What's going on with the new British government? Here's a positive smoke signal: Tonight, the global online advocacy network Avaaz.org was invited to co-host new Foreign Secretary David Miliband's first speech, "The New Diplomacy," at Chatham House in London. I don't think Britain's new foreign policy supremo was quite ready for the avalanche of almost 3,000 questions and suggestions our members sent him.
But when it came to answering a few online questions -- starting in Pakistan, with a challenge from Hassaan Naeem about the war on terror -- an impressed Miliband said, "That's the New Diplomacy". (See the video below.)
Why does the British Foreign Secretary want to engage with Avaaz.org's 1.2 million-strong community? We're hardly part of the coalition of the willing. We're sort of like a global MoveOn.org -- except that we operate in 12 languages, with members in every country in the world. We're campaigning for a diplomatic solution in Iraq, including all-party talks, phased withdrawal and oil sovereignty. Our global climate petition surged by hundreds of thousands of signatures when George Bush tried to wreck the G8 summit. We helped fire Paul Wolfowitz; and our Stop the Clash of Civilizations YouTube hit is enough to make Dick Cheney turn in his bunker.
So this event is unprecedented. It speaks volumes about how global public opinion is becoming the new superpower, and how progressive leaders like Miliband want to engage with that.
He hasn't publicly signed up to all our campaigns. (We'll be meeting him soon to discuss that.) But as Miliband asked in his speech tonight, "The stakes are high -- will progressive forces establish a new centre of gravity in politics?" He talked a lot about hearts and minds, radical climate action, multilateral solutions. He didn't justify Iraq.
Is this new British government starting to get it, then? We'll judge by their actions in the years and months to come.
At the end we handed David Miliband his own Book of Global Public Opinion, with all our members' thousands of questions and pieces of advice, warning and encouragement. Clarion calls for an ethical foreign policy, a new global climate treaty, all-party negotiations and ending occupation in the Middle East, the protection of human rights and decisive action on poverty. I hope he's reading it now.
As he said himself:
"Across the world, people are demanding more power for themselves. Our task is to make this a force for progress not destruction."
You do your bit, David -- we'll do ours. (And to the next U.S. Secretary of State, whoever you may be: this is how to start telling the world that you're ready to listen to it.)