Peter Ricketts

British former senior diplomat and life peer who served as the UK’s first National Security Adviser (2010–2012) and as Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Head of the Diplomatic Service (2006–2010). He later served as British Ambassador to France and is a Visiting Professor at King’s College London.

Britain’s Wartime Diplomats Turned Declining Power Into Lasting Influence

Lord Peter Ricketts, former head of Britain’s Diplomatic Service, argues that the wartime Foreign Office was not a ceremonial adjunct to military power but an instrument for sustaining alliances, securing access and preparing the political order after victory. Unable to match American or Soviet scale, Britain used diplomats to keep de Gaulle aligned, hold Spain outside the Axis, support governments in exile and build the institutions through which it could retain influence after 1945. Ricketts also contends that this work exposed the costs of the service’s narrow recruitment and exclusion of women.

Hoover InstitutionAug 12, 202615 min read