-10, the biggest issue that was faced in the world was piracy off the coast of Somalia. This was really important because so much of our trade, so much of our humanitarian aid to the poorest people in the world, went through the basin of water around Somalia, this huge, huge area of sea. And we were being challenged by pirates, many of them, young boys aged 14 and 15, who'd been offered the opportunity of $10,000 if they could capture a ship, hold hostages, take the cargo.

The alternative before them was, perhaps if they were lucky, maybe $1 a day doing some work on the land. They weren't well educated because Somalia had been in civil war for 20 years. It was a country in chaos. It was a country that had very little by way of government, a country dominated in many places by Al Shabaab, which was a terrorist organization affiliated to others across the region. And it was a country that had been failing for, by this point, two decades. So while we could address the challenge of piracy at sea by building corridors, so that ships could pass securely through the corridors because they were protected by military boats from a variety of countries in Europe, supported by NATO, and of course, the United States, using radio communications to find pirates, spot where they were, finding ways to deter them, by helping the ships to become better equipped, and so on. While we could do all that, if we couldn't solve the problem that created the circumstances, where these young boys were prepared to do this, then all we were doing was putting off a problem that would somehow bubble up in some other way. And that meant thinking about all of the issues of those young men's lives. And of course, many of the people already on the land, who are finding life difficult. So it meant thinking about schools. It meant thinking about campaigns to stop them taking up their guns, a campaign that the fledgling government called, "Give Up Your Guns and Go to School." It meant providing proper schools and health care, it meant providing the opportunities for people to develop the land. It's a very lush country, very capable of having huge amounts of agriculture, fantastically beautiful beaches and the seafront, lots of potential, but it was stuck in this ever, non-ending civil war. So it meant also providing security to the population, to communities, it meant getting rid of the threats that communities were under, it meant developing a holistic approach, if you like, a comprehensive approach to all of the different issues of justice system, proper prisons to put the real pirates when they were captured, or the people who were organizing the piracy. It meant rehabilitation, it meant jobs and opportunity, it meant all the things that you can think of what needs to happen. So for me, the big second lesson was you have to think about problems comprehensively. And the third lesson comes from particularly a period that we call the Arab Spring. You might remember that, across parts of the Arab world, beginning in Tunisia, and then coming through to Egypt, to Libya, to many countries in the Arab world, in smaller or bigger ways. There was a period when it seemed as if there was going to be dramatic change in governments across these countries. It began because a young man could not bear any longer the fact that he was being harassed by the local police to get a license, in other words, to pay a bribe, so that he could sell his fruits and vegetables in order to look after his family. He was called Mohamed Bouazizi, and he was a young man who was looking after a number of his relatives. In the end, he set fire to himself and died some weeks later. And it set off a sort of reaction across a whole part of North Africa, from people who felt very strongly that they did not have economic opportunity and that they were governed by people who had not got their best interests at heart. They were interested only in themselves, there was corruption, and so on. After the wave when you had the removal of the presidents in Tunisia and Egypt, and the end of Gaddafi in Libya, the challenge was, how do you then build the kind of society that would enable people to have the best opportunities? In a way, how do you build democracy? And I remember spending a lot of time with government ministers or interim governments of whom there were many at that point in different countries and asking the question, you know, how are you going to build this democracy? And most people answer by saying, "Well, the first thing we do is have an election." And, elections are really important, but they're the cherry on the icing on the cake, in terms of all the things that make a democracty. And, elections by themselves don't help you necessarily to end up with the strength for a democracy that you want. The challenge when you've had a country in chaos is that there are lots of people who will be happy to have one election, but not very happy to see one after that. They want to stay in power. The reason that we know that we can have in our democracies real opportunities for people to elect governments and then choose a different government. And to be able to relish and enjoy that democracy is that we have a deep underpinning of institutions that help us to keep our democracy strong. I call it deep democracy. It's about a civil society that can operate in a country, it's about the right to protest, to say what you think within reason. It's about a free press. It's about the capacity for political parties to explain what they stand for. It's about your knowledge that when you do vote, your vote will be counted, that you'll have the opportunity to cast your vote, that you will make sure that if there's a challenge, it will go through the courts, and be properly dealt with by people who know what they're doing. It's a confidence you feel that when you walk out of the polling booths, the police officers standing around, are there to protect you, they're not there to make sure that you've voted the right way. There are lots and lots of elements of deep democracy. Democracy of itself is not a straight line, it doesn't move quickly, necessarily. It doesn't move always in the way you want it to. It's what I call wiggles about, we don't always get the people that we'd rather have elected. We sometimes get people that we'd rather not have. But we know because we have deep democracies, that the opportunity to change that comes around again. I always say to people that, although in my country, we pride ourselves in having had democracy for a long time. We often talk in Britain, of 1215, which was the year of Magna Carta. It took 700 years after Magna Carta, before people like me, women, were given the vote. So democracy is not always quick. It's not always even. But it's really important that we protect it, we look after it, and we make sure it's as deep as possible. And so my third point is, we need to make sure that as we go forward, we have deep democracy, we look after it, we nurture it, and protect it. And we support countries that are looking for a democratic future, in not just to have the election, important though it is, but also to build the institutional framework that will enable them to make sure their democracy is deep. My fourth point is how to negotiate because I was involved in the Iran negotiations, and I also lead the dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo. And I was involved in negotiations around the Ukraine crisis at the beginning, in Egypt and elsewhere in the world. So I've been successful and unsuccessful. But I learned lots of things about negotiation, a couple of which I just wanted to share with you.

