President Obama’s much-praised message of friendship to Iran got a dusty public response from the Iranians, including some nice imagery: The new US president sends us a Persian New Year greeting message but in the same accuses us again to support terrorism and to be after nuclear weapons," the supreme […]
As I have previously noted, Diplomatic Blogging by serving diplomats is fraught with complications: The point is that under the way our democracy functions British diplomats can’t work like that. Nor do they. Anything close to being critical or tendentious or spikey or provocative is likely to annoy either a host government […]
Should the USA and its Western allies talk to ‘moderate elements in the Taleban’? President Obama’s musing about this publicly necessarily has various effects. Above all, it rewards Afghanistan extremism and demoralises ‘normal’ people there who have been trying to build a normal life with our support. Why should they make the […]
In Zimbabwe the Africanist tendency led by Robert Mugabe is making one last heave to destroy ‘white farmers’. The so-called power-sharing deal which is meant to start to pull Zimbabwe out of its crisis leaves the Agriculture Ministry in Mugabe’s hands. So, out they go: At the meeting in Chegutu, […]
Close your eyes and try to imagine what Germany, Japan and China will look like 30 years from now, that is, when a newly-issued long-term bond will mature… … Imagination fails in the case of Europe and Japan. One out of every four Germans today is older than 60, and […]
The latest Stonewall Workplace Equality Index has been published. The FCO is delighted with its rating (53rd place, above the Ministry of Justice but below HM Revenue and Customs): Commenting on the achievement Sir Mark Lyall Grant, FCO Board Diversity Champion for Sexual Orientation, said: “I am delighted that the […]
The Guardian website headline screams, as if in pain: Whitehall devised torture policy for terror detainees MI5 interrogations in Pakistan agreed by lawyers and government The ensuing text reveals … what? That there was an ‘official interrogation policy’. Directed at a high level in Whitehall. And agreed by lawyers and […]
David Miliband’s protocol problems in India (the risk or otherwise of annoying senior Indian interlocutors by being too ‘familiar’) raise an interesting operational point. What is the role of the in-country Ambassador in such circumstances? In particular, how far should he/she go to brief the visiting Minister on how to […]
You are a Prime Minister. You throw overboard your Defence Secretary in a Cabinet reshuffle. But you feel you owe him. And it’s always better to keep ex-Ministers ostensibly busy, lest they start to chaff at their obviously ‘ex-‘ status and cause trouble in the Party. Maybe push him for the top […]
You get what you pay for. Nature fills a vacuum. What goes up, comes down. Pride comes before a fall. And so on. Thus: Since the calamities of the Balkan wars, the average European planner has assumed that there are two worlds of military operations: NATO and EU missions on […]
