Choose Your Weapons

"This is a more recent book, and to some extent it’s a continuation of the Kissinger theme. In choosing your weapons he’s referring to the Castlereagh-Canning duel at the beginning of the 19th century, which he uses as a symbol of the duel between principle and realpolitik. Castlereagh is the realpolitik specialist – the Machiavelli, the Metternich, the Kissinger. Canning is the man of principle, the Woodrow Wilson in the argument. Hurd then takes that all the way through to the post-millennium age – you have to choose whether you think principle comes first, or circumstance comes first. And as always with Douglas Hurd – and that’s the cleverness of the book – he says (or at least implies) that there doesn’t need to be a hard choice between those two; there is a balance you can strike. Both are important: if you do one without the other, you will make bad mistakes, but if you understand the nature of the power of principle and the power of events and relate the two, and keep both in contact with each other, you’ll come out with a sensible set of policies – and you will be able to implement those policies in the real world without falling over precipices. So what he’s really saying in Choose your Weapons is, you can choose which side of the camp you come from, but if you’re sensible, whichever side of the camp you come from, you’ll end up in the same place – of sensible policy. It’s not a dramatic read, because he’s not that sort of writer, but as a writer of novels he has a good ear for anecdote. He tells plenty of lovely stories in the diplomatic arena. The clarity of what he is saying comes through particularly strongly at the end."