The Sherpa's View: Four Decades of French Diplomacy with Philippe Etienne

I wanna think about the craft of diplomacy itself.

So you've worked closely with Germans, Russians, and Americans.

How does each one negotiate, and what adjustments did you have to make or habits you had to unlearn within each relationship to successfully accomplish your goals?

I think it's the very heart of, uh, the, the business of diplomacy.

It's to, to understand, uh, what the other in f- we-- in front of you, uh, is, uh, thinking what is, uh, his or, or her position and, and goal, but also to understand how he's thinking.

It's, uh, what I call intercultural management.

And it's not easy even with the closest countries.

If you take Germany, for instance, uh, the French and the German, uh, are really diff- still today, even if we had convergences, of course.

Uh, for instance, the French people drink more beer, and the German people make and drink more wines, and it's good wines, and we, we make good beers.

So [laughs] there are cultural convergences.

But, uh, really, um, we continue to not to, to have the same ways of negotiating.

With the British it's the same.

The British culture is, is really interesting also in the...

And I like this.

It's, uh, it's what I prefer in this business.

It's, uh, in this, uh, profession, which is more than a profession, this calling.

It's the way you, you have to...

And especially in Brussels, I, I, I liked very much to, uh, to be, to have, to be confronted with this multitude of different culture histories and to understand around the table, and we were quite a number of us, twenty-seven and twenty-eight with Croatia, to understand how we, we had to, uh, to understand the positions of the others.

It is fascinating.

It is what makes diplomacy more than a, a, a job.

It's, uh, it made for me a passion and, uh, uh, it goes well, well, well beyond the, uh, the, the, the, the, the sheer act of discussing an issue.

And it was the same in the US and in Russia, of course.

In Russia, for instance, it was, uh, as I said, it was the end of the Soviet Union.

I, I met people in the foreign ministry which were Soviet diplomats also.

So to, to understand what they carried as ideas, what, uh, uh, they had to live with, with the fall of their, their, their country fi- finally, Soviet Union, uh, the Soviet Union, it, it's really important to, to dive deep into, uh, what your, your interlocutors can think and to not, not to, to use this against them, but to build, uh, something, uh, to, to, to, to reach something in common finally.