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Now, I may be slightly biased because I’m British, but I have to say the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.The only three contenders are really; the French Republic, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom. Germany, while able to exert significant ‘soft’ power through the European Union, due to it’s economic strength, lacks nuclear capability and has a conventional military which is only slightly more powerful than that of Poland.Of the three, I consider Russia to be the least powerful. In and of itself, Russia does possess the largest land territory, the largest nuclear arsenal, and the largest manpower reservoir.However, several factors combine to reduce Russia’s power and global influence.Lack of allies. Russia has no military alliances with any of the generally recognised Great Powers* elsewhere in the world. They have close relations with PR China, but (as far as I am aware) they have no formalised military alliance with Beijing.Declining population. According to Wikipedia*, Russia is currently experiencing population decline at a rate of -0.04%. While this is perhaps not an enormous amount, the fact that France and Britain are both experiencing population growth puts Russia behind in this ‘category’.Economy. Russia’s nominal GDP in 2014 was 1,857.461 (USD)*. This was less even than Italy, which is currently undergoing enormous economic strain, particularly in its banking sector. While Russia has the fifth largest nominal GDP in Europe, Britain and France are first and second respectively.France and the UK are actually very comparable in terms of global power. Both:Are NATO membersAre leaders in the Commonwealth of Nations and the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (respectively)Are permanent members of the UN Security Council (Russia is too, but we are discussing Britain and France)Possess territories across the globe from which to project power overseasHave true (though limited, compared to the USN) blue-water naviesHowever, I place France a narrow second for a couple of reasons:The official and primary language of the United Kingdom is English, which is usually regarded as the global lingua franca. This enhances Britain’s ‘soft’ power in a cultural sense: British cultural exports such as the BBC; bands like the Beatles and One Direction; and films (e.g. James Bond) have a wider audience.British military prestige. Whether deserved or not, France is often painted as a nation of ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’, and as militarily inept. Successes (such as the operations in Mali) are generally overlooked, and focus is turned to failures such as Vietnam and Algeria. In contrast, Britain is often seen as military more able - perhaps due to its closer relationship to the United States, and thus its shared ‘successes’ in Iraq and Libya. Independent British diplo-military achievements such as the peaceful handover of Hong Kong and the recovery of the Falkland Islands from Argentia are much vaunted.Global influence.I previously mentioned the Commonwealth of Nations and the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. You may notice that the former includes a large number of more developed economies and greater military/political powers, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India. While Britain has no formal alliance with most of these nations, they share many bonds and links that enhance cooperation and alignment.France, a leading member of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, is in a less advantageous position vis a vis the UK. Most of the Francophonie is composed of North/West African former French colonies, none of which can match the advantages enjoyed by the Commonwealth members mentioned above. Many are impoverished and afflicted with civil strife, disease and famine.Therefore I give the victory to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - though only just, since France does actually possess a slightly larger military.*The Great Powers, in my own opinion, roughly in order of power (greatest to least):The United States of America; the People’s Republic of China; the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; the French Republic; the Russian Federation; the Federal Republic of Germany; the State of Japan; the Republic of India.*List of European countries by population growth rate*List of sovereign states in Europe by GDP (nominal)

Historically the three islands were to be united as one nation. This idea did not progress any further. It was the idea of 'La federacion Antillana.’ Puerto Ricans participated in the political, social, and economic well being of these two other islands of the archipelago. A Puerto Rican patriot called Eugenio Maria de Hostos was a great philosopher.He introduced the ideas of positivism and public education in Dominican Republic. In Cuba, Juan Rius Rivers was a Puerto Rican general in 19th century Cuba and its war for independence. All three islands at one point of their histories were to be annexed by the United States.And several Puerto Rican cultural artists such as Daniel Santos, Diplo, and Myrta Silva were among Cuba's cultural artists. Merengues from the Dominican Republic are very popular among Puerto Ricans. Women Merengueras such as Olga Tanon, Jailene, and others popularized further this music in Puerto Rico. Cuban and Dominican dictators Fulgencio Batista and Leonidas Trujillo were compadres. Both eventually overthrown. One of the parents of Dominican leader Juan Bosch was Puerto Rican. And it was at the University of Puerto Rico where the 'Rio Piedras pact' was made for the Dominican Revolution of 1965. Of course the U.S. has invaded all three islands. They continue in Puerto Rico to this very day.

