Back from training EU officials in Mediation techniques, with an eye on the role of mediation at the international level.

One of our role-play examples featured an attempt by an imaginary Head of Mission in an imaginary country trying to mediate between his Deputy and a younger Political Officer over how best (if at all) to report back to HQ rumours of unrest in that country on the eve of an important visit from said HQ.

It was loosely based on my own experience in post-Tito Yugoslavia in 1984. I as a youthful and truculent Political Officer thought that the Embassy in Belgrade needed to convey to London serious concern about the risk of decay and perhaps even dangerous collapse in the country.

The Embassy top brass disagreed – Yugoslavia would (they were convinced) Muddle Through Somehow. See one of my first ever blog posts on this seductive and misleading idea.

The ensuing bickering and rows in the Embassy all played out in the long-lost days far before email, when there were few ways to get Confidential analysis fed to London. That was annoying (for me) but it had the advantage of giving Authority (of sorts) to what the Embassy sent in. Now when myriad emails slosh around, there is far more freedom and information, but it is that much harder to extract solid ideas and unambiguous wisdom.

Yet we all did our jobs. Any system requires people up through the policy chain to weigh options and take decisions accordingly. The then Ambassador disagreed with my paper, but he gave it a fair hearing before taking a more conservative/cautious view and feeding that back to London for due consideration.

Later when I returned to London I was asked to submit to then junior Minister Malcolm Rifkind a short note explaining my concerns. Which I did.

It came back saying that the Minister had considered my arguments but concluded that "ultimately it was for the Yugoslavs, warts and all, to sort out their own affairs" (or words to that effect).

Several years later when things in Yugoslavia were evidently sizzling, the next Ambassador tried to alert London to what was happening by sending to the top policy official in London a personal letter warning about open conflict. He got a sneery reply to the effect that it just did not matter if the Yugoslavs started fighting – Brits would just have to go somewhere other than Dubrovnik for their holidays.

This it came to pass that London and the rest of the Western world completely failed to grasp the seriousness of ethnic tensions across Yugoslavia until it was too late to stop the place disintegrating.

Had I and some expert people in the UK system or other systems been believed, or allowed to press their case more authoritatively – or had they been determined and brave enough to force their concerns into more formal complaints procedures and force a change of policy – billions of pounds of UK/EU/US taxpayers’ money might have been saved. 

Yet democracies don’t work like that.

If the FCO yells at HM Treasury that there is a good chance that spending an extra billion now on squabbling foreigners may save several billions down the road, the case will not even be considered. Too many imponderables.

A fascinating case-study on many levels.