Quotes of the Day

David Miliband has an image problem. Smart and engaging, he resisted siren voices that urged him to challenge Gordon Brown in June's contest to become Prime Minister, earning a plum Cabinet job in recompense. By any reckoning he's a heavy hitter. Yet Britain's new Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs finds it tough to convince people that he's old enough to do his job. On a July trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan, his first long-haul destinations since taking office, his youthful appearance provoked disbelief. "He's the Foreign Secretary? He's so young!" exclaimed social activist Atta ul Haq after meeting Miliband at an event in Pakistan. "He cannot be more than 30," said Amjad Nazeer, a Pakistani translator. "If he came through the democratic process, I congratulate him." In fact, Miliband is 42. "There's nothing I can do," he says, "short of dying my hair gray."

That's not strictly true. The Foreign Secretary could cultivate the trademark pomposity of high office or rein in a tendency to use teenage expressions. (Chatting to colleagues while waiting for a helicopter in Afghanistan, he dismisses a Tory policy as "pants.") Yet a change of style might compromise his disarming ability to disguise his intellectual firepower and connect with people, a rare gift shared with his mentor Tony Blair. Appointed Blair's head of policy in 1994 and an author of the election manifesto that helped sweep Labour to power three years later, Miliband is already a Labour eminence, if not yet a gray one. After winning a parliamentary seat in 2001, he was rapidly promoted by Blair, who once compared his precocious protégé to Wayne Rooney. The lanky, bookish Cabinet Minister may not seem to have much in common with the stocky, inarticulate Manchester United footballer (though Miliband proved a decent defender in Labour's soccer squad, the Demon Eyes). But like Rooney, Miliband is rated as a key player, with ample potential to score for his country.

Here's how Miliband says he plans to do so as Foreign Secretary: by resisting the temptation to be reactive and formulate policy in counterpoint to Washington (or any other international player), instead emulating the strategy of Arsène Wenger, manager of Arsenal, the London soccer club he supports. "There are those who decide their strategy on the basis of who's on the other team, and there are those who decide their strategy on the basis of who's in their team," says Miliband. "It's that latter strategy [Wenger] uses. Focus on your own strategy and let the rest pan out." He also believes that it's vital to articulate the benign motivations underpinning British policy, not least to counter any idea that the West is locked in a clash with Islam: "British foreign policy is not just about what we do, but why we do it."

On July 29, Miliband tackled his biggest fixture yet, joining Prime Minister Brown on a visit to America amid much speculation that U.K.-U.S. relations were set to cool. That night, Miliband's dinner with his opposite number, Condoleezza Rice, included heavy fare such as Iran (Britain favors a twin-track approach of incentives and sanctions), Kosovo, Russia, and his own detailed exposition of what he'd learned in Afghanistan and Pakistan (he sees the stability of both as vital to the fight against terror). Officials describe the meeting as "full and frank," which usually means that portions of the conversation were difficult to digest. Brown's discussions with President Bush earned the same epithet. His press conference with Bush, though friendly, was businesslike.

Critics who damned Blair as Bush's poodle were eagerly looking for such signs. When Brown took over, they dared to hope that the British bulldog would now cock its leg on neocon policy. Miliband's own appointment hinted at a shift. He is seen as a skeptic on the war in Iraq, though he supported the government line — something he is reputed not to have done when Israel invaded Lebanon last year. "Blair's position was too close [to the U.S.], and now they have to find a way of getting some distance without causing a rift," says Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University. Miliband rejects that interpretation: "Our relationship with the U.S. is our single most important bilateral relationship. It's as important under this government as it was under the last government. There's not a single anti-American in the U.K. government."

Certainly not Miliband, who spent years in the U.S., first at junior high school in Massachusetts and later at mit. But it's European history that shaped him. The son of Jewish intellectuals who fled the Holocaust — his father was a Marxist theoretician, his mother a political activist — his was a childhood marinated in debate. He emerged, he says, as a "conviction politician," and — like his younger brother Ed, also a member of Brown's Cabinet — a Labour man to his bones. "Politics is about which side of the fence you're on," he says, "and I've always been clear about that."

With foreign-policy questions stacking like planes over a busy airport, Miliband will need a sense of clarity. The British government plans to focus on Darfur as well as Afghanistan, while continuing to reduce its participation in Iraq, and also contending with such headaches as a deteriorating relationship with Russia. Miliband won't have an easy ride. "Another couple of weeks and I'll probably be very white," he says, pointing to a gray streak in his black locks. If so, that'll be one less problem for him to deal with.

• CATHERINE MAYER
• A breakneck trip to Afghanistan, Pakistan and the U.S. offers a daunting preview of the challenges facing Britain's new Foreign Secretary, David Miliband