It's the case that at the end of crises, even if you have a full victory, the end of wars, the end of problems is very rarely clear cut. There are ragged edges, so things need to be sorted out. It's rare that everything works out exactly as you wanted to. So even if you end up saying, I have succeeded in every possible way, there are things you have to negotiate. There are people who have to go home, there are prisoners to be exchanged, reparations to be made. There are ways in which you want to ensure this could not happen again. There are all sorts of things. And so making sure that we are ready for negotiations or ready for those moments, when we have to sit down around a table are really important. But I was especially struck in looking at negotiations of the importance of making sure that we know what it is we're trying to do. So often in international negotiations, there are many problems, many issues when you're talking to someone with whom you're negotiating. After all, we don't generally negotiate with our friends when negotiating, because we have a problem with the people, or the teams of people opposite. And so I would say the most important thing is to decide what it is you're trying to do, and stick to it. Don't add things. Don't try and make sure you cover all the ground in one negotiation, try and work hard to succeed in the things that you can succeed. So the Serbia Kosovo, discussions of Brussels agreement, as it's called, doesn't resolve the fundamental and core issue of the recognition of Kosovo by Serbia. But it does seek to deal with the issues that were most prominent at the time, which was how to make sure that people could live a more settled life. So really fundamental part of it. And then finally, then I'll stop, you have to think about the long term. Too often in foreign policy issues arise out of nowhere or seem to be out of nowhere. But they've likely bubbled up and become a problem over the years, if not decades. So why do we think we can solve them in weeks, months, even a few years. We have to get better at choosing to think longer term about all of the issues and problems that we have to face. In the book, I tell a small story about going to China to Xi'an, to see the terracotta soldiers, they are magnificent. And the chief archaeologist said to me, we can think these are the outer edge of what treasures there might be and what might be found. Because "Over there," she said, pointing to a small hill really in the distance, "is possibly where the first emperor of China was buried. And all of this ending with the terracotta soldiers, is what was built to protect him, to adorn him, to put treasures with him in the burial chamber." I said, "So when will you start excavating the main chamber?" And she said, "In about 50 years." And it struck me that we don't always think in order to get from here, the outer ring to the heart of this, we have to be prepared to spend the time and energy and be patient and do it bit by bit. And it felt to me that this was something that applied to how we think about foreign policy. Because problems don't solve themselves. If you leave them alone and don't deal with them, they rarely disappear, they often become worse, they certainly don't really get better, they freeze, they change, and people's lives are not really helped. Because the problems still remain. They come out of nowhere, when you're not looking as quakes and tsunamis, places like Haiti and Japan that I visited, and saw the effects of what happened with an earthquake and tsunami out of nowhere. And yet the resolution they're trying to solve the issues that come from that can take an awfully long time. So being prepared for the drip, drip, drip of diplomacy, being prepared to stick the course, being prepared to think much longer term than we do, but how we address the problems. And if in any issue, this was true more than any other, it's got to be about climate change and the impact on our planet. So be ready, because engaging in foreign policy and diplomacy should be a lifetime's work. Thank you very much.

