Making love not war

One of the inexorable problems for ambassadors is what speech they should make at the annual cocktail party to celebrate their national day. There’s unspoken competition to see which party is best, and the speeches are an important part of that.

At the end of the year the ambassadors can compare notes: which party was boycotted by the Government (that’s bad news, and can lead to an ambassador being recalled, unless it is part of a deliberately confrontational strategy), who made the most gaffs, whose speech was the most boring, and whose was longest. In truth, the best received speeches are probably the minimalist ones: welcome, tonight we celebrate the friendship between our two great nations, here’s a toast to us both, thank you again for coming. But the ambassadors of the more important countries aspire to more.

Last year’s speech at the America’s July 4^th celebration was considered by some to be in rather poor bad taste: the speech implicitly attacked the government for the killing of a human rights activist a few weeks before. The Congolese shook their heads in embarrassment while purloining another burger topped with a little US flag.

This year’s was different and ingenious. The new ambassador chose a completely different tack. He said (and I paraphrase) you mustn’t be so hard on yourselves. You may look like a failure, but I would like to remind you of the history of the US. Even though our declaration of Independence was in 1776, it took 13 years to agree on a constitution, then we had to create a supreme court, then we had a terrible war over slavery, and it was 89 years before we settled down as a nation. So give it time . . .

Of course this went down very well: even the other ambassadors could be seen to be raising an eyebrow in praise for its originality.

But how seriously did any one take it? Drawing clever analogies is one thing, but was this really the message which the US wanted to give? If so why is it ploughing so much aid to help the Congo implement “good governance”, why is it supporting the UN peace keeping force to such a degree, and why is it pressurising the government to keep to its election commitments? Because, in truth, the US is very worried about what has happened in the DRC in the last few years. Much of the promise of Kabila’s early years seemed to be evaporating as mining licences are withdrawn without following due process, and the conflict in the East is showing no signs of abating.

But not so the media: they had no such doubts. On the local news the following day there was one of those min-trailers – “Don’t go away: hear what the American Ambassador had to say”. This announcement was followed by excerpts from Mel Gibson’s film about the civil war in the US, lasting several minutes and mainly consisting of bloody war scenes. Then a bright young reporter, full of smiles, breaks the news about how the ambassador has said that the US had also had bitter civil wars and government had taken a long time to get its act together. And, in brief, that the DRC that they are doing better than the US did.

But enthusiasm in the local media is not matched in the corridors of the US Embassy and the USAID. There aren’t many people there saying “give them time”. They’ve done that before, and nothing has changed. Rather, they may be saying: that was smart diplomacy. As a result, the Congolese government will maybe think we are really really friends and take our bitter medicine without complaint. Maybe.