I have written a piece for Financier Worldwide on the dark arts of negotiating in central and eastern Europe: The implicit view is that it is the outcome, not process, which really counts, and that the value of different outcomes can be measured. However, based on my experience as a […]
Remember my lyrical piece about Left student activism at Oxford back in the 1970s? No, you don’t. So read it now. And marvel at the taxonomy of assorted Lefts: Labour Party members and moderates: weedy, hopeful, useful idiots Broad Left: Labour Party members who sucked up to the Communists Communists: small in number, […]
My latest piece over at The Commentator looks at why it took so long to arrest Ratko Mladic, and why our leaders tend to opt for gradual escalation rather than decisive blows to the head: In late 1996 I sent a secret telegram to London arguing that the massively expensive […]
Here is the text of President Obama’s speech in Westminster Hall. Well received more for powerful delivery and ‘feel-good factor’ than substance. Before he left Washington the President gave an important speech on the upheavals across the Arab region and what it all meant for the Middle East. Text here. […]
When Radovan Karadzic was finally arrested in mid-2008 I echoed here a telegram I sent to London from Belgrade in 2001 following the sudden transfer to ICTY of Slobodan Milosevic provocatively titled: "Is Milosevic Innocent?" My piece "Is Karadzic Innocent?" made the point that it would be easier for ICTY […]
A powerful article by Yale law professor Jeb Rubenfeld spelling out for the purely foolish the legal issues (such as they are) surrounding the death of Osama Bin Laden. See especially this: The opportunity to surrender is a cherished, civilized and valuable part of warfare. But accepting an enemy’s white flag in […]
My latest piece over at DIPLOMAT magazine looks at the policy and practice of ‘international interventions’ (or not): ‘The more precisely the position [of an electron] is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known, and conversely’. This, as all clever Diplomat readers will know, is the classic formulation by […]
Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski last week bcame the first Western Foreign Minister to visit Benghazi and meet the anti-Gaddafi leadership. Here at Project Syndicate are some of his conclusions: Peoples in transition from authoritarian rule – peaceful in Poland in 1989, bloody in Libya today – grapple with decisions […]
Does Dominique Strauss-Kahn enjoy diplomatic immunity by virtue of his role as the top official at the IMF, so that any American domestic attempt to prosecute him for assaulting a hotel employee gets struck out before it starts? Good question. I don’t know the answer. Missions of international organisations enjoy […]
Over at Salon24, the leading Polish group blog, are my thoughts on how relations between Poland and the USA (and UK) have evolved down the ages – scroll down for the original version in English. Thus: The point? Simply that things come and go over years and decades and centuries. […]
