Name a famous British diplomat.

A Google search only turns out 354 responses – Viscount Grey, Sir Harold Nicolson, Gladwyn Jebb – none of whom are household names, despite having been extremely influential. Jebb, for example, acted as the first Secretary-General of the United Nations.

And Tom Phillips is no exception. Ambassador to Israel (an important, if not cushy posting), his job has taken him to Tel Aviv via Kampala, Washington and Harare. Now, he finds himself on the front line in a search for peace that has eluded the efforts of figures as recognisable as Clinton, Netanyahu and Arafat.

So why does he, like the rest of his colleagues, maintain such a low profile? When I ask Phillips about his job, he always prefaces his answers with a disclaimer. ‘My government’s role…’ he begins each sentence.

I press him for a more personal answer, and he pauses. ‘There are so many individuals involved. Tony Blair, for example, in his new role as Middle East peace envoy, has been instrumental in trying to build the civil institutions that the Palestinians so desperately need.’

The former Prime Minister, with whom Phillips’ relationship has not dimmed since he stepped down last year, seems to loom large on the Israeli horizon. His attempts to shore up the flagging Palestinian economy have recently been complemented by a £243 million pledge from Gordon Brown for UK investment in the Territories.

‘There was a really successful conference last week in Bethlehem,’ Phillips tells me, ‘involving 1,000 business leaders from across the region, and the UK has promised to match any funds raised by these individuals and their companies.’

His overall tone is optimistic. ‘Things are a great deal better than they were a few years ago,’ he says. ‘We’ve moved on from the entrenched, ideological debate of the early 1990s, and there is a far greater emphasis on finding a practical solution.

‘Particularly if you look at the voices of those on the right in Israel – people who insisted that the entire state must remain intact – those voices have relented.’

I ask Phillips about the balancing act he must perform with regard to criticism of Israeli domestic policy. ‘We have a frank bilateral relationship,’ he says firmly, ‘and the Israelis know full well that we have significant humanitarian concerns over how they, for example, respond to Hamas’s rocket attacks.’

I hover on the edge of my next question, but Phillips is quick to retrieve his impartiality: ‘of course, we understand Israel’s security concerns. And, whilst we’ve always had terrorism in the UK, recent events have made Britons far more aware of what it feels like to have suicide bombers in our midst.’

He is also keen to point out that for all its shortcomings, Israeli society is vibrant, democratic and self-scrutinising. ‘People back in the UK shouldn’t imagine that Israel carries on without reflection. It has a remarkable ability to take long, hard looks at itself, and it does so more often than many countries in the West. After the intifada restarted; after the 2006 war in Lebanon, Israel really needed a lively press. And it has one.’

His concern for freedom of speech continues as we move on to discuss the role of students with regard to the peace process. ‘Israeli academics often think that their British counterparts are biased towards the Palestinians. Personally, I’m delighted to see people like Shlomo Ben-Ami being invited to talk at Balliol, as he was a couple of weeks ago.’

Ben-Ami remains a controversial figure, even in his home country, for his role as Minister of Internal Security during riots in October 2000, which resulted in the deaths of 12 Israeli Arabs and a Palestinian.

Despite this, Phillips remains a vehement opponent of academic boycotts: ‘It is absolutely vital to keep all channels of communication open. Until one understands both narratives, it’s impossible to move towards that common ground where peace is forged.’

He wanders back mentally to his student days, during which he was ‘passionately engaged with issues like this.’ His early career as a journalist, which marks him out noticeably from his civil service colleagues, seems to have nurtured an infectious enthusiasm for the power of debate.

‘I’m all in favour of demonstrations – as long as they remain within the law – but honestly, I believe discussion is the best way that both students and academics can advance the process.’

