THERE IS A CERTAIN tragic drama to the rough month between the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the outbreak of the First World War. Everyone who ever studied history in high school (or watched the really pretty good 37 Days) knows the basic story and I'm, in spite of myself, a bit fascinated by it: here was a closed world, an exclusive masculine society of gentlemen, of the upper class in their own countries but also members of a cross-national exclusive elite, speaking the same languages, familiar with the same Greek and Latin and French, bearers of an enormous responsibility to their governments and the world. They all valued their ability to maintain a kind of concert peace amongst great powers. They were aware of themselves as a class and as a professional corps of diplomats, habituated to the exercise of unaccountable influence, answerable at best only to a Cabinet and at worst to an uninterested monarch, and regardless of their shade of politics (from liberal to reactionary) had a kind of mutual sympatico that let them always empathise with one another regardless of their countries' positions.
So, how well did a group of highly skilled, professionally serious, high-minded, exquisitely literate and trained communicators handle the world-historic outbreak of violence? Pretty badly, as it turns out. Nobody mourns them.
The United States will be represented in Malaysia by its new Ambassador, former Ashfield Councillor, reject from the Liberal Party, 'alpha male' influencer and success coach, probable self-parodist (though who can be certain, honestly) Nick Adams. It's absolutely typical Trumpism to elevate the last guy whose book he read or whose TV slot he saw. How will the Hooters-loving, performatively chauvinist influencer go as plenipotentiary to a majority Muslim nation already at odds with the US over its support for the war in Gaza? Is diplomacy better in the hands of top-hatted and tailed gentlemen or MAGA fabulists?