My reminiscences are a few years old now. It would do my heart good if some currently serving Canadian foreign service officer would assure me things are better now.I should explain that the Canadian foreign service, like most others, has different groups of officers doing different things, political negotiations and reporting, international trade, foreign aid, consular services and visas. A foreign service officer with a given specialty may have more or less opportunity to change tasks.Not every overseas position is filled by a career foreign service officer. There are single assignments from the domestic public service and sometimes even from the business community. Of course, at the higher level, you sometimes get political appointments.Not all foreign services are structured quite the same. Some describe “consular services” as services to citizens of the country who are overseas, and visa services. Canada doesn't do that. Visitor and permanent resident visas, Work Permits, Study Permits, and applications from outside of Canada for people who would like to come to Canada as refugees, are dealt with by one particular group of foreign service officers. They are not actually members of Global Affairs Canada. Rather, they are members of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Despite this, they really are fully foreign service officers, and they and their dependants receive diplomatic passports when they are overseas. (OK, I admit it, it is a wonderful ego trip. I'm a diplomat, really!)You do not get to stay overseas all the time, which is unfortunate, because you get paid an extra amount to work overseas, tax and deductions free. If you are in a hardship post you get even more, depending upon the level of misery, health risks and raw terror involved. One time I even got combat pay as a result of getting trapped amidst a military coup attempt in Manila, tracer bullets, mortar rounds, tank shells, the whole works. It was kind of interesting, and my wife and kid put up with it, but we really are not Sylvester Stallone or Chuck Norris. (Jewish Quorans, say it loud, say it proud, I'm a nebbish and you ain't gonna change me!)Periodically, you have to come back to Ottawa-Gatineau and do some sort of headquarters assignment, purportedly to re-Canadianize yourself. The real reason is more that that it costs an awful lot to post foreign service officers and their dependants overseas. It is not just the salary and bonuses. In most national capitals and the big cities where most of Canada's consulates are, rents are far higher than in Ottawa-Gatineau. You pay a “shelter share”, which is the amount Statistics Canada thinks that someone of your income and family configuration, on average, would pay in one of the National Capital Region's bedroom backwaters. However, maybe that amount could rent you a closet in Manhattan.Sometimes you are given half-way interesting work to do while you are sitting it out Ottawa-Gatineau, and pleading desperately with Human Resources to post you absolutely anywhere, just, please, get me the hell out of here! However, some of the jobs are real thumb twiddlers, lots of time for nasty chat around the water coolers, or to exercise your coffee break backstabbing skills.But, in all honesty, overseas, in terms of the stress really was, it was the office. Local skirmishes go away, but a Canadian Embassy stays with you. Yes, I know it sounds all glamorous. But, it isn't. It is just a Government of Canada office, with all the command and control hierarchical orders that, that would entail. There are going to be days at the office when, you really do feel that it would be more enjoyable to be out there, dodging those tracer bullets and the incoming mortar rounds.Being A Visa Officer Is Not An Easy Way To Make a LivingThe one particularly good thing about it was, that some of the Canadian visa offices had nowhere near enough staff to handle the enormous processing loads. This creates a need for temporary duty officers. So, if you are sitting there in Ottawa-Gatineau, and you are running out of ideas for your next, beyond their back session, slanging someone else who was really annoyed you, you would do well to show appropriate obeisance and admiration for the folks at Human Resources who hand out the temporary duties. Take it into late January in Ottawa, and even the most forlorn developing world environment looks like Palm Beach. A temporary duty will normally run for a couple of months, partly because it costs a ton of money to get you there. (According to the rules, if there are more than a certain number of hours of flying, you get to travel business class. So, there you are, above the Pacific Ocean, cocktails and canapes, a full length fold down bed, and a decent selection of movies, all at the expense of the Canadian taxpayer.)Doing the actual visa work is nothing special, except that, at one touch of a button, you can destroy all of someone's hopes in life. It is not a good job at all for people who are, by nature, kind and empathetic.Maybe there is some hope around the guilt and shame corner, because Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is really working the Artificial Intelligence end, trying to replace those pesky employees and their bargaining unit with robotic type decisions.However, a lot of the emotion-provoking side of the visa work had been dampened down, even before the prospect of a low-end Star Trek apparition started to take hold. It costs a lot to keep enough visa officers around to actually interview applicants, so