Sir David Manning

David Manning joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1972. Postings in Warsaw, New Delhi, Paris, and Moscow preceded his appointment as head of policy planning in 1994. He was ambassador to Israel from 1995 to 1998, then supervised defence and intelligence matters as a deputy under-secretary. After representing Britain at NATO in 2000–01, he became Tony Blair’s foreign policy adviser and head of the Defence and Overseas Secretariat. ¹

Manning’s work before Washington placed him inside the negotiations preceding the Iraq invasion. The Iraq Inquiry records his warning to President George W. Bush that British participation required a United Nations route. On 10 March 2003 he transmitted a proposed revised deadline and six tests for Iraqi compliance to Condoleezza Rice and Chilean president Ricardo Lagos, as Britain sought support for a further Security Council resolution. ²

As ambassador from 2003 to 2007, Manning subsequently managed the relationship as British and American military strategies in Iraq diverged. The inquiry cites his February 2007 report of a conversation in which Rice questioned whether Britain was withdrawing too quickly. ²

After leaving the service, Manning explained to Parliament that cooperation depended on shared interests and sustained work, rather than an automatic exchange of favours. He warned that inflated expectations surrounding the ‘special relationship’ could themselves damage it. At Harvard’s Future of Diplomacy Project in November 2012, he gave a public lecture and taught master classes as a Fisher Family Fellow. ^{3, 1}