Derek Tonkin, former British Ambassador to Thailand, Vietnam and Laos, knows a few things about that part of the world. Hence it is good to see him helping with this lively site, Network Myanmar. See for example this page with a long list of handy links to articles about Myanmar […]
Back in Moscow in 1994 or thereabouts I asked a top Russian foreign policy pundit what would happen to Ukraine, then languishing in a deacying post-communist stupor. "We’ll just buy it," came the sardonic reply. But what about less obvious places, such as Nauru, which has just recognised Abkhazia and […]
A reader says nice things about my long posting on the Copenhagen Negotiating Disaster (for the EU at least) but also asks a terrific question: A remarkable piece of analysis, Charles, with fascinating insights for the outsider. I detect a theme emerging in your posts – a sort of neo-realpolitik […]
A group of former senior British diplomats (self included) have come together to set up a new top-end international strategic advice and dispute resolution/dispute management service: ADRg Ambassadors. Here is the website, just launched. Check it out, including the excellent and impressive list of policy areas and languages the team […]
Who does not remember that back in 2005 the witty literati on the Blair team at No 10 affectionately used to call Chancellor Gordon Brown Mrs Rochester, in honour of his wild shrieks from the Whitehall attic against the emerging EU Budget deal, under which the UK surrendered part of its […]
Remember drippy Comparative Politics? Now with added EU! New EU High Representative Baroness Ashton: The EU is now in a position to assume a "stronger, more credible role in the world," the nominee for the EU’s top foreign policy post says… Aargh. Who drafts this lame stuff for her? This person? […]
One of the amusing Criminal Law undergraduate questions in Jurisprudence centres on the law of mistakes. Suppose it is a rainy night, and I am in a restaurant without my umbrella which I lost the other week. After paying my bill I decide to chance it. I shiftily look around […]
David Aaronovitch writes eloquently about what he sees as the hypocrisy of all sorts of people who deny gayness in Africa (and elsewhere): …are there no gays in Malawi or Uganda and have there been none, in any significant sense, throughout African history? Is it just now, as a product […]
Many Departments of State in the UK hand out large lumps of cash to NGOs and other ‘community’ groupings for what are said to be noble purposes which advance taxpayers’ interests. The problem is that once that money is handed over, it ceases to come under any Freedom of Information […]
No amount of exhortations that the international community ‘be more robust’ in and with Bosnia can get round the horrible fact that the key problem is profound disagreement on what Bosnia and Herzegovina is (are?). The Bosniac/Serb/Croat communities and their leaders just do not and will not agree on what […]
