"Even if diplomacy is reduced to its own resources, it does not deserve to be the object of either excessive reverence or great abuse. One must guard against being overwhelmed by the ceremonial protocol with which diplomacy likes to surround itself and by the often conventional and stilted nature of its language and manners. When States decided to live together in peace, they developed diplomacy, and — with its rules and limits, its failings and successes — it still remains the best method that has been found to organise relations between nations. There are times when the prose of diplomacy reaches poetic heights and its tactics become an art. But for this miracle to take place, diplomacy must be enrolled in the service of something greater than itself — as if it had been illuminated from the inside. That ‘something’ is known as a foreign policy. What does it arise from? What are its aims? What does it consist of?," asks Gabriel Robin.

In this book, one of France’s most judicious foreign policy advisers addresses a crucial question: What should be the nature of French foreign policy today?

A former French ambassador, Gabriel Robin was one of Valery Giscard d‘Estaing’s closest diplomatic advisers. He was France’s Permanent Representative on the NATO Council and is the author of Un monde sans maître: Ordre ou désordre entre les nations?