Tom Fletcher
Contributor
Tom Fletcher, CMG, is principal of Hertford College, Oxford. He is a former U.K. ambassador and 10 Downing Street foreign policy adviser to three prime ministers, and a visiting professor at NYU. He is the author of the bestselling “The Naked Diplomat: Power and Politics in the Digital Age” (2016) and the forthcoming “Ten Survival Skills for a World in Flux” (2022).
As British ambassador to Lebanon, Tom Fletcher was one of the first ambassadors to “go digital.” Ten years on, he reflects on what the first wave of “technodiplomats” got right and wrong, and where digital diplomacy goes next.
Like every industry or craft, diplomacy — a world once dominated by protocol and platitudes, maps and chaps — has already been hugely disrupted by digital technology.
Also like many professions, the most visible impact has been on the tools: better kit, better comms (internal and ext …
