My young issue of the non-distaff side had a turbulent upbringing. Between 1996 and 2003 they lived in Russia, Croatia, Bosnia, USA, England, Serbia and Poland. Seven countries in some seven years. This took its toll in educational terms. In Sarajevo they were among the first intake in the newly […]
I have been struggling with my paper on military/civilian cooperation in ‘fragile states’. It is easy to think that the whole business is hopeless. It is just not possible in the short time-scales we all can cope with these days to work out how best to achieve Stability while maintaining Legitimacy. Not […]
My next commission for DIPLOMAT magazine is a piece on Diplomatic Ghastly Moments. All you diplomatic readers out there will have had them. You know what I mean. That moment when your heart disappears in the general direction of your toes at high speed. When your mouth goes dry as all […]
I am struck by the solid number of people coming to this site via my Diplomatic Oral History transcript here. Welcome. There is a lot of good vivid stuff there if anyone really does want a Lot More about some of the most memorable moments in my diplomatic career: In Bosnia after […]
The Presidential drama (or not) in Honduras drags on despite my own best attempts to end it by going on holiday. I see that Hillary Clinton is more nuanced about a possible return by ex-President Zelaya, now a ‘reckless’ move. What happens if a demonstration in favour of the new situation is […]
Did PM Putin deliberately sit President Obama in a chair way too low, to make him look and feel awkward for the TV cameras? The great debate unfolds. The point of such sly diplomatic insults is that the victim dare not show that s/he is aware of them, even if […]
In the UK most political letters announcing the writer’s resignation say what they have to say, perhaps with a feigned or even real sentence or two of respect, then stop. Some go into some vital policy detail, albeit in thinly coded and very general terms. See Geoffrey Howe’s letter to Margaret […]
As our friend Ivor wrote: On one side, the United Nations, the OAS, the United States government and, apparently, most informed opinion worldwide. Lined up against them, someone who spent 12 months as Honduran Minister of Culture – a political big-hitter, quite clearly – and your good self. It promises to […]
Once again the Guardian talking sense, this time on the Sir John Sawers’ untimely Facebook story: … the revelations of Lady Shelley surely contain very little that those in search of such information could not find somewhere else in the course of an afternoon. And certainly there seems to be […]
Reader Willie Garvin has sent in several thoughtful contributions in response to my request for personal experiences of donor/military cooperation (or not) on the ground in different hotspots. His basic point is that Western ‘interventions’ in conflict-ridden or fragile states are doomed to fail because the underlying objectives are invariably […]
