Update Link not working previously – now fixed. Apologies. When I rummage around in this blog I find all sorts of good stuff I have forgotten I ever wrote. This is one such: a good practical example of a policy and personal dilemma for any civil servant to which there […]
Ha ha ha! Serbia has been shoved to the top of the diplomatic rubbish-heap by the Russian Foreign Ministry when it comes to issuing extra money for hardship postings! This piece by RFE/RL notes that Serbia with Kosovo (sic) is now in the same category as Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Georgia, […]
Autonomous Mind kindly gave a link and supporting comments to my recent piece about Negotiation Training. And, via Twitter, he asked for More on the Carrot/Stick negotiating paradigm. So, here it is. The psychology of diplomatic negotiating is a vast, interesting and almost unanalysed subject. A couple of years ago […]
My article in DIPLOMAT about Diplomatic Loyalties has been recycled by Grassroot Diplomat, a site run by Talyn Rahman. She opens with this ambitious statement: Imagine this. You are a diplomat representing your birth country, but your heritage lies with two other states from your parents and you are married […]
Anne Applebaum does a convincing job in demolishing what remains of the reputation of Mikhail Gorbachev who led the USSR to its own collapse: … the evening served to underline the strangeness of Gorbachev’s fate. Here was the man who had launched glasnost and perestroika, who had presided over the […]
Sorry to have been a bit quiet, folks. I have been in Vienna with ADRg Ambassadors giving negotiation training to Senior Inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency. These Inspectors have a unique and important job, namely to help check what is going on out there in the world’s civilian […]
Here’s my latest article in DIPLOMAT magazine, mulling over the subject of diplomatic loyalty: … the Libya case has given rise to a spectacular number of high profile diplomatic changes of side, with one Libyan ambassador after another announcing support for the opposition forces struggling to bring down the Gaddafi […]
A snappy young Serbian woman with two degrees from universities in the USA comes back to Belgrade to live and work. She gets a good job in a major Serbian bank on the corporate communications side. She gives a presentation to the bank top brass on how the bank can […]
Always good to be reminded that Europe is not just the wimpy EU or neurotic Balkans. There’s also Ukraine, and where (if anywhere) it fits in to the Bigger Picture. Luckily we have Odessablog’s Blog on the case, watching things with an astute British eye from balmy Crimea. Here’s a […]
ADRg Ambassadors are now gathering nice momentum. After launching ourselves last year as the world’s first Ambassador-level mediation and consultancy panel, we have now reconstituted the group formally into an LLP. The plan is steadily to build the ‘brand’ by emphasising the way we can contribute to high-level corporate diplomacy. One way […]