And diplomats, perhaps? ‘My role,’ Phillips says, finally turning the conversation to himself, ‘is partly about finding creative paths to our goal of a two-state solution.’ But the UK also ‘has an incredibly detailed regional counter-terrorism strategy. It’s partly about reaching out to those in Islam who want to see…’

Phillips hesitates. ‘Different solutions from those which the UK believes will bring lasting peace. And it’s partly about a strategic dialogue with Israel that makes sure we’re prepared for anything.’

I ask how he feels about the stability of the Middle East at present. ‘We’re always looking over our shoulders when engaging with the Palestinian issue. We look across at Lebanon, which had a pretty worrying few days recently – and of course the shadow of Iran’s nuclear ambitions hangs over us all.’

Phillips’ deep antipathy towards nuclear weapons, whoever’s hands they may be in, gives me another reminder of his unusual path to the civil service. He doesn’t like to talk about his personal political beliefs, but it strikes me that he is very much a child of the sixties: socially and economically liberal, and serious about ‘world peace.’

But unlike the loud activism of the 2000s, which preaches environmental protection from concert stages illuminated by thousands of floodlights, Phillips’ quiet voice is committed to consistency, and sees links between everything.

I ask him about the effect of Israel and the Palestinians’ relationship on everyday life in Britain. ‘This is one of the central conflicts of our age,’ he says, ‘and there is clearly some kind of a link to our present experience of radicalism in the UK.’

He puts the emphasis on ‘some.’ For Phillips ‘doesn’t buy the argument that “if there wasn’t a crisis in Israel, Al-Qaeda wouldn’t exist.” It’s much more complicated than that.’

A devotion to dialogue, therefore, seems the overarching – and rather unsurprising – impression that Phillips leaves me with. I’m still not sure exactly who he is, but what I am sure of is that his low profile is a cultivated one. He keeps quiet so that others can talk; he facilitates dialogue by stepping back.

After the interview has finished, I wander into a bookshop and glance at the poetry shelf. Save the Last Page for Me, a collection of poems that include ‘troubled private reflections on the public world in which the author operates,’ sits to one side of a vast stack of Carol Ann Duffy volumes.

Its author is ‘Tom Vaughan, a British diplomat who has served in Africa and the US, and who is currently stationed in the Middle East.’ The cover photo impresses on me the anonymity of its figures, cropped from the neck up, and as I turn to the first poem I wonder whether these, perhaps, are the pages he has reserved for his own voice.

The world’s drug problem, ’declares the latest UN World Drugs Report, ‘is being contained.’ A truthful statement, if a touch optimistic – but the use of the present continuous is telling. There continues to be a huge market for cocaine, cannabis and heroin, among other drugs, particularly in Western Europe and the USA.

And South America finds itself with the dubious accolade of being the principal global producer of cocaine. Recent UN estimates suggest that 0.3% of the global population use cocaine.

That may sound like a negligible fraction, but it represents a formidable 143 million cocaine users. With users in the US regularly paying $100+ for a gram, it’s not hard to see why coke production continues to flourish.

The extent of the drugs problem varies wildly from country to country. Some South American nations, such as Uruguay, are host to neither narcotics-producing nor transit.

Other nations, like Venezuela and Brazil, are key drug-transit stops, due in part to intense corruption at the highest levels of government and in part to extensive borders which prove impossible to control. Yet they do not produce coke on a large scale.

And then there are the true movers and shakers of the coke world – Columbia, Peru and Bolivia. Last year Peru and Bolivia produced, respectively, 280 and 94 metric tons. But Columbia remains by far the world’s most significant cocaine producer, churning out an estimated 610 metric tons last year, representing over 60% of global supply.

The recent conflict between Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador over the latter two’s alleged support of the FARC (Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces), a Marxist militia owing much of its influence to the very un-Marxist means of drug-trafficking, arms-selling, and ransom-kidnapping, demonstrated the influence of the substance in the country’s politics.

Narcotics production has devastating effects, not only within the countries where the end product is consumed, but in the countries where it is created. Drugs mean power. A local drug baron essentially operates above the law, taking it into his own hands should his trade be threatened.

