A reader writes: I have been hoping for your comment on the recent move by EULEX concerning the border between Kosovo and Serbia which seems to have equally upset both sides. I think he means this: The EU rule-of-law mission in Kosovo and Serbia have signed the policing protocol, despite strong opposition from […]
Some good comments from readers on my (too) long piece about the US Missile Defence decision. Two take a different view, arguing that Putin’s Russian government is not motivated by crude nationalism, and that if one stacks up various decisions taken in recent years by the USA/West it is not […]
Last year I wrote some pieces about How to Negotiate. These and other pieces with an implicit or explicit Negotiation theme are linked here. Such as this one: It does not follow that being bloody-minded or even threatening force actually works. So much depends on context, the objective balance of […]
President Obama has cancelled a plan to build US anti-missile defence radar facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic. This move has been hailed by Russia’s President Medvedev as a "wise decision". Which, of course, prompts the ignoble thought that if the Russians like it so much, something must be […]
The Polish Government has showed its displeasure at the US missile defence decision by playing the protocol card: Prime Minister Tusk refused to take a telephone-call from Hillary Clinton, steering her to talk to her opposite number (ie Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski). Tusk eventually talked to President Obama after […]
Here (h/t Skeptical Bureaucrat) is an interesting report about apparent self-censorship among US diplomats going back some years: One diplomat told The Washington Times that he has decided to resign in part because of frustration with "rampant self-censorship" by Foreign Service officers and their superiors that has gone so far […]
Picking up the theme of the previous posting, I might add that after the St Albans School prize giving this week a smart young pupil asked me for a couple of lessons learned from my diplomatic career. Gulp. Where to start? I offered only this one. Back in Belgrade in 1981/82 […]
I mentioned a while back my latest article in DIPLOMAT magaizine about Ethnicity and Foreign Policy, with some general analysis of what is or is not a state under international law: DIPLOMATIC HOBGOBLINS AND BALKAN OMELETTES: WHERE DIPLOMACY MEETS ETHNICITY Here it is if you want to read the full […]
Former Ambassador Craig Murray has thrown himself back into the blogging ring after some self-doubt. He has a long post about the Lockerbie/Megrahi business, which covers the ground with the volleys of adjectives and adverbs one has come to expect: The Tories have shown their blood-baying, American bum-sucking true colours. […]
A consignment of weapons clandestinely sent from North Korea to Iran is intercepted by the UAE. Pretty big news for the UN Security Council and the different sanctions regimes against North Korea and Iran alike, huh? Of course not, when the USA is chairing the UNSC: At Ambassador Rice’s news briefing, […]
