A colleague of mine from old FCO days has a droll self-immolatory story about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the IMF who now faces serious criminal charges in New York. Years ago there was a tradition in the FCO that an Embassy would send short reports back to London if […]
You may not have noticed, but in the last few days/weeks/months/years (depending on how you look at it) Bosnia and Herzegovina has been teetering on the Brink of Disaster. Why? Oh, for all the familiar reasons. Key posts in the central government unfilled, general political deadlock stretching in all directions, […]
It’s not all doom and gloom with British diplomats. Over at Odessablog some warm words of praise for Judith Gardiner, Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy in Kyiv (Kiev, capital of Ukraine, for those who are not abreast of latest European city names). Thus: It is always good to catch […]
Network Myanmar, a lively source of information on Myanmar (previously known as Burma) welcomes the FCO announcement that the UK diplomatic presence in Myanmar is going to be increased (a bit), but then does a goodly job by pointing out one by one all sorts of errors on the Myanmar-related part […]
The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee today published a searching report on the Role of the FCO in UK Government. Here it is. And here is my own trenchant evidence, submitted in writing. I am not, it seems, grand enough these days to merit giving oral evidence. Sob. But read […]
Baffled by the sluggish rate of NATO bombing of Gaddafi’s forces in Libya, and the fact that this business is dragging on so inconclusively? Read this fine piece by Stephen Saideman at McGill University on the underlying negotiation going on. Really, I could not have it better myself. Thus: Simply […]
If you want a scintillating, furious polemic on why the Yes to AV campaign lost so heavily, go no further than Liberal Vision: The YES campaign was eminently winnable. But it ended up being run by readers of the Guardian for readers of the Guardian. Readers of this newspaper are […]
Last week I was back in stunningly expensive Geneva to give an ADRg Ambassadors training course on Mediation, Diplomatic and Communication Skills to an international organisation. One of the exercises that captured the imagination of the course participants – mainly international technical specialists of differing levels of seniority – […]
Here is a strong example from Walter Russell Mead of elegant but tough foreign policy writing, this time on the increasingly dysunctional US/Pakistan relationship. Once upon a time India with its phony anti-Americanist ‘non-alignment’ as encouraged by massive Soviet penetration of the Indian establishment was the main reason for Washington to treat […]
Max Atkinson praises President Obama’s ‘masterful mood changes’ exemplified in part by his Osama Bin Laden televised address last night. You can see and read it at https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-dead Yet it’s much too long, with (as usual) too much Obama praising Obama, plus some of it is, ahem, just ghastly: […]