Between 1989 and 2007, 140 journalists were killed in Colombia, approximately seven a year, often because of their decisions to report on drug trafficking or corruption. Drug sales frequently go to subsidise armed groups, further destabilising the country and increasing those groups’ regional control over South American slums.

As always, there’s one nation which just can’t resist getting involved – the USA. Its extensive involvement is hardly surprising given that the States remains the world’s largest cocaine consumer.

The level of US financial and tactical input in South America is formidable. The aptly named ‘Plan Colombia’, for example, was established to help the Colombian government combat the drugs industry and promised $5 billion worth of US Aid.

In addition, US Government produces an annual ‘International Narcotics Control Strategy Report’ each year, outlining the extent of American aid to each country and how effective it has been in containing drug production and trafficking.

Yet despite extensive UN and US aid, the cocaine industry in South America remains steady, if not flourishing. Where exactly are they going wrong?

For a start, the vastness of the continent alone makes it very difficult to monitor the trade. With a total area of 17,840,000 km² spread over 12 countries, each with its own anti-drug laws and strategies, South America finds forming a united front to combat drug-trafficking nigh on impossible.

Whilst countries are beginning to form agreements with one another, including exchanges of intelligence between security forces, they have a long way to go before they find themselves capable of infiltrating organised and well-funded narcotic-producing organisations.

The geography doesn’t help much either. The rainforests and rivers which delight tourists provide perfect cover for cocaine production and transportation.

The border between Brazil and Colombia stretches across 1000 km, and much of it is made up of dense rainforest or large river systems, with countless minor waterways along which to smuggle drugs. Unsurprisingly, police presence in such hostile conditions is limited, and local drug barons, with extensive knowledge of their surroundings, will always have the advantage.

Then, of course, there’s the tourists. Were the cocaine market a purely domestic one, for consumption by locals, narcotics production would never have reached today’s dizzying levels.

Unfortunately, the presence of tourists eager to sample purer, cheaper coke ensures that the market remains lucrative. An inordinate number of average gap year kids will certainly be heading south to sample the continent’s most infamous product – cocaine.

The typical tourist attitude to the drug is increasingly flippant and thus damaging. Tourists at Colombia’s Ciudad Perdida now have the option of stopping off at a ‘cocaine factory’ for a photo opportunity. As one travel writer puts it, ‘it seems the drug is becoming a tourist attraction in itself. Just as you try steak in Argentina and caipirinhas in Brazil; in Colombia, you sample the coke.’

Agencies hold guided tours of the same favelas (Brazilian slums) in which addiction and drug-related gang warfare are decimating a generation of young men. Glamorising the drug in such a way goes against any effort made by the host countries to combat the industry.

Perhaps most crucially, anti-drug efforts fail because they fail to capture the loyalty of the local people, often damaging their lives rather than improving them. In particular, the mass destruction or seizure of land on which coca leaves are cultivated hurts a trade on which hundreds of South American families depend. Interviews with coca growers highlight the uselessness of such unsympathetic measures.

‘Coca is a means of survival for us,’ said one farmer interviewed by the Guardian, ‘because the soil is very tired, very eroded. Coca leaves are the only option we have for earning a living to feed ourselves and our families.’

The problem, such farmers would argue, lies in the northen hemisphere. Without American and European demand, there would be no market for the product. The Americans should deal with their own people, discouraging citizens from turning to drugs recreationally, rather than intervening in the politics of other countries.

The countries of South America need to re-examine how they conduct their fight in the battle against cocaine. Wiping out coca fields is not enough – they need to provide those same farmers with another equally profitable product to survive on.

To ensure the co-operation of local people, US assistance must be downplayed and eventually rendered unnecessary. For our part, the message must be reinforced that casual holiday drug binges have a far more sinister effect on the country in question than users ever imagine.