Leslie Johns 23:57

Well, thank you so much, Cathy. I mean, you've definitely put a lot of depth of thought into the points that you raised. There's a lot of a lot of thought that went into that. And I'd like to say for our guests today that Cathy is especially eager, she told me before, her her thoughts that she's especially eager to sort of take questions and give feedback to students. So if you are a student in the audience, please be sure to use the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen to go ahead and type out your questions. But to give, to give everyone a chance to do that, I have a few questions of my own that I'm hoping that that Cathy will indulge me in in terms of some of the more details of sort of ongoing world events. You know, Cathy in reading your book, one thing that I was really struck by was that the time period when you were in office, which was 2009 to 2014, you know, was a time period in which, you know, you when you were working in the EU, you know, you were able to sort of have a relatively good working relationship with the Russian government, in the sense that, you know, you were able to sort of reach a period of cooperation in terms of the Iran nuclear agreement. You know, maybe my memory is a little bit off, but that that was such a breakthrough in terms of, you know, coming, you know, the sides, sort of East and West coming together and able to reach a consensus on that. I think it was an agreement that, that no one really thought was possible at the time, and you helped make it happen. And, and now in 2023, you know, we see this huge war going on. Many of us sort of fear, it has the possibility to become a world war. And I guess I was wondering if you had any insights into why that relationship with Russia has, has changed so dramatically? Or has it not changed so dramatically? I mean, what are your insights into why things, like seem so different 10 years later?

Catherine Ashton 26:18

It's a really good question, Leslie. And I think, I would say probably, that it wasn't that things were not obvious 10 years ago. In the sense that, although we could work very well with Russia on Iran, it was because we shared a common interest. It was a classic informal grouping, if you like. But there were lots of issues that were of concern. So for example, when I was engaged in the Soviet-Kosovo dialogue, we knew that Russia was not very happy that Serbia and Kosovo might reach some kind of agreement. And they did put a lot of pressure on Serbia in particular. We realized during the Iran negotiations, that Russia was putting pressure on Ukraine not to sign what was the sort of trade-plus agreement with the EU. And of course, they had already taken parts of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. We had barbed wire across bits of Georgia. We had an EU monitoring mission monitoring what the Russians were doing there. We had issues in Moldova. So there was a sort of sense that we knew there were big problems with Russia, but we were hopeful that first of all, we could compartmentalize and at least resolve the around negotiation deal, which we did. And that there would be ways to try and make Russia much more capable and willing to be collaborating with us on things where there was common ground. But I wouldn't say that we were kind of thinking that Russia had somehow dramatically changed and was dramatically different. I know that people look back and say, well, we should have done more. And there are lots of ways in which you can look back and say, well, maybe. But actually, we had this sort of two way relationship. One, where Russia was a collaborator and the other one Russia was very, definitely not.

Leslie Johns 28:28

Okay, do you think it was just an issue of like military capacity, that, that, that Russia always had that strength of opposition, and it just needed the 10 years to build up the capacity to take action on its feelings? Because I mean, it's interesting that, that, that Putin now sort of harkens back to Kosovo as being such a pivotal moment. Right? And and yet 10 years ago, it happened, right? That it, that, that, that 10 years ago, it didn't push all the way through in such a dramatic way. No?

Catherine Ashton 29:04

Russia talks about Kosovo's Declaration of Independence as a justification for what it did in Crimea. The two are entirely different. This was a place that did use self determination to decide it was a nation state. And in Crimea, Russia took it. So they're not the same thing. I think what you saw at the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, way back in 2014, was that the Russians thought that if they could stop the agreement with the EU, and you then had a situation where Ukraine would look to Russia, as its most obvious ally, and what's happened over the time, is that Russia has determined that it's not going to lose Ukraine to the West. Whether that is because some people in Russia think that Ukraine has always been part of Russia, or people think it should look and be closest to Russia. For President Putin and for people around him, the idea that Ukraine might look to the West, might want a different future, is inconceivable and incomprehensible. And they are, from their perspective, quite determined to make sure it cannot happen. So they've over time moved from saying, well, we'll just have, you know, places in Ukraine, that mean that you that we've got control — which effectively has been the way Russia has behaved in the past, put wedges into countries, so those countries can't join things, because they've got a wedge inside, that makes it impossible for the country to do the things it wants to do. They've [Russia] moved on in Ukraine from that, to saying, "No, this is much more straightforward." Ukraine either has a government that is going to be very pro-Russian, or we're going to take Ukraine back into our control and the excuse they use is that it's been taken over by some right wing group of people who are taking it in the wrong direction.

