Laughing or crying
Marco Rubio was in India the other day, doing something or other to “revive” the Indo-American relationship. Which badly needs reviving if his treatment was anything to go by.
When he arrived there was no one at the airport to meet him off the plane, no one at all, not even a baggage handler. When he left a few junior officers of the Indian Army shook his hand and also a very pleasant looking man in a nice tank top.
The trooping of the colour it was not.
As my old tutor used to tell me about diplomacy there is a reason these things matter. If every French ambassador ignores every British ambassador at parties and soirees around the world, the British Foreign Office realises that it has done something to piss off the French and it had better find out what, sharpish.
When no one turns up to meet the once all powerful US Secretary of State it is worse than that, just like when Trump was met in China by the vice president, it is a snub.
It is the diplomatic equivalent of deliberately forgetting a colleagues name to show him he doesn’t matter, and you are more important than him.
It is making everyone wait for you to turn up for a meeting. It is “forgetting” to stand up when someone important and powerful enters the room, or talking over a presentation.
The message is clear, you are not all powerful, we no longer respect you, you are light weights, we have better friends and more important allies and you don’t get to treat us like you have been doing.
For the likes of Trump and his entourage this type of messaging does not get through, I imagine they really believe all that rubbish about MAGA. They think they are feared and respected again, when they are hated and mocked.
But then the message is not really aimed at them, it is the rest of the world which notices and it is either laughing or crying.
From Jonty Bloom Media Ltd
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
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