interviews, as much as possible, got dumped.More recently, IRCC has been shifting a lot of the visa work to in-Canada processing centres. They have set up one called CPC-O, in Ottawa, which is heavily staffed by people who would dearly like instead to be living that business class life overseas.Generally, throughout my foreign service time, Visa Officers were the least renown professional stream in the Canadian foreign service. It was said, the work you do is mostly clerical, not like us diplo-negotiators, and you are not really, really foreign service officers like we are, are you? Any Canadian embassy or consulate relies on “locally engaged-staff”, people from that country, or third country nationals, in order to get much of the work done. They pick up the attitude. This can get very tedious when the Embassy administration is doling out “staff quarters”, or when you need someone to come and fix the federal government's washing machine. It didn't help at all that a lot of the visa work was being done by single assignment officers from the domestic part of what is now IRCC. Often they were sent out with minimal special training. This gave the lie to the idea that Visa Officering really was a high level professional activity.Think If You Had To Live At The OfficeA domestic Canadian public servant really needs to master the art of the politically correct day, and going with the flow. Certainly, you will have some seriously obnoxious people around you. But, stiff upper lip, think positive thoughts about your low deduction, government employee's dental plan, rattle your hanger at the end of the working day, put on your boots and parka, and get on the bus and vanish yourself into Ottawa-Gatineau's frigid darkness.But, what if you cannot escape from those guys? There's your foreign service for you. You are meant to socialize with them. They are supposed to be, sort of, “your family”. I had my personal cure for that belief, so, I do not celebrate Christmas and demon rum will never cross my lips. Do you really want me in your family? I hate bridge. I hate tennis. No, I do not want to chat with you in the unairconditioned cabana beside the Embassy compound's pool, when the air temperature is pushing 45 C. (New Delhi, Islamabad and a few other places.) And, put me on top of a horse, and watch me set the record for the quickest fall off.And yes, some Canadian embassies have compounds, because the local housing is lousy, and the ride into work is kidnappers' heaven. Think about it. You have invited the potential love of your life to your SQ, while the boss is watching, drinking a beer on his front patio. You will make Canadian Foreign Service tongues to wag.So, what do you do?You Are an Expat Now, Enjoy!There is the Expat world. Unless you are in an utterly anomic national capital, it is there for you. You can slip the bounds of your fellow Canadians and go out to socialize with all sorts of other third country nationals. You will learn that you are going to encounter some very slippery and dubious people indeed. They are, big, big time not Canadian nice.Manage The Americans In Your LifeAt some of their missions overseas, Americans, plus the other Americans who hang out with them, slide into sort of a Trumpian cocoon. After all, there are so many of them, enough for their own embassy bar and bowling league. What do they need you for?But, it is not always that way. You get environments where the Americans are very outgoing. You may even date one. And hey, it is not two weeks in Florida, this is years of your life!My first posting was in New Delhi, sociable Americans indeed. Some of my most frequent social contacts were with the United States Marines, embassy guards. A challenge for a committed Winnipeg nebbish? No. I had seen my share of Burt Reynolds films and similar. See yourself as a bit player in “Smokey and the Bandit”, and you will be a social butterfly.Manage Your Brits Even MoreI was so glad I have watched every episode of “A Jewel In the Crown”. Because, the Brits were still acting it out. As a Commonwealthie, you wanted to play the game. You don't want to miss the dart league or lose the opportunity for pub grub at the British High Commission restaurant. Also, you got to hang out with Scottish people, and for Canadian English-speakers of my generation, Canada is a lot about Scotland.Plus, if the British didn't invent the whole expat thing, they sure perfected it. They know. They will guide their colonials. And, most of them even had a decent sense of humour. If you needed a shoulder to cry on, they were good about providing one. And, what happens at the British High Commission, stays at the British High Commission.Thanks For The MemoriesNow that I am retired, I try to apply some selected memorization, and some gratitude. A lot of being a Canadian foreign service officer was, frankly, crap. However, I am proud of developing some very elaborate social dodging skills, that kept me well clear from the burning hot Canadian Embassy cabana.And, I was actually wanting to go overseas to see how other people live in other places, and talk with them. I got to do it.And then, there are excellent memories you cannot forget. I remember, as a very young officer, on my way to New Delhi, changing planes to get from Paris Orly Airport, to Paris Charles De Gaul Airport. They had a shuttle bus. It was comfortable. And then, on the way, there was the Eiffel Tower, for me, in my life, not even just a holiday. I was a little scared of New Delhi, but it was all worth it.Martin Levine