Leslie Johns 31:10

Yeah. Okay. Another sort of contemporary issue I was hoping you could speak a bit to is sort of the EU's changing relationship with China. You know, another similar issue in which we see a quite adversarial view of China nowadays in 2023. And it was a bit striking in reading your book, how little discussion there was of China. And my perception, perhaps it was wrong, is that during the time that you were serving in the EU in your foreign policy role, is that China wasn't viewed as sort of a major adversary at the time, is that correct?

Catherine Ashton 31:54

I chose the the stories to fit in a sense, some of the issues I wanted to explore.

Leslie Johns 32:01

Okay, so that was,

Catherine Ashton 32:03

Yeah, I could have written another book. And I haven't written another book. But the book is some of those stories in it. So I certainly visited China quite a lot. And we worked with the Chinese, again, on the Iran negotiations. But I think your point is a good one, which is that there is a changing nature of the perception and view of China, in my own country, you know, 10 years ago, it was the golden age. Yeah. And then it went to the icing.

Leslie Johns 32:34

Yeah.

Catherine Ashton 32:34

Right. And then it went to oh, no, we can't be anywhere near China. And I think if you extrapolate that and think about the EU, my experience of discussions on China was that there was a variety of different views about China. China was incredibly important economically, especially during the financial crisis in the EU 2008-9. China played a big part in economic growth. And we were, we were much more interconnected, in terms of support from China for what was happening in Europe. So a lot of countries were very reluctant to see China in any other way as than an ally, or as a country they could rely on in those economically difficult times. That prevented in a sense, what you might call a more balanced view. And I think where the EU is kind of coming out is recognizing there is a strong economic connection to China and it's very important to Europe. But there are also many issues of great concern that needs to be addressed. And so I think you're seeing Europe work through that to come up with a common position.

Leslie Johns 33:52

Okay. So I'm going to turn to some of the questions from the audience. And as always, I hope that you will feel comfortable saying no comment. I recognize you are a public figure and that perhaps there are certain things you can't comment on, or it might be inappropriate to comment on. So so please feel comfortable if you have to. This is from one of our graduate students in political science. As always, I will not pass on anything inappropriate, but feel comfortable, stay comfortable to say no comment. So looking back now, what would you have done differently when Russia took Crimea, if anything?

Catherine Ashton 34:35

It's a really excellent question, because as you can imagine, after things happened nearly two years ago now with the beginning of the war and the invasion by Russia, we all look back and said, what should we have done differently? And you have to remember that there are a limited number of things that can be done. You can decide to go ino fight, put boots on the ground, as it's often said, you can decide that you're going to support the country that is being invaded in different ways. You're going to provide them with weaponry and so on, you can decide to try and use economic sanctions, which is quite a heavy weight way of trying to get things to at least stop and roll back, even if not get completely resolved in that way. And at that time, what Ukraine was trying to do was to move on from having had a president who had left and gone to live in Russia, elections coming for a new president. And it was not for a second thinking about taking on Russia in a military action. So what we tried to do was support Ukraine in the way that seemed most appropriate at that time, which was heavy economic sanctions. What I would have done differently, is I'd have made those sanctions stronger. In fact, I wanted to, because I felt it was important to send the strongest possible message. But I don't know, it's whether that would have had any effect. I feel more afterwards, that we sort of didn't then pay attention in the way we should have done to the fact that Ukraine still needed a lot of help, and that Russia was still there. And in those intervening years before the war began, there's probably quite a lot we might have done to have put more pressure on.

