Kung Fu Diplomats

From the Glove and Mail:
"Canadian Diplomats Set to Receive Martial Arts Lessons"

Diplomacy, it’s been said, is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power. If so, Canadian diplomats are poised to drop their gloves. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade is moving to hire martial-arts instructors, to educate its envoys on how to handle themselves should words fail.  “Employees posted abroad must be sensitized to personal security threats in foreign countries,” says a solicitation for martial-arts instructors that was publicly tendered by DFAIT last month. Ambassadors deployed to “certain higher-risk countries,” the bid says, need to know rudimentary “reactive techniques to manage confrontation in potentially dangerous situations.” There can be no doubt that Canada’s diplomats are vulnerable to violence. In 2006, a diplomat was killed by a car bomb attack in Afghanistan. In 2008, two Canadians working as United Nations envoys were abducted for 130 days by a terrorist faction in Niger. Just last fall, the diplomatic corps was pulled out of Iran over Ottawa’s security fears. And yet – could better fighting skills really be the solution to any kind of conceivable trouble abroad? “I can’t see where it’s going to be of much use anywhere,” said Dan Livermore, a former Canadian ambassador to Guatemala.

^ It seems pretty dumb to expect Ambassadors and other diplomats to use hand-to-hand combat especially since more violent crimes involve weapons. I think this is a waste of time and money. ^

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadian-diplomats-set-to-receive-martial-arts-lessons/article6970182/