But is Roberts right? Is the confidence of the diplomatic disposition in the sovereign state system which allows him to tell his story in the way he does justified? After all, it is not merely the sterile, frightened ideologues of the Politiburo who have recently been swept away. So too has the USSR which Dobrynin served and about the impermanence of which he has little to say. It can be argued that European great powers face a similar, if gentler, fate. It may be symptomatic of international political change that one must turn to diplomats from the remaining superpower for clear reaffirmation of the priorities of princes over peace. The American Max Kampelman argues that one should be careful about creating too many international organizations because "experience shows that [their] staffs ... begin to establish their own policy and goals." Few contemporary European diplomats would openly agree, and none would echo Robert Vansittart's view of a half-century ago that "The more we are together' should become " the Froth-Blowers' Anthem", at least not on the record. And yet the anchor remains. Ask EU diplomats about their daily work and they will describe in great detail the multilateral committees in which they try to establish a better way of solving this problem or regulating that behaviour for the benefit of all. The operative pronoun is 'we' and yet, ask them who they serve and they will say their government or country.