Leslie Johns 36:37

So this is a question from one of our undergraduates, alluding to your comments. You spoke about deep democracy, and as the institutional forces that create the foundation of a democratic state, how do you view the state of America's deep democracy? Namely, is declining faith and electoral systems a threat? So I guess that takes us an assumption that America has declining faith in electoral systems?

I don't know if America does. There be plenty of people doing opinion polls and trying to work out what Americans think of America.

Yeah, I'm not sure if that assumption is true. But I guess that that, that the the the undergraduate who wrote that feels that way, so yeah. So that's true. Generally, yeah.

Catherine Ashton 37:36

No, I have no idea if it's true. But but yeah, the thing is that the point about deep democracy is that it allows for things to wobble and feel a little bit less clear than they might have been. It allows for the kinds of legal challenges you've actually seen over the years. But the legal system works, it allows for it for institutions to have to have to deal with things that are unusual in what happens. So you've had over the years, challenges in a sense that have come from incidents that have occurred, or from the political system moving quite sharply from one direction to another. Because in reality, in a lot of governments in democracies, the changes between one side and the other, from Democrat to Republican, from labour to conservative here, and so on, are not dramatic. There are very definite differences, but they're not dramatic. And then every now and then they are quite dramatic. And so my point is that the underpinning institutions still work. And they still work to allow you to go forward. But you have to protect democracy anywhere, it's not about one country being more vulnerable than another. It's about making sure that you always look after it. And that means you always make sure that those underpinning institutions are in good shape. And that's the responsibility of everyone who's in a democracy, or who believes in the Democratic framework, because, again, people's faith in things and places can wobble. It can feel unsure, because it feels very different. And that's because the swings are bigger than they normally are. And that has an impact on how people feel.

Leslie Johns 39:28

Yeah, I mean, I definitely say you know, as a college professor, you know, during the Trump era, that is what I constantly ended up saying in the classroom, right is like, it may feel crazy on TV, but, you know, institutions work, right institutions work. And oftentimes, I'll say the undergraduates didn't like hearing that right? Because because, you know, oftentimes, there was a lot of emotions. People were getting upset about the news. But but you know, you know, I don't I'll say my family didn't like it either because they were outraged. Right. But but but I would say by and large, you know, I totally agree with you. Right? It's institutions, correct institutions, balance courts. Right.

Catherine Ashton 40:14

From the other side of the pond, yeah, a lot of the foreign policy of America stayed the same. I mean, there were a lot, there were things that were, there was a lot of noise. Yeah. Yeah, but there was actually in quite a lot of areas things did continue, if you like as normal. And that's because the institutions seek the heartland and so on, continue the work until told not, as it were.

Leslie Johns 40:43

So I have a really great follow on question from one of our staff who writes, there are so many simultaneous crises in the world today, public attention and funding move from crisis to crisis. But what happens with diplomacy? Does it continue, even if the world stops or reduces its attention? So like, what's the difference between the news and public attention, and sort of the day to day work of diplomats, you know, people in your position.

Catherine Ashton 41:13

So for diplomats, you know, a lot of diplomacy is about presenting your own country or your own organization, and representing their values and views and so on, it's a lot of the day to day. But when you have a crisis, and you see this in 24 hours on media, and now, in a situation where everybody's a journalist, we have a phone, you have a camera, you're a journalist, in that sense, you are able to show the world, what's happening, or your interpretation of what's happening. So there's a lot of information, and there's a lot of demand for things to kind of move on quickly, a lot of demand for people to talk and say things as quickly as possible. And the challenge for diplomacy is that it's often quiet and longer term. So a lot of things are going on in the background, a lot of things that are happening that you're just not aware of, and you shouldn't be aware of, because that's what diplomacy is. It's quiet work done. Drip, drip, drip, continuing, trying to get things to move, and so on. And not being on the front page of the media, or on the television broadcasts, or using your phone, or on Instagram or Twitter, or what excellent school, whatever. It's all of that stuff. So there's often a bit of a challenge for diplomacy. Because people say, well, you're not doing anything. Yes, they are. They're doing a huge amount, but they can't talk about it, they can't. But the whole point is to get to the point where you've actually made some progress. And I find that one of the great challenges 10 years ago, and I think it's a lot worse now. So I think for diplomats and diplomacy, you've always got to be aware that there will always be much, much more going on than you can see. And that's good. Because whenever there's a crisis, you need a huge amount of effort in the background, from people who are trying to make sense of it. And then trying to find at least the first beginnings of the resolution to it.

