A King In The Making

Prince William’s visit to China has been an impressive success for the young man who will one day be King. Without his wife at his side he has stood on his own and stood firm with an outstanding performance of tact, humour and a clear sense of mission. This has been good for Britain and a clear success for the beleaguered foreign office. Indeed the effort to cultivate trade, cultural and diplomatic links with modern China is an achievement in sharp contrast to the blundering which has driven Russia back into isolation from which, feeling threatened, it is beginning to pose a threat.

It is impossible for this blog to unravel the mismanagement which has let to the crisis in relations with the Kremlin other than to say I have been predicting it for years unless we changed course. I think at the heart at the failures to read the signs and the errors of judgement which followed was an assumption that because Russia is a democracy it would all work out, whereas China remains a one party communist state and was seen to require more effort. One can only be left wondering if the FO (and the State Dept.) would have made a better fist of it if the Soviet Union had remained intact, decoupled from eastern Europe and reformed itself from within. President Putin certainly thinks so.