President Bush has given a speech on the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq intervention. Here is the full text. Of course all sorts of people think that this intervention has been nothing but a Disaster which needs all the adjectives from Dave Spart’s thesaurus to describe it. […]
Some good news from Cuba. If the EU wants to do something useful in ‘foreign policy’ it should start strongly promoting this sort of latent networked democracy and so promote and prepare for Cuban Regime Change. That would have two results. It would help end the current misery there faster. And it woiuld […]
I have been invited to take part in a debate in London later this year to discuss the proposition that "Western Policy in the Balkans since 1991 has been a Disaster". As someone involved in formulating part of that policy I am down to argue against this proposition. What to […]
As the results come in it is clear that Vladimir Zhirinovsky has failed yet again to become Russian President. He surged to prominence and even some significance in 1993 when his Liberal-Democratic Party won some 23% of the popular vote in the Duma elections. Before these important elections the […]
Back in 1979 when I joined the Service the FCO effectively enjoyed a brilliant and droll monopoly over most of Whitehall for communicating quickly with foreign governments. If eg the Trade Department wanted to send a message to its opposite numbers in Japan, this is roughly what would happen: […]