Leslie Johns 43:13

Perfect follow on question. Okay, what are the characteristics and skills of an effective diplomat? So what would you tell students who might be interested in this career path? You know, what, what are, what are sort of the personality attributes that might make them good at being a diplomat? Or that maybe you might tell them, maybe you're not so good at that career path? You know, obviously, tweeting a lot is probably an indication that maybe this isn't for you? No?

Catherine Ashton 43:45

I think I would say the greatest there are two great attributes for really good diplomats. And I'm not including myself in that. The first is the ability to listen. And that's really important. Because when you're in a situation, if you're representing your country, talking to somebody from another country, whether you're in the middle of trying to resolve a problem or crisis, you're trying to find ways to build and develop a relationship and you're trying to find the way to get into the problem and find a solution. And I would say to people, when I talk about negotiation, I always say listen, for what's said in the silence between the words and it's to do with the body language and to do with the, the way in which people talk and the way in which they use the words. Very simply, if you go into a room with two of your roommates or your friends and they've had an argument, you know, before they say anything, by the way they sit, on what they're not saying. And it's the same stuff. It's about picking up, it's kind of feeling it. It's about listening, and really understanding what somebody is trying to say to you. And it may be they're not saying anything, but you have to keep listening and keep working. And the second is judgment. Because the point about crises is that if we knew everything about them, there wouldn't be a crisis. We'd know. You're dealing with stuff where you don't know, when you often are confronted by something that you have no experience or you may not know the people involved, or the country involved, really. You may never have heard of the place where something's happened. So, your judgment is really important. Who's going to give you the information? How are you going to interpret it? What are you going to do? All of that is using judgment. So listening and judgment are the two greatest attributes.

Leslie Johns 45:55

Okay. A really interesting question from one of the undergrads asks that notes that we've been talking a lot about negotiations and sort of reaching agreements. But but sort of what happens after agreements are reached? Do diplomats play a role in preserving agreements or helping agreements or negotiations to evolve over time? Like, what if states changed their mind, or new information is learned? How do diplomats, ou know, are they involved in those processes?

Catherine Ashton 46:39

It's such an important question. And such an up-to-the-minute question, because I'm currently talking with people around the Serbia-Kosovo dialogue, which 10 years ago. Yeah, I did the Brussels agreement. And 10 years on, we're still trying to get them to really implement parts of it.

Leslie Johns 47:00

Well, like I've read in the news, like there are definitely flare ups, right about municipal offices? Yeah.

Catherine Ashton 47:07

Exactly. And I was in Kosovo about three weeks ago. And I'll be meeting with some Kosovars in Greece in the near future. And the point that I really feel very strongly about is that we sometimes don't nurture the agreements we've got. We kind of get the agreement and go, few, we've done it, and everybody goes home and moves on to the next crisis or next problem, because there is always a next problem.

Leslie Johns 47:34

Yeah.

Catherine Ashton 47:35

And we don't necessarily spend the time to nurture it, to kind of look after it, and to make sure that it moves forward. And exactly the point that the undergraduate's making. And it is so important. That if I had one thing that I would go back and say 10 years ago, to all those who follow me is please, please nurture all of these things. Don't forget about them, move them forward. And some of them they did. It's not a criticism of anyone. But we weren't, as we've never mind-focused on that, because we've done them. And you can't assume that just because you've done them just because you've started the implementation, that these crises will not emerge again. After all, they take decades to happen. In Kosovo and Serbia, they talk about the Battle of Kosovo, it took place in 1389. But they talk about it a great deal. How many hundreds of years? So why do we think we can solve a problem? Or begin to solve a problem in months, within decades to be able to be sure we've resolved it?

Leslie Johns 48:42

Okay. One of the graduate students wrote in with a question that's a little bit abstract, but I think she's trying to get you to tackle something a little bit more substantive, which is, what do you recommend in situations where it feels as though the negotiation is extremely small? For example, Russia-Ukraine, or Israel-Palestine? I don't know. You can be as abstract or specific as you want to be there. But I think it's sort of getting at the notion of where you have very, very little wiggle room. Maybe are there ways that you can make that wiggle room seem bigger? Or, you know, are there ways that you can try to build trust? Things like that? Yeah.

