My piece at Telegraph Blogs boldly asserts that yesterday was the worst-ever day for Western diplomacy: Think about what will happen if the Russian initiative starts to fly. Chemical weapons are relatively easy to make and store (and fire), but much harder to dismantle safely. The chemicals themselves are fiendishly […]
Here is a major piece I have written for Aeon on the way states emerge or de-emerge, and the specific case of Kosovo/Serbia. Thus: Miloševi? had some good points, but his willingness to use violence against his neighbouring republics repulsed those Western nations that might have accepted his logic. In […]
A well turned piece from John O’Sullivan at National Review on Syria: As the debate on Syria ricochets along, I am struck by a contrast between the internal conservative debate on the crisis and the wider political, diplomatic, and media debates. By and large the conservative debate is both civil […]
My Commentator piece about the notable developments last night in Parliament, noting three reasons why all is not (yet) lost: First and foremost, we risked ending up helping President Obama wriggle off an embarrassing immediate hook (the Syria regime boldly stepping across his own half-hearted ‘red line’) but without really […]
An interesting old CIA analysis of Tito’s strangled Yugoslav grammar and pronuciation concluded that he probably was a Polish or Russian imposter. The CIA opined that this fact “does not matter a great deal” as his rise to world prominence occurred after any substitution. Evelyn Waugh famously fretted that Tito […]
Two more superb American articles about Egypt. One by Adam Garfinkle looms at the very big picture and has some mightily wise words to say on the logic of political change: We can see in past developments leading to liberal democracy the dialectical relationships among technological changes, social mobilization, economic […]
My new piece for The Commentator: The main reason why I think it’s almost better for Western governments to say as little as possible in these grim circumstances rather than make loud statements of condemnation is that words without action look ‘weak’. Any statements made are mainly for domestic and […]
You’ll all be pleased to know that at long last you can sign up to one of my lively and memorable Negotiation Skills masterclasses, thanks to the good offices of Guardian MasterClasses: This is an exclusive opportunity to join Charles Crawford in a small group for an intensive workshop that […]
It’s pretty obvious that the ill-fated Russia re-set button produced before a bemused Sergey Lavrov by an excited Hillary Clinton back in 2009 is now sitting prominently in the Russian Foreign Ministry’s famed Museum of Diplomatic Curiosities, an exhibit put there for young diplomats to show them how not to […]
As you can see, I have been reviving my flagging career as a Daily Telegraph blogger. This one prompted by the death of Sir Kenneth James (one of my distinguished predecessors as Ambassador in Warsaw) popp’d up this morning, remembering lost times at the Foreign Office : One key difference between […]
