Former British Ambassador Oliver Miles is on a roll in the Guardian.

After giving Ambassadorial blogs the thrashing they so richly deserve, he now writes with eloquence and good sense about what Ambassadors actually do:

When I worked in Belfast, I was warned by a home civil service colleague not to "trust" the Irish government. It made me think about diplomacy. Do we or should we trust the American or French governments? Should they trust us?

It’s the wrong question. One of the arts of diplomacy is to find solutions to problems that depend not on trust but on interest.

Excellent.

Read it all. I have added a comment there.