It’s always good when a Pope picks up one’s ideas and gives them mass appeal. Here is Pope Francis warning that a ‘piecemeal World War Three‘ may have already begun: “Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, […]
Diligent readers will remember that now and then I argue with Brian Barder, another former Ambassador turned energetic contrarian. The Assange Saga in its early days gave one such exchange, where we disagreed over how far if at all the UK government might be within its rights to enter the […]
The bombastic smirking of Russia’s Victory Day parades is on a quite new scale this year. And why not? How often these days does a country get to boast to itself that it has grabbed part of some other country’s territory and seemingly got away with it? How did we […]
Things have slackened off again here, what with one thing and another. But here is the hefty piece I wrote about Ukraine last week for the Daily Telegraph. To be precise, I did not write it. I dictated it into my iPad from my hotel room in Gjakova (also known […]
Telegraph Blogs have published my piece on the latest deal on Iran and its nuclear programmes: All negotiations boil down to a few existential issues: Security, Resources, Control, Reputation/Recognition and Time/Risk. Plus, depending on how the other aspects are tackled, Trust. Skilful negotiators trade both within and between these ideas. […]
How to destroy Syria’s CW stocks, now that OPCW experts say that they have demolished Syria’s CW-making facilities? Not so easy to do this within Syria with a passing civil war raging on. So take the CW stocks to somewhere safe and do it nicely there. Hmm. But where? Albania […]
But, as with so many other things, Obama always gives the vague impression that routine features of humdrum human existence are entirely alien to him. Marie Antoinette, informed that the peasantry could no longer afford bread, is alleged to have responded, “Let them eat cake.” There is no evidence these […]
We Brits are bemused by the Obamacare saga in the USA. The overwhelming mass of Brits (including me) have no idea at all how the national health service actually works. All we know is that the State has taken on the responsibility to fix us if something goes wrong. It […]
My latest piece for DIPLOMAT is up, this one on Syria. A subject about which I know nothing at all, not that that stops me saying something about it, and failing that Yugoslavia: Back in 1980 I attended my first event at Wilton Park, the FCO country house conference centre […]
Dear All, Sorry to have dropped from the Blogosphere. Too much going on in the world and in the Crawf household, and not enough to say. I had an interesting few days giving a Negotiation Skills masterclass at the IAEA in Vienna, then a shorter one-day version of the same […]
