Dilemmas of Diplomacy. Geert Mak and Espen Barth Eide

In conversation with Tove Gravdal about Roosevelt’s right hand, history’s middlemen and the role of diplomacy today.

From Epstein files to the US and Israel’s bombing of Iran: The events of the last few months have highlighted the importance – and shortcomings – of international cooperation and diplomacy.

Norway’s foreign secretary, Espen Barth Eide, is one of many who suddenly have to navigate uncharted waters. Through his many years in the service of Norwegian foreign policy, he has worked to increase dialogue and alliances between countries and people. Now, it seems someone has tossed the rule book, making small states like Norway all the more vulnerable in the face of brazen superpowers.

Our current situation was far from the mind of internationally acclaimed Dutch historian Geert Mak when he set out to write about the role of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s now all but forgotten right hand. But in the process, the many parallels between the time he wrote about – the prelude to the second world war, the Spanish civil war and the rise of fascism – and our own times became increasingly apparent.

In The Switchman, Mak show how the social worker Harry Hopkins, who became Roosevelt’s right hand, laid the foundation for the modern welfare state and forged a crucial alliance between the US and Europe in a time when fascism was on the rise. What can Hopkins’s story tell us about the value of middlemen, mediators and diplomats – in a time when the transatlantic alliance is threatened both from the outside and within, and when many of us have lost faith in the world of diplomacy?

With titles such as The Lives of Jan Six and In Europe. Travels through the Twentieth Century, Mak has established himself as a central chronicler of modern European and American history. Barth Eide spent time as a researcher in the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and in central positions within the UN and the World Economic Forum besides his many years in Norwegian politics.

In June 2026, Barth Eide joined Mak for a conversation about Hopkins and the role of diplomacy today, moderated by writer and journalist Tove Gravdal.

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