Catherine Ashton 49:35

I mean, a lot of negotiation is about small things.

Leslie Johns 49:42

Yeah.

Catherine Ashton 49:43

In order to get you into the place where you can talk about bigger things.

Leslie Johns 49:48

Okay.

Catherine Ashton 49:49

One of the most important parts of negotiation is really making sure you've got the process in place. So in the Iran talks, I spent two years talking to the Ahmadinejad government. Now President Ahmadinejad was somebody who, in the context of Iran was regarded as really hardline. So in the context of the world was extremely hardline. And we were not confident in the least of making any progress. But what we were able to do was develop a process where we could talk about small things, we could talk about issues. We knew how to talk to each other. We had a way of doing it. We had a way of talking about technical issues, and so on. So when the government changed, and we moved to a government that wanted to negotiate, all of that was in place. We knew where to go, we knew how to talk, we knew what the subjects were, and so on. So you often, in times that are really difficult, need to think about the process you're going to use. So the Ukraine and Russia, they're not negotiating now. But one day, even if Ukraine wins everything, they will have to negotiate, how to send back prisoners of war, how to get back people who disappeared into Russia, who's gonna pay for the rebuilding of the country? How are they going to do security at the border? What's going to happen to people who've moved into Ukraine from Russia? How are you going to deal with the people who've committed crimes, and so on. So in any situation, you have to start thinking about what you're going to do, and the process that you're going to use. And in the Middle East, there has been a Middle East peace process of sorts lurking in the background, trying to find ways to deal with at least some of the crises and problems. And eventually, whatever happens, there will need to be people sitting around a table, whoever they are, not Hamas, of course, but people sitting around a table, working out what has to happen. And that might be the UN, the international community, it will be someone, people will need to sort this out. And so that will be part of the eventuality of the end of that crisis. And you need to think about that, as the crisis evolves, because when crises end — Russia-Ukraine war, you know, could end someday. You don't know. And you need to be ready.

Leslie Johns 52:29

Okay, so we only have a few minutes left. So I think as our final question, I'll take an undergraduate question. This is a nice one to end on. It says, "In your career, what moments or situations have left the biggest impression on you? And what have you learned or wish for future diplomats, students to learn from those moments?"

Catherine Ashton 52:54

Wonderful question.

Leslie Johns 52:55

Yeah, very big too. Yeah.

Catherine Ashton 52:58

It is. So for me the moments that I always think about when you are standing in the middle of a square, where people have realized that they can have a better life, when you meet people who have come out of prison, where they've been kept for a long time, and where you see the spirit of humanity at work, people want what you want. They want a decent life, they want to feel safe and secure. They want their children to grow up and have an education and a job. They want to live somewhere reasonably nice. They want food on the table. They want to have fun with their friends. They want to walk out their front door and not be scared. All of the same things. And it is the universality that everywhere I went in the over 100 countries I visited, and that people who wanted the same thing, and who were prepared to risk everything, to try and get it. So for me, those magical moments are just standing with people who, with their families could stand in their down in the freezing cold. And say "We want an agreement with the EU because we want to move forward." Or could stand in Tahrir Square and say, "We want better democracy." All of those things.

Leslie Johns 52:58

Well, thank you so much, Cathy. Thanks to our audience for joining us today as well as to our wonderful speaker. Just to reiterate, for those of you who are interested in learning more about Cathy's career experiences, as well as her really interesting stories of diplomacy, the book title is "And Then What? Inside Stories of the 21st Century Diplomacy". We posted a link in the chat about where you can buy it. You can also buy it from you know, major bookstores in you know, brick and mortar as well as online. And it was really a delight to hear your stories. I'm sure that the student, the students in the audience very much value hearing your wonderful advice about how to build careers in diplomacy. To our audience members, we have lots of wonderful events coming up both online and in person. Please go to the Burkle Center web page to learn more and you can also subscribe to our email newsletters. Goodbye, everyone and I look forward to seeing you all soon. Bye bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai